I led a semi-sheltered suburban life in my high school years, so it wasn’t until MTV made its debut on my cable system a year after it launched in 1981 that I really started getting exposure to music that wasn’t AC/DC or Rush. But that’s not all MTV was able to do. Because the channel only had so many videos to play in a 24 hour programming schedule, it meant that they were open to artists who had videos ready to go — ’cause, you know, they were starving for content. I had no idea what was going on in the bowels of MTV programming back then, but what I did find that I was able to hear and see artists I really didn’t know much about. Of course if you look at this list you’re thinking “Yeah, it’s classic ’80s…so what?” But before they were classics, they were new songs that were untried in the music marketplace. But MTV being what it was back in the day, meant the programmers were able to give many of these song/videos extremely high rotations. So much so, that one couldn’t help like (or love) what they were hearing or seeing. MTV affected radio playlists in ways program directors never thought it could. Kids seeing the video for something like “Rockit” on MTV would call their local stations and request the song. As the requests piled up, the songs eventually made their way to radio. Not all were breakaway hits, but if it wasn’t for MTV they certainly wouldn’t have been played on the radio all that much. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘A Flock of Seagulls’
The Friday Mixtape: 10/2/09
The important thing to remember is that I didn’t set out to make this mix as it is.
The initial concept was to pull out the box of CDs I seldom listen to and pull tracks from them. It is not a judgment call as to why the Beasties’ Hello Nasty
(Who am I kidding? My nostrils are HUGE.)
There are songs here that I never listen to. The dust on Orgy’s Vapor Transmission
Somebody hold me.
A Flock Of Seagulls – Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You) from The Best of A Flock of Seagulls
Beastie Boys – Intergalactic from Hello Nasty
Eve 6 – Leech from Eve 6
Keats – Hollywood Heart from Keats
Leaves’ Eyes – Elegy from Vinland Saga
Limblifter – Screwed It Up from Limblifter
My Little Dog China – Eggshells from Velvis Carnival
Orgy – Fiction (Dreams In Digital) from Vapor Transmission
Procol Harum – Bringing Home The Bacon from Grand Hotel
Pushmonkey – Handslide from Pushmonkey
Sweet – Burn On The Flame from Strung Up
T Bone Burnett – The Long Time Now from The Criminal Under My Own Hat
The Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies – Boogie King from Big Wheel
Thomas Dolby – Airwaves from The Golden Age of Wireless
Triumph – Headed For Nowhere from Surveillance
Bottom Feeders: The Ass End of the ’80s, Part 32
I know I said I’d be quitting the intros for a while, but I had to put this all into perspective. I hadn’t thought about the scope of this series since I first agreed to do it, but the other night it kind of hit me and put me into shock.
This is post #32. Usually I get about 20 songs in each post. Which means over the course of this series so far I’ve posted somewhere around 640 songs. 640! That’s a good 50-disc box set there.
Then it hit me that we’re only on the letter F. Take out letters like X and Z and we’re still only about a quarter of the way through the entire series at this point. Again, this is the 32nd week; at this pace we’re looking at 120-plus weeks, total. So by the end we’re talking two years and a few months and probably around 2,500 songs. But the good news is that I still enjoy putting each week’s post together even after eight months of them. Whew.
Well, here’s another disc and a half’s worth of the eventual ultimate Bottom Feeders box set, as we continue looking at songs that charted from 41 to 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s.
Fleetwood Mac
“Sisters of the Moon” — 1980, #86 (download)
“Fireflies” — 1981, #60 (download)
“Family Man” — 1988, #90 (download)
“As Long as You Follow” — 1988, #43 (download)
“Sisters of the Moon” was the last of the four singles released in the U.S. off of Tusk (1979). Someone needs to introduce Kanye West to this one. The beat seems right up his alley for a sample.
“Fireflies” is from Fleetwood Mac Live (1980), written by Stevie Nicks and one of the three tracks recorded in Santa Monica for friends of the band.
“As Long as You Follow” is the only one of the four tracks here that’s still heard on the radio today. It was one of the two new songs on their Greatest Hits album (1988), which is widely thought to be the last album released on eight-track.
I know Lindsey Buckingham is a Popdose favorite, so I’ll let you guys talk about the Buckingham-penned “Family Man,” from 1987’s Tango in the Night, in the comments section.
