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.”

(more…)

Zack: There’s a certain element of playfulness to this song and its accompanying video that was a hook for me when I first heard it, and still is. While the music might seem trite these days, at least it seems earnest. The same way that R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People” made me want to vomit onto someone’s shoes, “All This Time” makes me just shake my head and say, “Aww … it’s so cute.” I know there are religious overtones in the lyrics, but I’m happy to overlook them and just enjoy this whimsical tune.

Scott: A great song from the last great album Sting has ever done. Yeah, he’s done some good songs since then, but not a consistently great album. Must have had something to do with the theme of The Soul Cages (i.e. the death of his father). What I love about this particular song is the dichotomy of the upbeat, happy-go-lucky melody countered with the heavy subject matter. His band never sounded better — he still had Manu Katche playing drums — and “All This Time” contains one of my favorite lyrics, Sting or otherwise, of all time:

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth
Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle
And as these words were spoken I swear I hear
The old man laughing,
“What good is a used up world, and how could it be worth having”

Vrabel: Yeah, OK, I like “All This Time” enough, in that vague, cottony, nondescript way you like cookies, or pillows, or cheeseburgers. I don’t know, friends, I just can’t muster up any sort of support for Sting beyond a loud and vibrant “Meh.” (more…)