So, where did we leave off last week? That’s right, the kid finally got some cash money. It’s 1999, and I’m in my fifth year at the beautiful College of New Jersey. All that matters to me at the time is my radio gig at the campus station (and getting more music for it). After months of going to the used CD store and picking up greatest-hits and compilation discs for $7 each, I set a goal for myself. I was going to collect every single song that hit the top 40 in the ‘80s. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

The day was a great one. It marked my first purchase of one of the music bibles — Joel Whitburn’s Billboard Top 40 book. Today I sit here with eight of them right next to me, but back then, it was all about that one glorious book. I collected my Def Leppard and my Men at Work, but I quickly found out that the stuff that really interested me the most were the songs I hadn’t heard before. And then I realized that if I wanted to get the majority of songs in the early ‘80s, I’d have to start buying records. That’s when the collection exploded.

If you are ever near Princeton, NJ, you have to stop by the Princeton Record Exchange. It is a glorious music store. They sell a lot of DVDs today, which cuts down on the record stock, but eight or nine years ago they had a billion LPs for just a dollar. For a college student starting on a new quest, working two jobs to get by, the dollar record was the greatest thing ever. And the dollar record was my downfall into uber-geekdom.

We’ll continue talking about the steps towards my first goal, next week. But now, I present to you the final “A” artists to hit from 41-100 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

Ashford & Simpson
“Street Corner” — 1982, #56 (download)
“Count Your Blessings” — 1986, #84 (download)

You could point to their song “Solid” as the defining moment of their career as singers, and you certainly say their career is defined by writing classic songs such as “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” or “You’re All I Need to Get By,” but personally, I think they defined themselves every morning when Nickolas Ashford woke up and put the sheen in his hair. I can just picture being around Ashford in a recording booth. Every time he shakes his head you get just a bit more hair juice in your eye.

Neither of the songs we’re talking about today are “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” but they do fit in decently with the decade. “Street Corner” is the better of the two songs, a nice little slab of pop-funk. “Count Your Blessings” is the last song of Nick and Valerie’s to chart and seems like it would’ve been better in 1981.

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So, we’re on the third post of this series, and I haven’t yet told you about my collection, and the reason I can actually do this type of thing. Last week I mentioned how my dad used to give me cash to get 45s back in the late ’80s, but that’s not really what got me started on my habit. It wasn’t until college that I really started collecting.

As a student at the College of New Jersey, I spent the majority of time at the campus radio station, WTSR. Back in ‘97 or ‘98 I picked up the coveted 9-midnight Monday night slot and started “Stuck in the ’80s,” but at that point, my collection didn’t include much other than the crap the studio had kept around for the last 15 years. At the time, my buddy James was doing a ’70s show and his goal was to own every song that hit the Top 40 within that decade. So, as any broke college student would do, I decided to embark on that same journey for my decade, albeit with much shittier music to find (or so James would tell me).

I started out getting greatest-hits packages to build up the tunes for the show, then someone would call and request a tune I didn’t have, so I’d run out and buy it so I had it for the next week. It worked like that for a few years, until I graduated in ‘99 and started making some real money. That’s when the obsession really began.

And … commercial. Just like every reality show in the world, I send it off to break just as it’s getting good. We’ll look more into my obsession in the next post. Heck, I mean, there are going to be hundreds of these, so I need to take it kind of slowly, or else by part 35, I’m going to have nothing left to talk about but my morning bowel movement. And I’m sure that’s not nearly as fascinating to you as it is to me. And if it is, there are groups to take care of that sort of thing. Maybe you should look into that.

Update: After it was mentioned in response to post #2, I actually went out and purchased the All Sports Band LP. Maybe it’s just me, but the damn thing ain’t half bad. I mean, “I’m Your Superman” still sucks total ass, but it’s a decent rockin’ album. Not anything great, but a little bit of Journey and a little bit of The Knack and you have this record. Much better than I could have ever anticipated.

Anyway, more A’s for you this week …

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I thank my dad for my love of ’80s music. My parents divorced before I can even remember, and I used to see my dad on weekends. Every weekend for years, he’d give me $20 and let me go in this little local record store run out of some guy’s house. You’d walk in and be immediately surrounded by a billion records. But right up front were the 45s, each of them $2. He would let me grab ten of them and wouldn’t charge me tax because “the government doesn’t charge kids tax.” If I remembered his name, I’d look him up today to see how long he’s in prison for some kind of tax fraud. It’s probably better that I don’t recall his name, but I do remember picking up the latest hits from Culture Club, Whitney Houston and Debbie Gibson, which as a 12-year old couldn’t have possibly been as lame as that sounds to me right now. I’d walk home with my dad and pop all ten of them on the record player (I still remember the turntable that actually held multiple records with the arm and would drop them one, sometimes two, sometimes three at a time — those were the days). We’d actually fill out index cards with the name of the song and the artist and assign each record a number which we’d put on the inside of the sleeve in pencil, which might explain why I always feel the need to keep all my music in order.

You know, I never really thought about it before, but maybe this is partially why I had a secret desire to be a librarian, too. Up until now I thought it was the hot librarian ass I’d get back in the horticulture section while no one was looking, but maybe that’s not the case after all. Anyway, I still have a bucket of those records today, and while not one of them factors into my collection — I started back over from scratch many, many years later — it certainly was a jumping off point as to why I chose to love the ’80s. So I guess I need to thank my dad for this; if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be able to talk about shitty Corey Hart songs with you. The world works in weird ways.

Let’s keep on keepin’ on with the A’s this week. (more…)

Welcome to Bottom Feeders, my friends. We are about to embark on a totally excellent adventure, the likes of which has never been attempted before. Over the course of the next … um … uh … who the hell knows. Over the course of a really long period of time we’re presenting to you a look at why ’80s music was radical/gagged you with a spoon.

Over the course of this blog, we’re going to talk about each and every song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ’80s, with a twist. We’re only going to look at the ones that charted between 41 and 100. I mean, really, what can I say about “Pour Some Sugar on Me” that you haven’t heard already? But that song that charted at #99 for one week thanks to some podunk station in North Dakota playing the hell out of it for a while — that’s a totally different story. We’re going to start with A and work our way to Z, a little bit at a time. Maybe you’ll find some gem that you haven’t heard in 20 years.

As for me, I just love ’80s music! It’s that simple, really. I’m under no illusion that this decade’s shit doesn’t stink, though. In fact, I tend to agree with most people that this is the worst decade for music ever (though at least I don’t have to talk about “Laffy Taffy”) but I still enjoy the good, the bad and the grotesquely ugly.

And there’s a lot of ugly.

We’ll get more into the backstory of how I started collecting and enjoying ’80s music as we go along, but let’s jump into this thing with a look at the decade’s bottom feeders, starting with the letter A. (more…)