November 6, 1982

Unless you have a masochistic streak, you are as likely to have election fatigue as I am. However, the end of this highly-informative, enlightening period is near and, before the next president is inaugurated in January, a new slate of empty suits will already be jockeying for 2016.

(all of this is, obviously, contigent upon no year-end Mayan nonsense)

So, as I opt to periodically do – when I have no other viable or unviable ideas – it’s time to pull up an old Billboard magazine Hot 100 chart and note the songs that debuted that week.

And, since 1982 was the year during which I first truly fell in love with the radio, here is the octet of songs which first appeared on the Hot 100 thirty years ago…

Judas Priest – You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’
from Screaming For Vengeance (1982)
(debuted #90, peaked #67, 7 weeks on chart)

I didn’t go through a metal phase as a kid (or as an adult for that matter) and by the late ’80s – when the hair-metal bands were ruling MTV – I thought the genre to be laughable. Over the ensuing years, I’ve come to enjoy some of the stuff, but, if I’m opting for metal from that period, I’m likely to dial up Iron Maiden.

However, Judas Priest, led by Rob Halford and the twin-guitar attack of Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing, were titans of the metal world and fixtures in Circus magazine, one of the few music magazines stocked in the rack of our local drug store.

Though I’ve never embraced Judas Priest, I do recall hearing their driving You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ here and there at the time. It was catchy enough to give the band their lone US pop hit.

Bill Conti – Theme From Dynasty
from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3 (1990)
(debuted #89, peaked #52, 9 weeks on chart)

I knew the name Bill Conti as the composer of Gonna Fly Now, the theme from the movie Rocky, but, as I never watched the show, I had never heard his theme from the television series Dynasty.

I know that Dynasty was about rich people and there’s a snootier-than-thou vibe to the theme that I could imagine accompanying people playing polo, eating caviar, yachting, running for president or doing whatever else rich people do.

Frida – I Know There’s Something Going On
from Something’s Going On (1982)
(debuted #88, peaked #13, 29 weeks on chart)

I’m sure that, initially, I had no idea that the voice on I Know There’s Something Going On belonged to one of the women from ABBA. And, I doubt at the time that I recognized the drumming on the song to be Phil Collins (although I’d soon become familiar with the cavernous sound that was his trademark).

Instead, I loved the thunderous sound and omnious vibe of the song. And, in retrospect, it’s odd to think of Frida’s lone hit getting played on the rock stations playing Tom Petty, Saga, and Def Leppard that would have never touched ABBA.

Men At Work – Down Under
from Business As Usual (1982)
(debuted #79, peaked #1, 25 weeks on chart)

Men At Work had dominated the radio during the late summer and early autumn of ’82 with Who Can It Be Now? and, by Christmas, Down Under had become the Aussie act’s second smash.

I do know that my friends and I – living in a world without MTV – had seen both of those videos on Casey Kasem’s America’s Top 10 and been delighted by lead singer Colin Hay’s expressive antics and emotive nature. That Christmas, I received a copy of Business As Usual which I wore out over the following winter months.

Kim Carnes – Does It Make You Remember?
from Voyeur (1982)
(debuted #78, peaked #36, 13 weeks on chart)

Kim Carnes had unleashed the juggernaut Bette Davis Eyes upon the world in 1981 as music was beginning to tickle my fancy. Despite a lengthy career beginning in the ’60s as a member of The New Christy Minstrels and a number of solo hits including More Love and Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer, Bette Davis Eyes will headline the singer/songwriter’s obituary.

Carnes’ follow-up to Mistaken Identity, which contained Bette Davis Eyes, was destined to fail in matching its predecessors’ success. Voyeur‘s title track came and went quickly as the album’s initial single.

The second release was the mid-tempo Does It Make You Remember? which, like Voyeur, briefly reached the Top 40. It’s not a bad song and well-suited for Carnes’ raspy vocals, but my main memory of Does It Make You Remember? is that the singer seemed to appear on Solid Gold performing it every week that winter (accompanied by noted session guitarist Waddy Wachtel and his voluminous hair).

Phil Collins – You Can’t Hurry Love
from Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982)
(debuted #77, peaked #10, 21 weeks on chart)

I knew little of Genesis and even less about The Supremes as 1982 wound down and Genesis’ Phil Collins released his cover of the latter’s classic You Can’t Hurry Love. I knew Genesis for their recent hits from Abacab – No Reply At All, the title track, and Man On The Corner – but I doubt that I knew The Supremes whatsoever.

Though it obviously doesn’t match the original, Phil Collins take on You Can’t Hurry Love is likely as good as one might hope for from a drummer of a (increasingly less) progressive, English rock band.

John Cougar – Hand To Hold On To
from American Fool (1982)
(debuted #72, peaked #19, 18 weeks on chart)

Few acts had as good a year as Johnny Hoosier – as my buddy Bosco referred to local hero John Cougar – did in 1982. The gritty rocker had broken through with the mega-selling American Fool set which had spawned two hits in Hurts So Good and Jack And Diane that had dominated radio that summer and into the fall.

As I was living in Indiana, local radio had given heavy airplay to American Fool even before Hurts So Good broke nationally, meaning that by the time Hand To Hold On To was issued as the album’s third single, I was well and truly tired of anything Cougar.

So, Hand To Hold On To usually prompted me to change the station, but, now, thirty years later, I hear it as a solid, amiable rock song, hardly as memorable as the first two hits but a decent track nonetheless.

Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney – The Girl Is Mine
from Thriller (1982)
(debuted #45, peaked #2, 18 weeks on chart)

If there is one song among Thriller‘s seven Top Ten hits that I haven’t really heard on the radio in the three decades since it was a hit, it would be The Girl Is Mine, the duet that launched the album. Even at the time, it offered no hint at how Thriller would dominate the airwaves for the next eighteen months, well into 1984.

The Girl Is Mine was Paul McCartney’s second superstar duet that year – he had paired with Stevie Wonder that spring on Ebony And Ivory – and it’s a pleasant enough song with a goofy spoken word interlude. I always thought that its laid-back, breezy vibe would have made the song more suitable for warmer months.

Not long after The Girl Is Mine hit radio, the full album arrived and several of the stations I was listening to quickly jumped on Beat It with Eddie Van Halen on guitar, a far more intriguing track to me.

I hear The Girl Is Mine now and I can’t help but hear a buddy ad-libbing “the goddamned girl is mine” in place of the more benign “the doggone girl is mine” in the chorus which was high hilarity to us at the time.

The Colonel

Growing up in a basketball-mad state and half an hour away from the school that inspired the movie Hoosiers, this time of year meant the culmination of the hoops season with the state-wide tournament.

In fact, Sports Illustrated devoted a feature story to my high school’s team during the last open tournament in ’97. That team had been ranked third in the state and, with the tournament being divvied into classes the following season (a highly contentious and unfortunate decision), the team from my hometown had become the darlings of fans statewide who hoped for one more run from a small school at the state title.

Fifteen years earlier, I was in junior high and the high school team replaced a beloved coach that had won a couple sectional titles. The new coach was greeted with the same open arms and small-town hospitality that Gene Hackman found in Hickory. But, he won and soon all was right with the world.

My freshman year, the team was loaded, led by a small forward who could have played Division I ball, opted for a smaller, Division III school and was an honorable mention All-American.

(dude was also a state-champion high jumper)

We lost two games all season.

Two.

Both games were to team from a school five times our size who had made several, recent trips to the Final Four. The first time was on their court, by a point, during the regular season.

The second time was on their court, by a point, with a trip to the Sweet Sixteen on the line.

The team which beat us went on to win the state title.

It was a fun trip to experience up close and it locked in the once-suspect coach as entenched. Two years later, I had the coach for a teacher – geometry class.

My buddy Bosco quickly dubbed him The Colonel – “Bobby Knight’s called The General, so…”

I’m not sure if it was an homage or a dig

(with Bosco, it was sometimes hard to tell)

Despite the drowsy hour – it was first period – we looked forward to The Colonel’s class. Bosco would often side-track the preceedings by bringing up the idea of dating The Colonel’s oldest daughter, a freshman.

Bosco was far more Spiccoli than scoundrel, so The Colonel played along and the two would good-naturedly banter. The Colonel often countered our antics by immortalizing us on his exams as stick figures with identifying characteristics (my stick figure had long hair, Bosco’s sported checkerboard Vans, another friend had oversized glasses, etc.).

The Colonel, like many of our teachers, was often subjected to having his house pelted with eggs on the weekends by disgruntled students. I’d see Bosco in school on Monday morning. He lived across the street from The Colonel and he’d tell of coming home in the early morning hours to find him in his yard.

“He was in his robe, hosing egg off his siding. He shook his fist at me.”

“Really?”

“No. He’s The Colonel, man. He waved.”

The Colonel was a good teacher. He seemed to enjoy it and, more so than most of our teachers, he seemed to remember that, though we were almost adult-sized, we were still kids.

I think he still was, too.

Here are some of the songs I remember during that run by The Colonel’s team in March of ’83…

Def Leppard – Photograph
from Pyromania

There are few acts that seemed to explode overnight to the degree that the Leps did with Pyromania. I’m thinking that I might have heard Bringin’ On The Heartache from their previous album, but, if I did, it wasn’t a song that got more than a smattering of airplay.

But Photograph launched like a rocket. It was as though I heard it for the first time and – twenty minutes later – the song (and Union Jack t-shirts and shorts) were everywhere. It was just one of those songs that seemed so obvious that it would be mammoth and it still sounds stellar.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Change Of Heart
from Long After Dark

I was non-plussed by You Got Lucky (though the video was pretty cool at the time), but there was something rough and tumble about Change Of Heart that I found far more appealing. I’d argue that the song is one of Petty’s most underrated hits.

Saga – Wind Him Up
from Worlds Apart

I know that they’ve released a lot of albums during their career, but the Canadian band Saga didn’t have much success here in the US. No doubt best known for On The Loose, I much preferred the follow-up, Wind Him Up.

And, it was always fun for us to mimic lead singer Michael Sadler saying, “No luck today.”

Frida – I Know There’s Something Going On
from Something’s Going On

I’m sure that, initially, I had no idea that the voice on I Know There’s Something Going On belonged to one of the women from ABBA. And, I doubt at the time that I recognized the drumming on the song to be Phil Collins (although I’d soon become familiar with the cavernous sound that was his trademark).

Instead, I loved the thunderous sound and omnious vibe of the song. And, in retrospect, it’s odd to think of Frida’s lone hit getting played on the rock stations playing Petty, Saga, and Def Leppard that would have never touched ABBA.

As Bosco would have no doubt said, it was a one-eighty.