January 16, 1982

Several folk whose music blogs are regular reads for me frequently make it their business to dissect and discuss the songs from the music charts for a particular week from the past.

Favorites such as The Hits Just Keep On Comin’, Echoes In The Wind, Songs Of The Cholera King, and 70s Music Mayhem are likely known to anyone who stops by here, too.

That last one – 70s Music Mayhem – is a recent discovery that is impressive in its painstaking attention to detail in breaking down the songs that happened to debut on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart for a given week from the ’70s.

Like a lot of music fans, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 was appointment listening for several years of my childhood and, at some point, I’m sure that I stumbled across Billboard‘s Hot 100 posted in a record store.

Years later, Billboard would be a regular read and even an employer, but, in the early ’80s, what lurked beyond the forty songs Casey would count down each week was a mystery.

It’s 2011, though, and in this age of enlightenment, a good portion of Billboard‘s back issues are available to peruse online.

So, borrowing a bit from some of those blogs I’ve mentioned and to give myself a source of material when I’m not not pondering something mundane in particular, I thought that I’d take a page from one of those charts from yesteryear and chew on it.

I’m not sure when I first heard an episode of American Top 40, but I do know that I became a regular listener in January of ’82. At the time, I was halfway through the final year of junior high and music was becoming my favorite waste of time.

On a frigid, snowy Saturday morning, surfing the radio dial, I happened across Casey counting down the hits on WRIA, an adult contemporary station – as I recall – out of Richmond, Indiana.

From perusing those Billboard back issues, I suspect I was listening to the countdown from the week of January 16, 1982 when the following songs debuted on the Hot 100…

Soft Cell – Tainted Love
from Non-Stop Erotic Café
(debuted #90, peaked #8, 43 weeks on chart)

There were only a couple of songs that debuted this week which I didn’t immediately remember. The moody ’80s synth-pop classic Tainted Love isn’t one.

(though it didn’t reach radio stations in our area until the summer)

Skyy – Call Me
from Skyy Line
(debuted #87, peaked #26, 11 weeks on chart)

Call Me was a #1 on the R&B charts which would have meant nothing to me and it didn’t get played on the pop stations I was listening to.

It’s a perfectly fine dance-funk number with a bit of guitar that makes me think of Ray Parker, Jr’s The Other Woman from that summer.

Smokey Robinson – Tell Me Tomorrow
from Yes It’s You Lady
(debuted #86, peaked #33, 12 weeks on chart)

And though I wasn’t listening to R&B stations, I did, at least, know Smokey Robinson for the suave Being With You, which had been a huge hit the year before.

Tell Me Tomorrow is a mid-tempo crooner that wouldn’t have appealed to me then, but I kind of dig now.

The Oak Ridge Boys – Bobbie Sue
from The Oak Ridge Boys
(debuted #85, peaked #12, 14 weeks on chart)

The radio station in my hometown flipped from rock to country about a year or so before I began to truly care. My only interest in the station was for school closing anouncements on January mornings.

I am willing to listen to any of the dozens of Toto songs named for women. As for The Oak Ridge Boys, Elvira was more than enough and, in restrospect, I consider it karma that a friend from college once drunkenly yanked on the beard of William Lee Golden and asked if it was real.

(or so I heard)

Chilliwack – I Believe
from Wanna Be A Star
(debuted #83, peaked #33, 11 weeks on chart)

Speaking of Toto, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of folks would guess that the groovy, mellow I Believe might have been that band. It wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Toto IV.

Though it’s a perfectly amiable song, I Believe isn’t the ridiculously catchy My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone), the Chilliwack hit that had preceded it.

AC/DC – Let’s Get It Up
from For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
(debuted #81, peaked #44, 9 weeks on chart)

I’m glad that we live in a world where there is AC/DC and I think that Bon Scott was amazing, but I listened to Let’s Get It Up three times this morning shopping and it left me with no impression.

Cliff Richard – Daddy’s Home
from Wired For Sound
(debuted #80, peaked #23, 13 weeks on chart)

At the time Daddy’s Home was a hit, I thought it was music for old people. I’m sure that while it was in the Top 40, Casey told me that it had originally been a hit for Shep & The Limeliters in 1961, but, here were are almost thirty years later and I still couldn’t tell you if I’ve heard that version.

John Denver And Plácido Domingo – Perhaps Love
from Seasons Of The Heart
(debuted #79, peaked #59, 7 weeks on chart)

Like a lot of kids in the ’70s, I thought John Denver was pretty groovy. This long-haired fellow in the floppy hat, traipsing around the Rockies with bear cubs and denim-clad hippie chicks on television specials was, in my five-year old mind, The Man.

Perhaps Love arrived well past the time when John Denver ruled the world. I didn’t know the song ’til I listened to it and…well…it might have been pleasant enough had it been Denver solo, but Plácido Domingo just doesn’t work for me.

The Police – Spirits In The Material World
from Ghost In The Machine
(debuted #76, peaked #11, 13 weeks on chart)

I know some listeners began to turn on The Police with Ghost In The Machine, but the band was one of the first to earn the unwavering allegiance of me and several of my closest friends. The album’s first hit had been the stunning – though angst-riddled – pop song Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and I can understand why the follow-up wasn’t as big.

It is darker and less inviting, but I’ve always loved the moody, distant Spirits In The Material World and it’s so brief – less than three minutes – that I’ve never tired of hearing it.

Stevie Wonder – That Girl
from Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium I
(debuted #72, peaked #4, 18 weeks on chart)

Stevie Wonder yearns for an unattainable girl who knows that she’s unattainable.

Just as I began listening to music, the legendary Stevie Wonder was wrapping up a decade and change of being a musical force, both commercially and critically. Since those months when I’d hear That Girl half a dozen times each day on one station or another, Wonder has released just a half dozen albums.

Journey – Open Arms
from Escape
(debuted #57, peaked #2, 18 weeks on chart)

There might not have been one junior high or high school kid in my hometown that didn’t own a copy of Journey’s Escape in late 1981.

I had no more than a handful of albums at the time, but one of them was a cassette of Escape. Then, in the winter months of ’82, Journey’s über-ballad became the biggest hit from one of the iconic rock albums of the early ’80s.

(though, even then, Mother, Father, which preceded Open Arms on side two, was the ballad that I’d rewind)

A Random Walk Through Wednesday

Several months ago, one of the cable stations burned an weekend showing episodes of The Twilight Zone. I, not wanting to appear ungrateful, burned an entire weekend watching episodes of The Twilight Zone.

This continued a tradition dating back to college when – fall semester, sophomore year – I had to skip all classes that interfered with me watching Rod Serling’s visionary show on WGN (it aired weekedays, noon ’til one o’clock).

One of the classes that I often missed due to this unfortunate scheduling conflict was a class on the occult and strange phenomena.

(The Twilight Zone was better done and far more thought-provoking, so I felt it was a no-brainer)

One of the episodes, The Midnight Sun, was set in a New York City apartment as the earth – due to a change in orbit – is headed for the sun and a fiery end. At the episode’s conclusion, it is revealed to have been a fever dream of a young woman and that the earth is actually drifting away from the sun and to a frigid demise.

So, as this summer swelters on, that episode has popped into my head.

It’s made me think.

If I am in some fever-fueled state of delerium and the earth is heading toward an icy rendezvous with Pluto…Paloma, please get me a sweater…and soup…yes, soup would be nice…with a grilled cheese sandwich…

I am relatively certain that I am not in some bizarre, Twilight Zone-esque netherworld.

I am completely certain that it is hot. Too hot to do much more than think about skipping classes, lying on the couch, and reveling in the genius of Rod Serling.

Here are four songs that shuffled up on the iPod…

The Thorns – Blue
from The Thorns

The Thorns was a trio comprised of Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge, and Shawn Mullins (with Jim Keltner on drums) and their lone album from 2003 immediately made me think of Crosby, Stills & Nash – it’s the harmonies and chiming guitar.

It also is much in the same vein as The Jayhawks – a band that Paloma and I devoted much attention to – who they cover faithfully on Blue.

Warrior Soul – Love Destruction
from Salutations From The Ghetto Nation

I honestly know nothing about Warrior Soul and I think I snagged Salutations From The Ghetto Nation as a promo in the early ’90s, dug it, and filed it away for future listens. Like a lot of music from that time, I never truly got around to devoting more time to it.

And I keep intending to do so as Love Destruction pops up on the iPod rather often and it always demands my attention. It’s a brooding slab of thunderous rock with serious punk attitude.

Bow Wow Wow – Fools Rush In
from Girl Bites Dog – Your Compact Disc Pet

I think that Bow Wow Wow released two..maybe three actual albums during their career and, somehow, I have a good half dozen or more. I’m a fan, but, you truly need no more than five or six essential tracks by the creation of the late Malcolm McLaren.

Fools Rush In is a pleasant if inconsequential cover of a song that had already been performed by everyone from Frank Sinatra and Brooke Benton to Etta James and Doris Day.

Journey – Still They Ride
from Greatest Hits Live

Of course I loved Journey in the ’80s. I was in high school and allegiance to the band was hardly an uncommon thing.

But, during the summer of ’82 when Still They Ride was the latest hit from the monstrously successful Escape, I didn’t care for the song much. It plodded.

Now, the song falls into a well-populated group of songs that I have far more affection for thirty years later. There’s no arguing that Steve Perry was perfectly suited for the band and the style of music. The dude has pipes and, on this live version, he belts it to the back row.

The Cabin

Not long ago, someone asked me to name my favorite place that I’ve ever visited and my brain immediately locked onto faraway places like Dublin, Paris, and Hong Kong.

However, over the past couple weeks, childhood memories have nudged a locale far closer and far less exotic into mind.

Sure, if anyone wants to hook Paloma and me up with round-trip tickets to Dublin, Paris, or Hong Kong, those tickets will be used, but – at this moment, here in the midst of summer – the place I think I’d most like to spend some time is a small cabin, nestled in the Allegheny Mountains in Upper Turkeyfoot Township.

Growing up, most summers would include two weeks spent in Western Pennsylvania, visiting relatives – a trek that lost appeal mere hours after arriving.

However, most summers, as much as a week of that time would be spent at the cabin belonging to a great aunt and uncle. It had been passed down to my aunt from her father who had purchased the rustic outpost not long after World War II.

It was place that was strictly a getaway where my father, his brother, and other relatives had often headed for some hunting during the winter months. Though hardly luxurious, it had considerable charm.

Provisions would be purchased at a small gas station that had a general store in a speck of a town nearby and the stocks would be replenished by periodic return trips.

The cabin was situated near several others on a dirt road that ran parallel to Laurel Hill Creek and up to a state road which passed over a small dam. Other, similar dwellings were spread throughout the area, usually clustered in threes and fours with some larger, more posh getaways sitting alone.

The days would be sunny with highs in the upper 70s or low 80s and little humidity – nothing but pure sunshine that warmed the spirit. My brother and I would head down the stone steps to the creek – which was no more than thirty yards from the cabin – and wade about in the water or fish from a perch on the rocks.

Oftentimes, the two of us would head out with our father and uncle and take a rowboat kept near the dam to do some fishing in the late afternoon or merely to explore the numerous channels.

In the evening, as dusk arrived and dinner digested, the family would sit on the screened-in back porch and the adults would talk or the radio would be tuned in to KDKA and to a Pittsburgh Pirates game.

If it was late enough in the summer, there might be a Steelers preseason game we’d watch through the snowy reception on the television.

When everyone would finally retire for the night, my brother and I would sack out on the couches on the back porch. I’d lie there in the cool, mountain air and stare out through the screen at the stars with the sound of the creek lulling me to sleep.

The last summer that we made the trip to the cabin was in ’82. I was headed to high school that autumn and my brother would do the same a year later. It became more difficult to coordinate schedules to make annual trips back east.

Here are four songs that I remember hearing while scrolling through the radio dial at the cabin during the late summer of ’82…

Asia – Only Time Will Tell
from Asia

Asia’s debut had been in my cassette player for most of the summer of ’82. By the time we made the journey to the mountains that year, Heat Of The Moment had given way to the album’s second single, Only Time Will Tell.

As much as I dug each and every track on Asia, from the first listen, Only Time Will Tell was the song I wanted to play repeatedly.

It was grand, majestic and an epic musical melodrama.

Or, it was overwrought, flaccid and a total sell-out for the band’s storied personnel.

I was fourteen, so it was the former.

John Cougar – Jack & Diane
from American Fool

Johnny Hoosier, as my friends and I called him, had gone from local, Indiana singer to the man with one of the summer’s biggest hits with Hurts So Good.

But I’d only heard Jack & Diane a few times on the radio before we headed out on vacation.

Two weeks later, when we returned home, I was hearing the song a half-dozen times or more a day.

Frank Zappa – Valley Girl
from Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch

I haven’t listened to a lot of Frank Zappa’s music, but I have encountered a few memorable characters that were insane for his work.

I thought that Valley Girl was fun, but the culture, trappings, and slang mocked in the song didn’t really take in the corner of the American midwest where I was growing up.

In fact, it seemed like the song was everywhere for a few days and then the stations I was listening to never played it again. It was as though it had never happened.

Journey – Only Solutions
from Tron soundtrack

As summer ended in ’82, Journey’s Escape had spent a year as one of the best-selling albums in the US. I actually remember hearing Who’s Crying Now for the first time on the drive home on our vacation the previous year.

During that year, there were the big hits – Don’t Stop Believin’, Open Arms, Still They Ride - but I heard almost every track from Escape on the radio at one time or another. They could have put out anything and it would have gotten played.

So, I suppose it wasn’t surprising that stations would jump on Only Solutions, a song that the band contributed to the soundtrack to the movie Tron. The flick was cutting edge at the time, but, for all the hype, it was a bit of a flop. I didn’t see it when it was in the theater and I don’t recall any of my friends seeing it either.

But I liked Only Solutions. Though it wasn’t quite as good as the best stuff from Escape, it was new stuff from Journey and that was good enough for me.