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.”

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Big Noise - Bang! (1989)
purchase this album (Amazon)

If you’re a music fan with the good fortune to have been born before the late ’80s, chances are you remember the thrill of spending a leisurely afternoon (or many afternoons) wandering the aisles of your favorite record store, thumbing through stacks of LPs/cassettes/CDs, just sort of…looking without hoping to find anything in particular. You can still do this today, of course, but only if you’re lucky enough to actually have a record store in your neighborhood — and on nothing like the scale of the “good old days.”

The reasons for this are too numerous to delve into in a silly little Cutouts Gone Wild! post, but for the sake of our time together today, let’s chalk it up to two things — the rise of big box retailers whose treatment of new music as a loss-leader product choked the life out of indie retailers, and the steep 21st century decline in major-label revenues. There’s still plenty of music out there — more than ever, in fact — but you’ve got to go online to find it, and as wonderful as it is to sample new albums before you buy them, nothing quite compares to that aisle-wandering experience. Be sad you missed it, kids — we might not be getting it back.

The point of all this rambling? Once upon a time, the major labels released a lot of music. I mean, really — lots. So much music, in fact, that it was a mathematical certainty that a not-inconsiderable percentage of this music would be utterly ridiculous. Case in point: Big Noise and their 1989 debut, Bang! (more…)