The other day Metal Sucks introduced me to Firewind’s cover of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac.” That in turn took me to iTunes to search for other covers and yielded the interesting remake of “Super Freak” by Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby. As much as I loathe most of the covers that were made in the ’80s, I love when someone does a good cover of an ‘80s tune. And I’m not talking about someone adding a club beat behind a track and calling it a remake; it seems like almost every really popular song was remade into a dance track by some DJ within the past decade. I’m talking about cool covers with some different sounds or ideas incorporated into the original sound; since I like the Firewind track, a good example would be power-metal covers of pop tunes. (One of these days Manowar is going to cover “Who’s Johnny?” and I’m going to be all over it.) So, help me out and let me know some of your favorite covers of ‘80s tunes so I can make a mix of my own.
NEW MUSIC FOR THE COLLECTION:
Big Big Sun, Stop the World
David Drew, Safety Love
Nitzer Ebb, That Total Age
Nik Kershaw, Human Racing
Dave Edmunds, Riff Raff
We continue on with our look at the bottom 60 percent of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ‘80s with more “C” artists.
This past week I was like a pig in shit. Nine tracks from Chinese Democracy were leaked and I couldn’t be happier. See, Guns n’ Roses are my Led Zeppelin. They’re my Black Sabbath. Appetite for Destruction came out in 1987 when I was 11 and they were pretty much the first hard rock band I had ever really come in contact with. I’m not sure what music my dad liked. I mean, he gave me money to buy records, but I don’t really ever remember him buying anything for himself, so maybe he just liked me enjoying it. I know my mom liked The Moody Blues and Queen, so Queen was probably my first exposure to rock music — but GNR was the first hard rock that I can remember. Thinking about it right now, it was probably pretty cool of my mom to let a preteen listen to Appetite.
I’ve mentioned before how I don’t remember actually listening to much in the ‘80s. But there are two things I remember vividly. The first is coming home from school one afternoon and every hour on the hour huddling around the TV with my friends to watch the MTV premiere of the video for “Paradise City.” And the other was sitting on the back of the school bus and trying to convince all the kids that I had one of the “original” copies of Appetite for Destruction because “Paradise City” was much louder after the whistle on my version.
I love collecting music, that’s a given. As with most collectors of something, it’s the thrill of the find that really does it for me. Two weeks ago I was at a place called Positively Records in Levittown, Pennsylvania, which is a store I visited weekly while I was in high-school living with Mom and Dad. Of course, Positively CDs would have been a better name, as no records were ever present. This was my first visit in at least two years and I walk in and run right over to the cheap used CDs as I always did and after about 15 minutes I happened to turn to the left and blam! — there they were. Records! Tons of them. $2 each and on the floor of course. So now I’m excited and sitting on the floor flipping through vinyl when I see a sign that says “$1 records in the middle aisle.” So now of course I have to run over there, because if there’s ever a place where you are going to find shitty records from the ’80s, it’s in the dollar bins. So I’m sitting in the middle of an aisle big enough for only one person to begin with, looking under the CD racks where all the records are. Every time I move a record, I get dust flying and I’m slowly but surely losing feeling in my right leg. But I can’t get over how exciting it to find cheap records in the store. I end up leaving with about 25 records no more than $2 each and of course I look like a gimp doing it since I have to walk around the store unable to feel my leg from the knee down from sitting on it for an hour. But that’s part of the fun. No matter where the records are located and how dirty and dingy it is on a floor or back room, I’m there. The only thing that would stop me is if they were covered in feces or something equally as gross.
However, it’s inevitable that with every purchase of records now that at least half of them are going to sound like the feces I just mentioned above. Case in point, the album I’m listening to right now as I type this — Frehley’s Comet by Ace Frehley. I listen to everything I buy, but I don’t buy them because they are good or bad. Now and then I find a gem, but for some reason it’s just as satisfying for me to find the train wreck too. I’m not saying Frehley’s Comet is a train wreck per se, but it’s certainly a big old brick of shit. The difference between the two is very subtle but there’s still a difference. My buddy Andy repeatedly tells me that I’m the only person he knows that discovers new music — 25 years after it was released. I’m constantly telling him about some ’80s record that I heard for the first time that he has to listen to and he has no interest in discovering what he missed back then. And I completely understand this. It’s tough to listen to a Peter Godwin record for the first time and not think it sounds completely dated. At this point in my collection, I really just try to listen to the music for what it is. Sure, these things sound old most of the time, but I’ve listened to so much ’80s music that at least for me it fits right in. And at this point if I don’t own the record already then I’m 100% sure that I haven’t heard it before. So everything from this point out in the collection is technically “new” for me.
This week we have a short post as we trek on with our alphabetical look at the bottom of Billboard Hot 100 charts in the ’80s and close out the letter “B.”
If you’ve got nothing to do on a Tuesday from 8 PM to midnight Eastern time, you should head on over to Bastard Radio and listen to Destiny’s Bastard Children, the Web radio show I’ve been cohosting for the last eight years or so. Known as Bastard #1 on the air, my cohosts Bastard #2 and Bastard #3 spin some nice college rock and wax poetic on plenty of topics.
I say this not simply for self-promotion, but because just a few weeks ago Bastard #2 pulled a great one off on #3 that seems fitting for this blog. Each week they play some of the bands that were listed in the Alternative Press “100 Bands You Need to Know in 2008” list. Bastard #3 sits behind the board and pops on the CDs, while #2 talks up the song about to be played. So #2 did his normal thing, #3 hit play and what comes on, but “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. I’ve been rickrolled on the web before but it’s the first time I’d heard of a radio rickroll. I have to give it up to whomever first started the rickroll, because this shit just never gets old.
Welcome to double digits! This marks the tenth week of posting every song from the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s that peaked at #41 and beyond. I have to say that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying writing this series, especially going back and listening to the songs I hadn’t heard since I passed by them while listening to the entire collection (I did that in alphabetical order too). Big thanks for last week’s comments too. Close to 60 of them, mostly about your first music purchases, which, as I mentioned, I love to hear.
Just a short little anecdote before we get to the songs this week — I can only remember one time in my life where I’ve actually said to someone that I wished I was another person. You’d think I would’ve said Michael Jordan, Billy Joel, or some dude who got all the chicks, but back in 1989 I actually remember telling my mother that I wished I was Tone Loc. That’s right — a pale-ass Irish redhead wished he was a gravely-voiced black rapper, all because Tone Loc seemed to have an unlimited supply of Funky Cold Medina. As far as I remember, that really was the only reason, even though I’d never actually heard of medina before that (or after, come to think of it), and other than bringing all the poodles to the house, I had no idea what it really did or even was. The weird things you wish for as a kid …
Here are 20 more songs this week from artists whose names start with the letter B.
How many of you remember your first music purchase? I have a terrible memory, so I’m not sure if it really was my first purchase ever, but I absolutely remember buying my first CD with my own money. I was eight, the year was 1984, and the unfortunate CD was Culture Club’s Colour by Numbers. (I don’t know what CDs cost back then, but I must have done a lot of chores to be able to afford one at that age.) I say “unfortunate” not because the album was bad — I still enjoy it even today — but because it just becomes the laughingstock of the first-purchase conversation. I could absolutely tell people that it was Def Leppard, Billy Joel, David Bowie — hell, even Ride the Lightning if I wanted to be cool — but I know that at some point I’d tell someone the wrong thing and get called on it and then not only will people laugh at my purchase but they’ll think I’m an asshole for lying about it too. It’s really a no-win situation, so I just stick with the truth. Besides, people are just as horrified when I cradle my self-titled Frank Stallone record like it’s my child, so at that point “Karma Chameleon” is like 100 times better.
I’m an absolute junkie for the “My first record was …” story, so I’d love to hear what yours is after you take a listen to the 19 below as we continue this week with the letter “B.”
Today we’re going to finish up with the story of my collection.
As I mentioned last week, I consider “The Collection” to be complete, i.e. I own a hard copy of all but one impossible song that charted in the Hot 100 during the 1980s. But just because it’s complete doesn’t mean I stopped collecting. I’m currently working on obtaining the entirety of both the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart and the Dance chart from the ’80s. And I’m not against also getting stuff from the Adult Contemporary, Rock, Country, and Bubbling Under charts, but those aren’t ones I’m targeting directly at this point.
As of today, my entire stash of ‘80s music consists of 2,117 LPs, 1,127 CDs, and 949 45s; I’ve listened to every single one of them from start to finish, note for sometimes painful note. Throughout all of this I’ve learned that the differences between Def Leppard and Scott Baio songs are more immense than you could ever imagine. So, I consider myself an expert in ‘80s music. I don’t know the stories and facts of every band in the decade, but I do know every song that was a hit and tens-of-thousands that weren’t. And I enjoy the songs that most people either have never heard, or haven’t heard in 20-some years. “Walk Like an Egyptian” does nothing for me. However, Alfonso Ribiero’s “Dance Baby” brings a joyful tear to my eye. I’m a total music geek and I’m okay with it.
This week we continue looking at the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with more artists that begin with the letter “B.”
The story of how I completed my collection continues in 2006. I was winding down to the end. I found that collecting the first 4,000-plus songs to hit the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s was no big deal, but the last 200 or so were giving me issues. If I had to pinpoint why, I’d say the three biggest obstacles were:
1. “Single-only” songs. The songs released by artists never heard from before or since, and only available on 45, were the most difficult ones to find by a long shot.
2. Crappy records from the tail end of an artist’s career. Contributing to the difficulty of my task were the artists that had had hits for 20 years prior to the ‘80s but just didn’t know when to stop recording, or tried to make a failed comeback attempt. Half the time the artist was crap once the ‘80s rolled around, and his/her/their LP sales were so poor there was never a second pressing or a proper CD release. The other half of the time the artist’s label decided enough was enough, so he/she/they had to release one final album on a new label — naturally, the singles from new-label, final-label albums don’t appear on 99 percent of greatest-hits compilations since they weren’t spawned from the same label as all of the artist’s other songs.
3. Price. I could’ve finished my collection a lot sooner than I did had I been willing to spend anywhere from $12 to $25 on an LP. But I’m not made of money, so aside from some pretty rare albums, a limit of a few dollars was my peak price. In almost every case, what I needed was considered rare mainly because it was crap and no one’s ever had the desire to release it again: go ahead and charge $250 for a rare Beatles 45, but just because you have a tough-to-find Unipop single doesn’t mean it’s worth anything. The end result of it all is that I was eventually able to find everything at the price I wanted.
Here’s the thing, though — I say my collection is “complete,” but technically it’s not. I have 4,229 of the 4,230 songs (approximately) that charted in the Hot 100 from 1980 to ’89. I’m missing just one record: “American Memories” by Shamus M’Cool. Though I do have it on MP3, it’s the hard copy I desire, but I can’t locate it. And I’m never going to locate it, but after a few years of searching I’m finally okay with that.
As far as I’m aware, only ten copies of this 45-only song were ever made. It’s easily the hardest to find of any charting song in the ’80s, and some historians will tell you it’s the hardest song to locate in the history of the Billboard chart. Up until April I’d only seen one copy available, as part of a full collection of music going for $300,000. Then a crazy thing happened — there was a dude on eBay selling this record! The end price was $3,600; if I was going to spend that much money on something I’d have ponied up an extra hundred and bought Oran “Juice” Jones’s $3,700 lynx coat. Trust me, though, it pains me not to have “American Memories.” Instead I’ve filled that hole with the purchase of the original contract that Shamus M’Cool signed to perform the song on The Mike Douglas Show back in 1981. It hurts to collect for so long and then not be able to finish my collection, but such is life.
Of course, I just couldn’t stop there, so next week we’ll end the story with where I’m currently at today with the collection. In the meantime, enjoy some more Bottom Feeders starting with the letter “B.”
This has been an interesting trip so far. Since I’m talking about the songs that reached the Hot 100 but not the Top 40, I know there are some stinkers. But since I’m doing it in alphabetical order, I was really curious how the quality would turn out. We’ve had one really good week in post #1 and one pretty bad week in #4, but for the most part there’s been a good mix of hits and crap each week.
So, continuing with the story … it’s 2001 and I’ve completed what I originally set out to do — get a hard copy of every song to hit the Billboard Top 40 in the ‘80s. But that wasn’t enough for me, so I decided to expand my search to encompass the entire Hot 100.
This is the point where the real fun of collecting began. It wasn’t difficult at all to get the songs in the Top 40. But the songs we’re talking about in this series are a completely different story: approximately 4,230 songs hit the Hot 100 in the 1980s. Now, of course, having greatest-hits CDs and a ton of full albums meant I had a good start in my quest, but I quickly realized the rarer songs from the early ‘80s would have to be found on record, as many of them have never been issued on CD. I’m not made of money, so the challenge was not only to locate them but to do so on the cheap. Finding those bottom-of-the-chart Bananarama songs from last week was simple, but locating something like “Fools Like Me” by Lorenzo Lamas was not. The only format I wouldn’t accept was cassette, only because I had nothing to play them on.
So, over the next five years I scoured record shows and eBay for Dana Valery singles and Frank Stallone’s self-titled debut record. My then-girlfriend — now my wife — would get totally pissed at me as she came home every day to find a half-dozen packages blocking the door, but hey, it’s all for the love of the art, right?
Next week we’ll skip ahead to 2006 and talk about how I “finished” my quest. Until then let’s continue with artists whose names start with the letter B, as we look at the songs that made it into the lower three-fifths of the Billboard Hot 100 in the ’80s.
It’s 1999 — I’m working two jobs and finding myself with no money thanks to my record-buying obsession, so I pick up three new jobs. I’m now working five jobs, 60 hours or so a week, going to school, and purchasing as many records as I can get my hands on.
Fast-forward to 2001. Collecting every song from the Top 40 wasn’t really the most difficult thing I’ve done. The majority of them can be found on some CD, somewhere, and if not on the original album then on a reissue, greatest-hits album, or compilation of some sort. The only reason it took me two years is a simple lack of moolah.
The very last song I needed to finish my collection was an interesting one: “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles. Of course I could’ve found that song on a thousand different CDs, but I wanted to find the ’80s release of it — it hit #23 in 1986 thanks to its inclusion in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I must’ve searched for the soundtrack to that movie for six months without any luck before the lightbulb went off in my head that maybe I should find out why. Seems that Ferris’s director, John Hughes, didn’t think the songs in the movie would flow together outside of the movie, so he never released a soundtrack. At that point I purchased the original song from one of those thousand different CDs, and my collection was complete. Or so I thought.
I figured I could end it there, but after going no more than three weeks without purchasing one record, I decided I needed to keep going and expanded my quest to include the entire Billboard Hot 100 chart from the ’80s. So, essentially, I’ve been building up to this series for about seven years now.
Since this is where the fun really begins, we’ll start talking about this challenge next week. In the meantime, we move on to the letter “B.”
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable Who's Who of music bloggers and and an ever-expanding roster of writers who have made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies to books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing Popdose Guides) and snarkily brief (the weekly Cassingle Vault), surveying releases both old and new. Visit today — and return regularly: The site publishes a minimum of twice a day.
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable Who's Who of music bloggers and and an ever-expanding roster of writers who have made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies to books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing 
