1980 | Your Volcanic Hit Parade Eruption ballads. Disaster ditties. Tributes to Harry Truman. So, so many Harry Truman tributes. PNW musicians in the spring and summer of 1980 took their shot at stardom through Mount St. Helens. You know, pop culture always finds a way to respond to disaster. After 9/11, you got solemn tributes of varying quality (Springsteen's "The Rising" album vs. Paul McCartney's song "Freedom," for example). Yet, Mount St. Helens got something else: novelty songs, jokes, a genuinely jovial spirit wrapped around an eruption that killed 57 people and gutted a region. Granted, some of those singles came out before May 18, when the mountain was still just a rumbling curiosity. Fair enough. But the novelty songs kept coming after, too. Different time, different vibe, but I still can't think of another natural disaster that was responded to in this way. What St. Helens songs do you remember from 1980? What's your favorite (or least favorite) from this mix?
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