It’s amazing sometimes to see how music brings the world together.
I was food shopping with my wife last week and “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone was playing in the store. Even though I’m not a big fan of most of the larger hits of the ’80s, it was the only song that caught my ear the entire time I was there. After the song ended, I found myself whistling it through the next few aisles. About five minutes later, this goth-looking dude with a ton of tattoos passed me and was singing the chorus. Not long after that I passed a couple that had to be in their 70s, and the old man was repeating the famous phone number to his wife. So, at least five minutes after “867-5309″ was over, there was me, a goth kid, and an old man all still being entertained by it. Somewhere the guys from Tommy Tutone are smiling.
NEW SOUNDS FOR THE COLLECTION:
Riot, Restless Breed
Accept, Metal Heart
Europe, Wings of Tomorrow
Johnny Gill, Johnny Gill
Axe, Offering
This week we look at the final nine artists whose names begin with the letter C as we give you 15 more Bottom Feeders from the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ’80s.
I turned on the radio the other day for the first time in months and the first thing I heard was “more music, less talk,” so that’s what we’re going with this week. Well, okay, it’s the same amount of music but less talk. But you get my point.
NEW SOUNDS FOR THE COLLECTION:
Garland Jeffreys, Escape Artist
Krokus, Change of Address
Aleese Simmons, I Want It
Art in America, Art in America
We stroll on with our next-to-last week of artists whose names begin with the letter C, looking at songs that missed the first 40 slots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ‘80s.
Rita Coolidge
“Fool That I Am” — 1980, #46 (download)
Many times it’s just so much more interesting to talk about everything but the music. What can I say about a boring track from some movie I’ve never heard of called Coast to Coast? Coolidge’s personal life is the story here — she dated Stephen Stills and then Graham Nash right after him, leading to the initial breakup of CSNY. But my favorite tidbit about Coolidge is that she starred in some television specials called The Christmas Raccoons and The Raccoons on Ice in the early ‘80s, which apparently led to the Canadian TV series The Raccoons. Here’s a clip from Raccoons on Ice, narrated by Rich Little and also starring … Leo Sayer!
You know, there are times when even I’ve had enough of ’80s music. It’s hard to believe that since I’m still acquiring “new” music all the time, but sometimes I need something more.
One of those times occurred this past Saturday as I was sitting at a poker table in Atlantic City, New Jersey. My iPod contains every Hot 100 hit from the ’80s plus many more ’80s tunes, some random great albums from the past two decades, and a ton of metal. I rarely ever choose a single artist or a full album and listen to the whole thing since I love the randomness of the shuffle option. There’s just something about hearing a 17-minute track from doom metal masters Electric Wizard followed by a Flock of Seagulls tune that does it for me. But as I was sitting at the table, I actually started to see a trend — when Tiffany came on, I was playing passively and poorly, but when it shuffled to Slayer I was nice and aggressive and winning hands. So, there came a point when I got tired of losing money and just chose to listen to Exodus albums for the rest of the night. I never thought there would be a point where the ’80s just didn’t work for me, but I guess I’ve found it.
NEW SOUNDS FOR THE COLLECTION:
Isaac Hayes, Lifetime Thing
Captain Sky, Concerned Party No. 1
Tease, Remember
The Flirts, Made in America
Gayle Adams, Gayle Adams
Kano, Kano
Back to a full post this week as I invade your speakers with more Billboard Hot 100 Bottom Feeders from artists whose names start with the letter C.
So here’s my question of the week for you — what the hell is a “fancy dancer”?
I’ve been listening to a lot of ‘80s funk and R&B lately and I keep hearing that term pop up. There’s One Way’s “Pull Fancy Dancer/Pull,” Twennynine and Lenny White’s “Fancy Dancer,” and before those two there was the Commodores’ own song from 1976 called “Fancy Dancer.” I still don’t know what a fancy dancer is, though. I assume it’s someone who dances in a non-boring fashion — maybe a person who wears some attention-grabbing clothing or is simply superfly.
However, I do know that I’ve been talking about fancy dancers for the past three weeks now, and every time my unborn child starts kicking my wife, she calls him a fancy dancer. So it’s about time I figured out what the true definition is. Can anyone help? Better yet, were any of you a fancy dancer in the ’80s?
NEW MUSIC FOR THE COLLECTION:
Mai Tai, Mai Tai
Curtis Mayfield, Love Is the Place
House of Freaks, Tantilla
This week, an abbreviated edition centering on the letter “C,” as we continue wading through the muck at the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ’80s.
Every now and then I like to talk about what I have deemed “inappropriate ghetto moments.” These moments occur when I have the windows open in my car, the stereo turned up really loud (there isn’t any other volume), and some really bad song is playing as I’m driving through the ghetto.
Now, this doesn’t happen often. Most of the time I drive straight home from work and I don’t pass through the ghetto at all. But on days where I stop to get some food on the way home, I have to take the long way back and, well, there goes the neighborhood. We’re definitely talking a lot of 40 oz. bottles of fine malt liquor, one or two crack whores, and maybe someone starting a fight outside of the Fried Chicken Shack. Oh, and the homeless man with the broken right leg. Yet even with this sunny description of the area, my fat belly often yearns for a double cheeseburger from some grease pit, so I risk it.
Anyway, the story is not about the food I eat but rather the songs coming out of my speakers. The first time I ever spoke about “inappropriate ghetto moments” came as I was riding down the street and a group of thugs were stollin’ along the sidewalk while I was playing El DeBarge’s “Who’s Johnny.” (Yes, I realize this song comes up all the time in my posts. I swear I listen to it way more than anyone should.) Another time was a 12-inch remix of “Electric Youth” by Debbie Gibson. And it usually doesn’t hit me right away either. After a half dozen people give me weird looks, it’s only then do I realize the reason and stop singing along.
So how do I top Debbie Gibson, you ask? Well, I think I did last week. I had four dudes walking down the yellow line in the middle of the street as I pulled up blasting the very beginning of “Ears of Tin” by Jethro Tull, off their Rock Island record. If you don’t know this song, it starts off with a fierce flute passage (typical), and of course nothing says “I’m a big pussy, please carjack me” like Riverdance-sounding bullshit bumpin’ outta da hooptie. And this time I was going through the ghetto for nothing more than a sweet tea — if I’m going to die it’d better not be while listening to Jethro Tull and sipping sweet tea. That’s far less cool than my plan of dying when I’m 90 during an orgy with barely legal teens after realizing my Levitra-induced erection has lasted more than the four hours they warned me about on the commercial. This, of course, only holds true if they don’t create some kind of bionic penis in the next 60 years. If they do, then maybe death by Tull will have to do.
Last week I talked about “the Shrink,” the guy at the record show who thinks he knows everything about every artist that ever recorded. This week we move on to another one of my favorite characters: Mr. Random.
Mr. Random is the dude who comes into the twice-a-year record show with thousands of records in milk crates all around the floor and gets pissed off when the records aren’t in alphabetical order. I don’t expect everyone to be a hardcore collector like me, but it still makes me laugh when I see people get angry at randomness. Mr. Random was probably in his mid-40s or so and came in with his wife and two children. He immediately asked the seller, “Are these in any sort of order?” The seller told him that they were by genre only and that he was in the rock and pop section, with country, jazz, easy listening, etc., over on the far wall. After the seller walked away, Mr. Random started loudly complaining to his family: “How does he think anyone will buy any records if they aren’t in order?” Then he started flipping through the crates, you know, like ten records at a time, kind of looking in their general direction and feigning a bit of interest before walking away seemingly disgusted.
I really just wanted to answer his rhetorical question to his wife. “Who’s going to buy them? Well, pretty much everyone who comes here, sir, since you are clearly the only one that just stumbled across this record show. The rest of us are here because of the show, and I’m sure all of us don’t mind not having anything in order, and in fact most of us enjoy the fact that they are random because that’s part of the fun of the search.”
And yes, I completely realize that I sound like a record-show snob at this point, but I’m really not. Ninety-nine percent of the people that were at the record show were totally cool and, really, I couldn’t have cared less what they were doing or buying, but it’s the 1 percent that make for a good story.
NEW MUSIC FOR THE COLLECTION:
David Hasselhoff, Lonely Is the Night
Atlantic Starr, Brilliance
Jethro Tull, Under Wraps
Jethro Tull, Rock Island
More “C” artists to come as we try to keep up with the quality of last week’s songs with 20 more from the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ’80s.
A few weeks ago I was at a record show for a few hours flipping through thousands of $1 records. I fully admit that I am a nosy person — I like listening to conversations going on around me, and it’s almost impossible to avoid them in this setting. I pick up some of the worst-looking albums you could possibly imagine, so I usually don’t make fun of people for their purchasing choices, but sometimes it’s inevitable. The best time to do this is when people are flipping through records and loudly talking to their friends or family like they’re experts on every artist, album, and song ever made. They seem to be trying to impress the seller or other seekers to the point where we somehow magically ignore the fact that Debbie Gibson’s debut is in their hands. This brings me to my first character. We’ll call him “The Shrink.”
The Shrink was probably in his mid-20s and was there with a buddy around the same age. The friend picked up Michael Bolton’s The Hunger and held it up for show. The Shrink then went off on a tangent that I’ll attempt to re-create as much as possible here. He said, “Is that a greatest-hits album? If that’s a greatest-hits album you should put it back, because greatest-hits albums don’t truly reflect where an artist’s head is at the time, and that’s why you should be buying a ‘real record.’ Why would you want just pieces of albums thrown together when your purpose should be to listen to the artist’s mind-set in one period of time?”
Of course I had to let out a little chuckle, not just because of the Shrink completely ripping the greatest-hits concept — which I clearly am not against — but because a harmless Michael Bolton record is what set him off. I’m pretty sure there were no signs given off that this was indeed a greatest-hits record, because if it was, wouldn’t there be some sort of indication on the record sleeve?
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.”
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and 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 Captain Video!), surveying releases both old and new. Visit often: the site publishes a minimum of twice a day.
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and 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 
