the slow restoration of "celticdistrict.com" begins...

...with the restoration of pTartan, the interactive (php) application for generating tartan images for backgrounds.  After having argued with WAMPServer's configuration and figuring out which dba handlers I had available (and re-adapting my coding style to the newer security restrictions like the elimination of server globals which wasn't a "problem" back in php 4.0 days), I this morning discovered that my new ISP doesn't support dba at all.  So I had to then rewrite the db code to use mysql instead.

But for now, it works.

All I need to add now some script-kiddie attack sensors and a new interactive mode for letting users design their own.  Then the last bit is to change it from frames based to AJAX.

That's enough geeking for now.  In 30 minutes, a new AT40 will start and then it'll be time to start cleaning again.

Today's AT40...

...is December 13th, 1980.

Not nearly so interesting as others to me.  Again, I think this is one I heard some of on the first AT40 weekend 15 months ago (the one I commented on, concerning John Lennon, after the long rundown of the "best of the 70s" recap that kept me awake on my way home).

Last week's recap had #3 Another One Bites the Dust, #2 More than I can Say, and #1 Kenny Rogers's Lady.  My mom (named Martha, so "duh") loved that song at the time.

Christmas 1980 was spent at in Chula Vista, California.  I'm pretty sure dad was home for most of the month, but they probably had a week long cruise early in the month.  I remember very little "pop" music at the time, since dad had his rock (when home) and mom often had either the oldies or the "adult contemporary mix" stations on.  What little I could glean came from "Solid Gold".  More of these songs I likely heard long after they were out rather than at the time.

There are also still remnants of disco seeping through, like #40, Never Knew Love Like This Before by Stephanie Mills.

Time to get to work upstairs...

MASSIVE Irony Interrupt:

I wrote this about this particular weekend's countdown back in August of '06:

and the odd note that history just scares you with...

the billboard charts are usually calculated 4 weeks in advance of the magazine's weekly release, with the American Top 40 recorded 2-3 weeks before to give it time to get distributed to the stations.  this format was usually 4 vinyl records (I have a rick dees 4lp set from feb 1984).  As such, sudden changes in the news at the time might not make it to broadcast...

They were running one that was a mere "2 weeks before Christmas" 1980.  As they got to the top ten, he played the great comeback song of John Lennon, "Just Like Starting Over".

and it dawned on me.

2 weeks before Christmas would have been sunday December 14th. [ed note: the week ending the 13th, so I guessed right at the time]

and though Kasem had no possible way of knowing when he recorded such uplifting, positive support for the comeback, John Lennon would already be dead by the time that went to broadcast.

spooky stuff...

Well, that was my comment towards the end of the countdown.  Hearing the beginning of this countdown just got even spookier.

He just answered a listener's trivia question, "how many pop artists have hit the top 40 after they've died?".  (7 performers, including 3 #1 like Janis Joplin and Time in a Bottle).

Again, recording it a month earlier, Casey had no way of knowing an 8th artist would join that list that very week.

Irony interrupt over.  Back to cheesy adult pop songs like #37's "He's So Shy", and 36's "Hey Nineteen" from that group I hate so much I ranted about it for a full day years ago, Steely Dan.  Plus Dr. Hook.  This is having an extremely mellow start to the afternoon...

Cliff Richard (I still don't get it.  I probably never will) just had a huge drop from #10 to #36 with "Dreamin'".  And I thought the great drop Foreigner would make with Waitin' for a Girl 18 months later was deep.

Eddie Rabbit still loves a rainy night.

A few later, Cliff Richard shows up again with Olivia Newton John in Xanadu's "Suddenly".

...

Kool and the Gang achieve wedding reception immortality with Celebrate.  Rod Stewart leaves his "sexy" behind to try a hand at a relatively unique style of rock in Passion.  "Even the President needs passion" seems a rather ironic line, post-Clinton, 'eh?

among these are a LOT of songs I've never heard before.  with most its pretty obvious why not...

Well, Waylon Jennings's Dukes of Hazard theme song is certainly one I've heard.  And recently, too, as the stars of the original show were on Graham Norton yesterday on BBC-America.  Silly show, which mom and I mostly watched to remember what green trees and red clay were like while in our California "exile".

Then Blondie's Tide is High.  They're one of those groups that, for my generation, if you didn't get 'em in high school, you couldn't escape 'em in college, as the general party music (along with Bat out of Hell, discussed last week).  Today, I still hear them as good party music, but I have no real intention of ever buying any.

After an insanely mellow song from Diana Ross (It's my turn), we get an MTV standard that stayed in the high rotation playlist for years, Devo's Whip It.

At #16, Sting is telling off the media with his insightful lyric, "Da do do do, do da da da".  Mellowness returns with Christopher Cross's Never Be The Same, and later on at 13, Heart is sounding almost nothing like their 80s hit parade with Tell It Like It Is, followed immediately by Hall & Oats' cover of You've Lost that Loving Feeling, which would be the dominant radio version of that song for years until Top Gun restored the Everly Brothers' original to the pop consciousness, albeit with a terrible crooning from Tom Cruise singing along.

After Air Supply, the mellowness is broken with Pat Benetar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot at #10, but then its back to back Barbara Streisand hits (Guilty, with Barry Gibb, and Woman in Love) before the early Springsteen hit, Hungry Heart hits #7.

The final few are mellow central, with two exceptions...

• Neal Diamond's Love on the Rocks
• Stevie Wonder's Master Blaster (you can hear the beginnings of the rhythms that would become "Part Time Lover" already in this)
  
• back to mellow with Boz Scaggs's Love Look What You've Done to Me as a long distance dedication
  
• John Lennon's Starting Over, with that great praise Casey heaped onto Lennon's comeback, the (double) irony of which I discussed earlier

Leaving the top three...unchanged!

• Another One Bites the Dust
• More than I can Say
• Lady

(and to go from one extreme to another, as in one end of the decade to the other, the very next song 80s on 8 programmed was, NKOTB's Hangin' Tough!)

Not sure if I'm in Revels next Sunday.  If I am, no update, 'cause I'll be deep in the concrete of Lisner and unable to get any XM signal.