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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