Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Bottom Feeders: The Ass End of the ’80s, Part 71

by Dave Steed

feeders52

An entire letter in a week. You gotta love that, considering R, S, and T will take a few months. Here’s the entire letter Q for you, as we look at songs that charted no higher than #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ’80s.

P.S. Thanks to those that recommended I purchase Pet Shop Boys’ Yes. I’m glad I did, as it’s a pretty awesome record. I’ve finally been able to cross that and Loz Netto’s Bzar off my list. I didn’t quite like Loz as much, but thanks to the reader who sent that to me as well.

Stacey Q
“Shy Girl” — 1987, #89 (download)
“Don’t Make a Fool of Yourself” — 1988, #66 (download)

It seems impossible that Stacey Q would have had four hits in the decade, but it’s true. Ms. Q had two dance hits with her group SSQ in 1983 before they decided to just go with the name of their singer and release “solo” material. She had two top 40 hits in 1986 with “Two of Hearts” and “We Connect.” “Shy Girl” was actually on her debut EP in 1985 but released after she had her two big hits. “Don’t Make a Fool of Yourself” is from her third album, Hard Machine.

Q-Feel
“Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)” — 1989, #75 (download)

Checking in at #4 on my Top 80 Songs of the ‘80s list, Q-Feel’s “Dancing in Heaven” to me is the definition of a lost gem. This track was actually way ahead of curve when it was released in 1982 and probably a bit dated when re-released in 1989. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t and still is, totally awesome. It appeared in the movie Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, (1985) but despite this fitting in great during that timeframe, it wasn’t a single then. The voice you hear here popped back up in 1994 with Top 20 single “In the House of Stone and Light,” none other than Martin Page. You gotta love the video here. He’s dressed up like a third string linebacker with a look and mannerism somewhere between Mark Mothersbaugh and Weird Al Yankovic. Seeing this, it’s not surprising they were never a hit.

Quarterflash
“Right Kind of Love” — 1982, #56 (download)
“Night Shift” — 1982, #60 (download)
“Take Another Picture” — 1983, #58 (download)
“Talk to Me” — 1985, #83 (download)

Can you believe that Quarterflash had seven Hot 100 hits in the decade? I probably could only sing “Harden My Heart” — the rest have faded into obscurity. The early recordings from the group all had pretty much the same saxophone sound to them so they are very easy to pinpoint at Quarterflash songs. Later songs like “Talk to Me” still featured the saxophone, but seemed to have much more of a rock edge.

Suzi Quatro
“She’s in Love With You” — 1979, #41 (download)
“Lipstick” — 1981, #51 (download)

Quatro had been releasing music since 1973, but her peak was between ’79 and ’81. Both of these songs sound very ‘70s but are pretty damn catchy.

Queen
“Play the Game” — 1980, #42 (download)
“Need Your Loving Tonight” — 1980, #44 (download)
“Flash” — 1981, #42 (download)
“Calling All Girls” — 1982, #60 (download)
“I Want to Break Free” — 1984, #45 (download)
“It’s a Hard Life” — 1984, #72 (download)
“One Vision” — 1985, #61 (download)
“A Kind of Magic” — 1986, #42 (download)
“I Want It All” — 1989, #50 (download)

QueenThe almighty Queen check in with nine of their 14 charting tracks in the decade not making the Top 40. Their nine songs makes them just one away from the Bottom Feeders record of 10 songs, still to come.

“Play the Game” was somehow released between “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust” and wasn’t a real hit. And the awesome “Need Your Loving Tonight” was the follow up to “Dust” and also didn’t make it past #44.

“Flash” is actually not the version called “Flash’s Theme” on the Flash Gordon soundtrack. That version has the dialogue from the opening scene only, while the single version here has dialogue from various points in the movie.

I love Queen, so I’d like to say otherwise, but 1980’s The Game was pretty much the last good record from the group. Hot Space (1982), The Works (1984), A Kind of Magic (1986), and The Miracle (1989) all had brief shining moments, but even the bigger hits like “Body Language” and “Radio Ga-Ga” weren’t all that great. A song like “One Vision” tries to rock out but ends up missing the mark by a long shot. “I Want It All” really is one of the few Queen singles from the latter half of the decade that really doesn’t try any gimmicks in turning out a straight rock song; in so doing, it ends up being the best single of that era.

Quiet Riot
“Mama Weer All Crazee Now” — 1984, #51 (download)

Quiet Riot flat out sucked. I would definitely like to hear their first two Japanese releases in the late ‘70s with Randy Rhodes on guitar to see what they sounded like with him. But once QR starting releasing albums in the U.S., they progressively got worse as a band. 1983’s Metal Health is passable at best. Past that, the next three (Condition Critical (1984), QRIII (1986) and Quiet Riot (1988) are almost unlistenable. Somehow they kept releasing albums though right up until singer Kevin DuBrow died of a cocaine overdose in 2007.

QUICK HITS
Best song: Q-Feel, “Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)”
Worst song: Quiet Riot, “Mama Weer All Crazee Now”

TOP 40 ONLY
None

Next week, another new letter — R!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under Bottom Feeders, Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • WHarrisBullzEye
    I once met a girl online in some chat room or other who swore by “Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)," but I'd actually never heard it until she assured me of its greatness. That was in the mid-'90s, though, so I have no clue how it stayed off of my radar for so long.

    Of those Quarterflash songs, the one I remember most fondly is "Night Shift," as it was the theme song to the Henry Winkler / Michael Keaton film. I still love that flick.

    Hard to believe "Flash" wasn't a top-40 hit. ("Gordon's ALIVE!") As far as Queen's classic albums go, I realize it wasn't part of their '80s output, but I still think that, as swan songs go, "Innuendo" was really quite good.

    In closing, Quiet Riot may have sucked (though I would personally take exception with that, given that their music was a definitive part of my early teens), but any band who could raise the profile of Slade's classic '70s output at least deserves some props for that.
  • rob
    I still remember the moment on Casey Kasem's TV show whe they counted down the top 10 rock acts of all time, based on (I think) viewer votes. Number 3 was Elvis. Number 2 was the Beatles. Number 1 was … Queen. Yes, Queen.

    I'm sorry but that moment lives on my mind whenever I hear about the band.
  • sneezebag
    I remember that countdown. Must've been in 1980. I recall the song and video played was a live version of "We Are The Champions" (appropriately enough) and I believe Freddie was dressed in a leotard (appropriately enough). Can't be sure of this, but wasn't the leotard black and white, split vertically, or am I seriously mistaken?
    I do love Queen, and I have a great fondness for all of their albums. Perversely, "Hot Space" is a favorite. I was working in a record store at the time that he died and believe me, morale was utterly destroyed that day we learned about it. Everybody working in the place except for one overaged hip-hop guy was devastated. Back in 1991, record store kids still gave a shit about rock and roll. But not for too much longer.

    As for QR, let's hear it for SLADE! I still surprise friends of mine (who really liked the QR records) by playing the originals. Then, they ask to hear more! That, to me, is the whole point of having friends over for music marathons. If someone goes home with a new favorite band, I feel like I've done a good deed. Ironically, the week's worst song might just be Slade's best song (either that or "Gudbuy T' Jane") and all of their singles were bottom feeders in the 70's. In fact, Slade finally had two top 40 hits in America in 1984. QR undoubtedly helped make that happen, so maybe I oughta cut the daisy-pushin cokehead a little belated slack.
  • In fact, Slade finally had two top 40 hits in America in 1984. QR undoubtedly helped make that happen...

    I would argue that Big Country probably had more to do with the success of "Run Runaway" than Quiet Riot...
  • sneezebag
    My God, that's a pretty good argument. I'm thinking of "Fields of Fire" and that galloping beat and anthemic rowdyness. Love BC. They should've been much bigger. Unfair comparisons to U2 dogged them from the start. They're really nothing alike. So sad about Stuart. Now I've got to go dig out one of their records...maybe I'll start with "Wonderland"...
  • Eric S.
    Cheap Trick has a Slade song on their current CD. The song is "When The Lights Are Out" and it is supposedly a version that has been sitting around for 30 years or so. It's a great song and it totally suits Cheap Trick.

    I have to admit I didn't know Slade until Quiet Riot came around. It's great that they finally got some exposure in the 80's, but I think Noddy Holder may have been the ugliest person to ever appear on MTV.
  • My wife swears by Q-Feel. I can't say that I share her enthusiasm.

    Man, I thought I knew Queen pretty well, but I don't recognize "It's a Hard Life" or "Need Your Loving Tonight" at all.
  • sneezebag
    Even then, I couldn't help feeling that if Queen had released "Dragon Attack" as the follow up single to "Another One BitesThe Dust", they would have had another huge hit. It was all over the radio anyway. Maybe they decided to keep it as an incentive to buy the album (and it seems to have worked.) Kinda like Led Zeppelin not putting out a single of "All My Love" back in late 1979, not to mention "Stairway To Heaven" in late 1971. I mean, "Need Your Lovin' Tonight" is a fine song, but maybe it shoulda came after "Crazy Little thing Called Love" instead. I don't ever remember hearing it on the radio. No single at all for "Dragon Attack"? Feels like a missed opportunity. Maybe someday out of desperation it might happen. You could certainly make a killer compilation of all the fantastic songs that were radio hits but never released as singles. That would be one of them.
  • Russ
    I thought they were deliberately trying not to release similar singles back-to-back so as not to get pigeonholed. But Another One Bites the Dust was SO huge that Queen essentially turned into a joke (with US rock audiences anyway) and when Need Your Loving Tonight tanked the band apparently decided to just go with the joke thereafter.
  • kingofgrief
    Slow.

    Slow.

    Quick. Quick.

    Slow.

    No argument about its coolness.

    I'm not immediately familiar with the Quarterflash tracks here beyond "Night Shift"...on first listen, "Right Kind of Love" sounds cut from the same cloth as their first two hits (they sure loved them some B minor). I still can't believe "Walking on Ice", the first single from '85's Black Into Blue, missed the chart altogether. I'm looking for the single remix to spin on the Club Hour occasionally. Take a listen, it's nice and synthy (no comment on the video itself): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJWllEMjpuI

    I love "Lipstick", even if Van Morrison was denied the co-writer's credit he obviously deserves. I'm hoping to find a comprehensive Suzi best-of, "Devil Gate Drive" and "Stumblin' In" (with Smokie vocalist Chris Norman) are also favorites. (No mention of Leather Tuscadero? I have to think of everything...)

    This has been my week for Queen; I added The Game and A Day at the Races to the collection on Monday, and now I get to fill in some gaps here...most notably "Calling All Girls", though Hilly Michaels will always own that title.

    I second the notion that Quiet Riot deserves kudos for giving Slade a Stateside boost, but drawing two buckets from that well smacks of creative bankruptcy. (It didn't help that there was a competing cover of "Crazee" from the Irish band Mama's Boys released around the same time.) That said, Metal Health will weasel its way into the KoG library in the future.
  • kingofgrief
    I just realized...there's an artist AND a record by a different artist in this week's post that can be connected to both Henry Winkler and Ron Howard. Goodbye grey sky, hello blue...
  • rob
    That would be Suzi Quatro, who played Leather Tuscadero on "Happy Days." Good catch!
  • I found my thrill....
  • I have been trying to find that Hilly Michaels record (or at the very least the song) for ages.
  • sneezebag
    Just checked ebay. Lots of choices, even a sealed LP.
  • kingofgrief
    Would an mp3 suffice?
  • Thank you very much for the offer, but our own DW Dunphy came to save the daaaaaaaay!
  • sneezebag
    The Q-feel song is pretty great. Here's something weird: The first time I heard it was on a K-tel record called "Get Dancin" (U.S. album, not the old U.K. one) that I bought in February 1983 (I'm a receipt keeper). Never heard of that tune before, but dug it immediately and it quickly became my favorite on the album. According to the Billboard Bubbling Under book, the single first charted on March 26, 1983 lasting just two weeks and peaking at #110. Usually the K-tel principle works in the other direction. I can't think of another instance where a song charted after retiring to the K-tel graveyard, and then this one went on to finally break the top 100 six years later? That just about never happens. I don't remember why the sudden popularity in 1989, but then again, Benny Mardones was back in the top 20 with his nine-year-old #11 hit at the same time. Planetary alignment?

    By the way, I'm not knocking K-tel records. They were how I got my earliest music "education" since I was six. I was always fascinated by the songs on the albums that I didn't know (and more than a few were never hits) and I tended to judge most of the songs equally. As a result, from a young age, I liked music from all categories and I didn't dismiss songs just because they didn't fit a favorite genre. Coincidentally, one of the best K-tel's of all time was "Believe in Music" from the spring of 1973. Guess what "hit" was stuck on the middle of side two? "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" by Slade (#76, January 1973.) I played that track to death, until my crappy cheapo "record player" wore it out enough to make it skip. I was six and suddenly I was "into" Slade. Years later I'd finally discover how awesome they really are but the cold hard fact is that it was some cheesy K-tel record that opened up a door beyond the top 10 AM radio hits of the day. It must be noted, however, that that same album also contained two Donny Osmond solo hits. "Go Away Little Girl" was a goddamned #1 hit.
    But it also had the immortal Raspberries and The O'jays. But Bobby Vinton was along for the ride, too. To my six year old ears, there was nothing schizophrenic about this lineup. It's kinda like racism. If nobody plants the idea in your head that certain music is automatically awesome and other music sucks by default, then you can appreciate just about anything you hear, even if you have to listen to "How Do You Do?" to get to "Long Cool Woman In a Black Dress". And I love 'em all - even the Donny Osmond ones. You may fire when ready.
  • brettalan
    Wow, this is weird. I had Believe In Music, too, and I certainly didn't remember Slade being on it! Turns out, there was a licensing problem--original copies of the album had "Mama Weer All Crazee Now", but after a few months it was replaced by "Let Your Yeah Be Yeah" by Brownsville Station, and that was the version I had. I got mine from someone else so I didn't know when it was purchased anyway. Fascinating.
  • sneezebag
    Re: the Q-Feel video:
    He DOES look like "Weird Al" crossed with Mark Mothersbaugh!!! What a brilliant and dead-on accurate observation. But wait, is that Paul Lynde on the drums and Ray Liotta on keyboards? Or maybe Tony Curtis... either way, the guy's got connections. You gotta have some major pull to bring Paul Lynde back from the dead to play in your band.
    Isn't it odd that a song as completely inorganic as "Dancing in Heaven" has a live performance video? There's something simultaneously uncool and fantastic about this. I've always loved this song, but now it finally sounds "humanized".
  • Keith629
    Given my somewhat extensive knowledge 80's music, I am ashamed that I didn't hear the Q-Feel song until the '89 re-release. Chalk that one up to growing up in Central Kentucky. I never had a mp3 version of it until now, so that's a highlight for me this week! I was working in college radio in 1989, and there was a fad at the time among commercial radio programmers to unearth underappreciated gems from earlier in the decade and put them into current rotation. Moving Pictures "What About Me" is another example of this. I think that speaks volumes about the new music releases from the music industry at the time.
    One note about Quiet Riot...some time back in the mid-late '90's they just showed up at a bar here in tiny Richmond, Kentucky and asked to play a set that night. They did just that, with no advertising or marketing leading up to it. Left town immediately afterwards and moved on to some other sleepy burg I guess.
  • I used to have great, fond memories of Dancing in Heaven, and had not heard it for years until Popdose had it up a few weeks ago; and now I realize it is pretty bad, specially compared to other electro pop and euro dance tracks from the period, like Tapps, the Flirts, Bobby ORlanda, Claudja Barrry, Lime et. al. Actually, I do not remember it being released again in 1989, only remember it as part of the big wave of Hi NRG hits of the early eighties. Talk about lost gems.
  • Elysium
    Wow, Martin Page was the singer for Q-Feel. I remember he co-wrote one of my favorite tracks on Robbie Robertson's Storyville record and by the time he had his solo hit record in the 90s I was aware of the previous hit songs he wrote. But, I never connected the Q-Feel song that showed up on the various compilations with him.
  • philz88
    I love Dancing in heaven, check this out: dansoninheaven.ytmnd.com
  • EricL
    It absolutely breaks my heart that Queen's Innuendo was a 1991 album because it won't make your chart. Well for that reason and because it had no hit singles in the US. It marked a return to their "epic" song style and includes some of their strongest work. Practically the whole thing is Freddy's take on mortality including te heartbreaking "These are the Days of our Lives" and "The Show Must Go On." Although it has a fair amount of filler (seriously Feddy, your cats?) t's quite a shattering record.
  • mojo
    Just two rock star/jazz-blues musicians' deaths affected me at all, emotionally: Kurt Cobain and Freddie Mercury, Freddie much more so than Kurt.
  • Don Karnage
    OK, I guess I'll be the only one who thinks "Dancing in Heaven" is pretty awful. It's like an 80s version of clueless/faceless disco, but with the over-earnestness of a song from a children's program. I can picture Martin Page delivering a song like this, wide-eyed, to a group of day-glo-clad moppets. "Time for the 'Stranger Danger' song!" I first got the song on one of the Rhino Just Can't Get Enough CDs, and didn't think much of it. Now it's more of a 'can you believe this' sort of track for me.

    ...and nobody else wants to do this? All right, I'll take it.

    Gimme
    Gimme
    Gimme
    Gimme
    FRIED CHICKEN!
  • Don
    Sorry but Quiet Riot did not suck. If you can get past a metal bias most "writers" have maybe you could understand their appeal. They were one of the highlights for Rocklahoma 1 for me and yes I know only 2 members of the popular lineup were there but the were still great.
  • Haha. Metal bias, that's funny.
  • awww, maaaaan. Way late to the party here. I had a good deal to say about the Q week, so yeah, might as well start there..Stacey Q. Love, love, LOVE her. My first exposure to her was obviously "Two of Hearts" I recall exactly where, too. Steed - coming from the same area, being the same age- perhaps you recall this one: Dancin' On Air. (the awesomely awful theme song now stuck in my head) There was a girl, a "regular" on the show, who had a solo dance routine to the song and she did some goofy shoulder move to the "i-i-i-i-i-i-need" part that has stuck with me to this day, and even now, whenever I spin the song(which is almost every set) I find myself doing it. UGH! haha. I play "Shy Girl" a lot too, and occasionally "We Connect"(which is essentially "Two of Hearts" part two) and "Insecurity" as well. I even once in awhile break out some SSQ. "Tonight(Make Love Til We Die)" from the Return of the Living Dead soundtrack in particular. That one is definitely(as always) getting played during my Halloween set later this month!

    Q-Feel . "Dancing In Heaven" gets a lot of play here. I was once blessed by a popular DJ here in town who was at my gig saying "wow, you're really playing this. Nobody ever plays this. This is my wife's favorite song." I like mixing it with Peter Godwin's "Images of Heaven" Obvious reference point with the whole heaven thing, and the songs work together, oddly enough.

    Queen is by far one of the best bands of all time. Their early 70s output is some of the most creative and insanely weird stuff ever put to tape. So way ahead of their time. Funny how all the early stuff boasted that "no synthesizers were used on this album" and then they went that route come the 80s, haha. There are some excellent tracks to be found on their later stuff, but as far as full albums go, it's mostly filler.

    I admittedly like Quiet Riot, though I do see them for what they are - second tier hairmetal band and part time Slade cover band. Either way, they were always fun.


    on to this week!!!
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