Today's AT40

[acroyear]

for those new to my flist here, every week (if I'm home and not doing some faire thing), I follow along with the AT40 repeat on XM's 80s on 8, reliving my middle and high school years to the soothing sounds and trivia-obsessive voice of Casey Kasem, just as I'd done all those years ago.  If curious, you can see all the recaps with my at40 tag.

So this week, here we go with June 19th, 1982.  Between grades 6 and 7, I spent a lot of this time hooked to MTV at my cousin's house in Xenia, seeing a lot of songs that would become huge months later (like I Ran and Who Can It Be Now) in the days when MTV would make a group rather than be the minimum requirement (and now nearly completely unnecessary).  sigh, how things change.  again.

Last week's top 3 were...

3. Don't you want me - yeah, that was my fault: it was the first 45 I ever bought. :)
   
2. Rick Springfield warns us, Don't Talk to Strangers
1. Ebony and Ivory, with that great irony of having (in the background) two black guys dancing/low-fiving, kinda defeating the point a bit

Today's another heavy-cleaning day, so it'll be mostly bullet points, I think...but its 8 debut songs this week (so mabye the ballad-heavy spring is finally over) so, On with the countdown...

40. Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow with Stone Cold.  pretty standard post-metal rock, crappy video, yada yada.  even the good ones can't win 'em all.
39. Neil Diamond's Be Mine Tonite.  Over time, many of his songs that hit the countdown, much like those of just about any "adult contemporary" artist (Barry Manilow, anyone?), ended up in the forgotten bin.
38. Huey Lewis sticks around with Hope You Love Me Like You Say You Do.  Pretty good, in hindsight.  It's one I didn't really hear until after they got big the second time around with the Back to the Future hits.
37. Heart's This Man is Mine, a blues-pop number before they'd reinvent their sound to be a defining moment of 80s rock.  here, it's just a nice ditty but nothing memorable.  Casey notes a trivia bit where during a storm in Japan while doing an outdoor concert, the stage roof started to give way, but gave way in 2 parts, the first not hurting anybody but giving plenty of time to flee before the second half fell, thus nobody was hurt.  crazy, 'eh?
    
36. Steve Miller Band's last big hit, Abracadabra.  LOTS of MTV airplay for this one.
35. Stevie back to her country-western roots with After the Glitter Fades.  It's ok, but I prefer it when she aims for a more European sound than this.
34. REO Speedwagon's Good Trouble keeps their hit-parade going with Keep the Fire Burning.  I liked this one (still do), but bought the 45 for "Sweet Time" for the b-side, "Stillness of the Night", which I'd seen on an MTV-only concert that wasn't released on home video (since it was so soon after the Live Infidelity video), and absolutely adored.
33. Hold Me from Fleetwood Mac comes in this week, one of Christie McVie's songs. I liked it but preferred Stevie's hits and songs on this album (Mirage) at the time. I wish I knew what was up with Buckingham - his work on Mirage is, for me, a career low compared to the masterworks he would do on Tusk and Tango in the Night.  The video was just strange.  Pop-up Video says they never actually returned the hundred-+ guitars they "rented" for the shoot.
32. The first one-hitter, Carla Bonoff's Personally.  One of those you remember as soon as it starts and forget it as soon as its over.  No shortage of those, are there?
31. Rick Springfield already has his followup on its way with What Kinda Fool Am I?, which I actually liked more.
30. Journey's ballad, Still they Ride. Oddly my memories of this are very specific - the first time I heard it was a hot summer day (possibly this very weekend 26 years ago) at home raking the grass cuttings to the boom box cranking out an AT40. With this song, I can see every detail of my Grove Park home's yard in my head as if I was there.  Decent guitar work here.
29. Forget Me Nots, from Patrice Rushen (the song is often more remembered than the singer, 'eh?). As I wrote before, I'd have totally forgotten this if it weren't for being used as a sample and chorus melody in Will Smith's rap for Men in Black.
28. Lou Graham sings "I Don't Wanna Break It Up", one of my fav Foreigner songs at the time. Maybe it's 'cause its got guitars in it?  (note to new readers: that's a running gag with me on these countdowns - the eventual elimination of guitars from their music as the 80s progressed...)
27. Highest debut of the week is Stevie Wonder's Do I Do.  You can here the influence on subsequent soul heavily here - the guitar riff here in the verses, if converted into a minor key, is the same riff Michael Jackson would use in the title song Thriller a year later.  On the other hand is the relative throwback in the chorus, which is straight outta Turn Your Love Around from the year before...then the middle-8 sounds reminds me of The Love Boat.  Crazy...
26. Loverboy's When It's Over, which was the main reason Get Lucky was my 2nd LP ever (Mirage was the first...and my dad stole that one from me).
25. Elton John's forgotten tribute to John Lennon, Empty Garden.
24. Frankie and the Knockouts with the forgotten Without You .  Casey tells the story that his Audi got totaled in his driveway on the same night, in the same moment, that he heard that the band was going to be on the sketch comedy show Fridays.
23. One of my favorite Kansas songs of all time, Play the Game Tonight.  (BTW, CCR holds the record for most "gold" singles (1 million sales) without ever hitting a number 1, with 7 total).
22. The last remnants of Country-Crossover with Alabama's Take Me Down. Earlier in the year, country was huge on the pop scene in the post "Urban Cowboy" world (hits by Ronnie Milsap, Juice Newton, Eddie Rabbit, Kenny Rogers, and the Oak Ridge Boys, as well as Alabama), but the 80s recollected itself back into a rock decade soon enough. Of course, as Country goes, I'll take this over most of the crap coming out today.
21. Speaking of which, Milsap's Any Day Now is still slowly climbing up.
20. The Motels' Only the Lonely.  Like REO, it took 'em 10 years of work to become an "overnight sensation".  I still love this one, and loved the WW2-style "Brighton Beach Memoirs" look to the video as well.
19. Little River Band's more forgotten Man on Your Mind. They and Olivia Newton John would be "the" definition of Australia 'til Men at Work. Yeah, Rick Springfield was Australian as well, but given that he kept an American-like accent on TV in General Hospital and Battlestar Galactica (yeah, the original Zac), most people simply didn't realize it.
18. Charlene's I've Never Been to Me, a one-hit-wonder that was 6 YEARS after it was actually released.  Odd that it would make it in '82, 'cause it most definitely sounds like a '76 ballad, with all the trappings of that era (Bacharach-like Piano, sweeping string scoring, emotionless drum part, pointless talk-over segment in the middle).  In hindsight, ick.
17. Soft Cell's high-tech Tainted Love, one of those guilty pleasures of us 80s fans. Oddly, I always thought it was a cover but never really pursued it. Recently, I actually heard the '64 original on the Avis bus down in Atlanta this last weekend. Gotta love XM Radio, 'eh? As usual, they didn't bother to play the Where Did Our Love Go part after it.
16. Jacksonville Florida's 38 Special and their first big hit, Caught Up in You.  Good southern rock, that.
15. Another one-hit-wonder, Tommy Tutone's famous phone number, 867-5309. Definitely an 80s anthem, of course.
14. hmm...maybe releasing another great single while still on top is NOT a good idea?  Springfield's Don't Talk to Strangers dropped from2 all the way down to 14!  Go fig.
13. A Roberta Flack ballad, Making Love.  I could have done without this...
12. Back to the country, with Juice Newton's Love's Been a Little Bit Hard On Me.  Again, not so great as such, but better than most country today.
11. One of my least fav Queen songs, to the point that I'd forgotten it existed, Body Language.  Might have been a great song for any other group, or a great one-hit-wonder, but as a Queen song, its very weak.
10. Denise Williams says It's gonna take a miracle. For me to like that song? Probably.  Considering I only knew her for Let's Hear it for the Boy, an overplayed single from Footloose, I keep getting surprised by how busy she was in the late 70s and early 80s.
9. John Cougar says it Hurts So Good in his first big 80s hit, though he did hit in the 70s and in '81 as well, but those are long forgotten 'til one hears these old countdowns.  Like Williams, he was already in his 30s when he started topping the charts, much older than most people would think.
   
8. The Dazz Band's Let It Whip, #1 soul song this week.
7. My second 45 ever, Joan Jett's cover of Crimson and Clover. Not nearly so fond of it now than then. My third was Bad Reputation, which I liked a lot more. Little would I know that in a few weeks at Cincinatti's King's Island, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts would be my first rock concert ever!
6. Asia holds the #1 album and the #6 song with Heat of the Moment. I'm of mixed feelings on Asia right now. On the one hand I'm glad they've gotten over the crap and reunited and actually managed to make an album, but on the other hand I'm annoyed at the treatment John Payne got as a result...and then I'm even more annoyed at Payne for this "Asia featuring John Payne" touring crap he's doing. I understand he's (rightfully) miffed, but dude, get over it. To 90s Asia fans, your name has enough value without piggybacking and confusing the audience.
5. In '82, Willie Nelson was still using exactly the same guitar and amp in spite of the damage to it over 25 years, and swore he would never change.  Here, his ballad that put him in the pop chart, Always on my Mind, finally gets into the top 5.  Of course, that guitar/amp comment was itself 26 years ago.  I wonder if he's changed them since then...Actually Wikipedia says he's still using the guitar, "Trigger" (named for the horse), and the whole in the soundboard is still there!
   
4. Ray Parker Junior is STILL in love with the other woman.  Without Ghostbusters, he probably would have ended up a one-hit-wonder with this one.
   

Rick Springfield's Strangers dropped out of the top 3, the top 5, and even the top 10, down to #14, so, we're into the new top 3 with

3. Toto's Rosanna climbs its way in, this time only with a mention about how many Wizard of Oz references are in this week like "Rainbow".  Given how much I like Simon Phillips' work with Oldfield and The Who/Pete Townshend, I probably should give the more recent Toto works a listen to see if that strong drum style of his survives that style of music.
   
2. Don't You Want Me actually climbs up another notch, but still isn't quite yet able to beat the current #1
   
1. Ebony and Ivory

Though it will soon...and in spite of a future #1, Abracadabra hitting in august, being already in the countdown the song that will hit in between them, which has been a single since January 1, isn't even on the countdown yet: Eye of the Tiger from Rocky III.

That's it for me, as now it's time to get really serious cleaning for company coming later this week.  g'nite, all.