National Lampoon October 1980

National Lampoon

October, 1980

October, 1980, and the number one album on the Billboard Top 200 chart is Guilty by Barbara Streisand.

Atop the Hot 100 singles charts is Queen's immortal 'Another One Bites the Dust.'

 

It's always interesting to look at the songs in the lower depths of the Hot 100. In October of '80 we see a 'rap' tune from one Curtis Blow......is this a novelty song, or perhaps a bow shot from a genre still in development ? And the rock band called 'Journey' seems to be doing alright, too. Surely we'll see them on the charts again, at some point in the future.

 

As for the group 'Zapp,' they are making their mark with 'dance' or 'funk' tunes (back in the Fall of '80 it was death to use the noun 'disco' to refer to anything). Lots of synthesizers in their song 'More Bounce to the Ounce.'

Let's take a look at the October issue of the National Lampoon. This is a rather dull issue; P. J. O'Rourke is the editor, but most of the magazine's creative icons have moved on to the world of film, riding the success of National Lampoon's Animal House. 

 

Writer John Hughes, who contributes the feature 'Bullies' to this issue, is on the cusp of becoming one of the most influential and successful directors and producers of the decade of the 1980s, with such movies as National Lampoon's Vacation, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

 

 

Chris Miller, who contributed many memorable short stories to the Lampoon, is absent and Gerald Sussman provides this issue's story: 'Curses,' about a witches and warlocks convention where an orgy runs into trouble. It's a funny story, but it lacks the demented quality of a Miller tale.

 

There's an advertisement for a comedy album (?!) from Chevy Chase (?!). It's Chevy providing some ad-libs in accompaniment to a variety of tracks, like 'I Shot the Sheriff.' It's pretty awful. You can listen to it here. 

 

 

Some neat little cartoons among the pages, and 'Foto Funnies' goes existential:

The comics section of the magazine has quite a profile in this issue. Not all the stuff is very good, but still, it was better than most of the magazine's text pieces.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that's what you had in the pages of the National Lampoon in October from 45 years ago....