Posts Tagged ‘Weekly Top 40’

Today’s Top 5: December 7th, 1979

Posted: December 7, 2019 in 1970s, 1979, Barbra Streisand, Blondie, Donna Summer, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Rupert Holmes, Styx, The Buggles, The Commodores, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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As I write, 40 years ago this day was a Friday. I was 14 years old and a ninth-grader at Keith Valley Middle School, the Hatboro-Horsham School District’s second of two middle schools. (At the time, the district’s elementary schools were K-5; Loller Middle School was 6-7; Keith Valley was 8-9; and the high school was 10-12; in the decades since, Loller closed; KV became 6-8; and the high school became 9-12.) 

In the Delaware Valley, you never knew what a December day might bring: One morning, such as this day, might be a brisk 40 degrees (Fahrenheit); and the next could dip into the 20s.

As was my custom, before leaving for school, I flipped through the Philadelphia Inquirer, which landed on our front porch every morn, while eating breakfast.

To me, the biggest news of the day was that the Philadelphia Flyers beat the L.A. Kings 9-4 and extended their unbeaten streak to 23 games. (The game was from the West Coast, so started late – too late to watch.) They’d continue with no losses for another month (12 games), racking up a record that still stands today.

I scanned the comics. Here’s this day’s Doonesbury, which is slightly prophetic: disco’s days were indeed numbered.

I’ve noted this before, but the late ‘70s were – economically speaking – tough. As the Inquirer reports on its front page, a jump in wholesale food prices showed that inflation had yet to be tamed:

For the year, inflation clocked in at 11.35 percent. That means, on average, items priced at $10 on January 1st, 1979, cost $11.35 by year’s end; but “on average” means just that. Some items skyrocketed higher while others remained about the same. If you look at fourth paragraph of the above article, you’ll see what I mean: “Energy prices rose by 2.5 percent in November, the smallest increase since February, but were still 62.7 percent higher than a year ago.”

Due to the increasing energy and food costs, something had to give: Discretionary spending. Except, that is, mine. My $5/week allowance still went far, especially when combined with Christmas and birthday cash. I hit the movies with regularity…

…and usually bought a 45 every week. LPs were a bigger expense, of course, so entered my collection at a slower pace. (That would change in a few years after I discovered a nearby used-record store.)

Speaking of albums, here are the Inky’s (uncredited) album reviews for the week:

Reading them now, I’m shocked: I had no idea I’d read a review of one of my essential albums, Hank Williams Jr.’s Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound, this early in my musical development. (I discovered it a few years later.) 

For the TV aficionados, this was the night’s lineup:

And, with all of that context (and more) out of the way, here’s today’s Top 5: December 7th, 1979 (via the Top40Weekly.com charts that end Dec. 8th):

1) Styx – “Babe.” In some respects, Styx were little more than a white Commodores with Dennis DeYoung the Lionel Richie of the group. (Think about it.) This ballad tops the charts for the first of a two-week run at No. 1. 

2) Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer – “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” In her never-ending quest to stay hip, Babs pairs with the era’s Queen of the Top 40 for this kitschy curio, which drops to No. 2 after its own two-week stay atop the charts.

3) The Commodores – “Still.” In some respects, the Commodores were little more than a black Styx with Lionel Richie the Dennis DeYoung of the group. (Think about it.) This ballad holds steady at No. 3.

4) K.C. and the Sunshine Band – “Please Don’t Go.” Coming in at No. 4 for the second week in a row is this out-of-character K.C. tune, which sounds lifted from the Dennis DeYoung/Lionel Richie playbook. It would eventually land at No. 1.

5) Rupert Holmes – “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” – Rising a notch to No. 5 and on its way to No. 1, this pop tune – which was inspired by a personal ad Holmes read – has been derided as one of the worst songs of all time. (Rolling Stone named it the sixth worst song of the 1970s, for example.)

And a few bonuses…

Blondie – “Dreaming.” In its 11th week on the charts, this perfect slice of taut rock drops from No. 27 (its peak) to No. 31. 

The Buggles – “Video Killed the Radio Star.” One of the week’s “power plays” is this foreshadow of the future, which jumps from No. 44 to 41.

Today’s Top 5: September 8, 1979

Posted: September 8, 2019 in 1970s, 1979, Charlie Daniels Band, Chic, Earth Wind & Fire, ELO, The Knack, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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Days become weeks, months and then years, and soon enough the communal memories are relived on the Decades TV channel via its flagship “Through the Decades” program. For those who’ve never seen the show, it’s a magazine-styled documentary series that delves deep into what happened on a particular date across the decades. Sometimes, though, I wish it dove deeper into specific days or timeframes. 

Which leads to this date in 1979: September 8th. It was a Saturday and, in the Delaware Valley, a wondrous pre-fall day. As predicted by Jim O’Brien, the weather forecaster on Action News, temperatures remained in the low 70s through the afternoon, thanks in part to the sun hiding behind billowy clouds, and then dipped into the 60s that evening.

The main issue on everyone’s mind: the economy. The unemployment rate jumped from 5.7 percent in July to 6 in August, due in large part to layoffs in the manufacturing sector, and inflation was – yet again – on the move, clocking in at 15.4 percent.

Two months earlier, on July 15th, President Jimmy Carter had delivered his infamous “malaise” speech about the palpable unease in the land: “It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” Carter, it should be noted, was half-right: There was a crisis in confidence – but it wasn’t directed inward. Rather, the American people had lost confidence in him.

The median income of households in the U.S. was $16,530 (click here for a full report), which comes out to $58,418 in today’s money. (The average cost of a car, for those curious, was $6,848.)  

Anyway, Saturday being Saturday meant me heading up the street to play make-shift baseball, basketball, football or street hockey with friends, all to a soundtrack provided by the Top 40-oriented WIFI-92. That night, along with the mom of two of the friends, we took in one of the funniest movies I’d yet seen, The In-Laws.

I know the date not due to a photographic memory, but old-fashioned deduction: It’s the only Saturday in September that the movie was booked at the one-screen Hatboro Theater, which is where we saw it.

If I’d stayed home, my TV options would have been severely limited…

…so, odds are, I’d have hightailed it to my room and listened to music. And speaking of music, here’s today’s Top 5: September 8, 1979 (via Weekly Top 40).

1) The Knack – “My Sharona.” Topping the charts for the third week in a row is this tasty track, which I owned – and still own. In time, an anti-Knack backlash took hold, as the band was seen as calculating and somewhat crass. Whatever. 

2) Chic – “Good Times.” Within a year, Chic would find themselves cast aside due to the anti-disco backlash deejay Steve Dahl’s Disco Demolition Night ignited on July 12th at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. But that doesn’t diminish their work. (Nile Rogers’ memoir, by the way, is well worth the read.)

3) Earth, Wind & Fire – “After the Love Has Gone.” The classic soul group channels their inner-Christopher Cross in this adult-contemporary classic.

4) Electric Light Orchestra – “Don’t Bring Me Down.” The final single from ELO’s 1978 Discovery album reached No. 3, their highest-charting 45 yet. (It would take an assist from Olivia Newton-John for them to hit No. 1, which they did the following year with the title tune to Xanadu.)

5) The Charlie Daniels Band – “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Folks who heard this on country radio back in the day may not know, but the line that goes, “’Cause I told you once, you son of a gun, I’m the best that’s ever been” was dubbed in after the fact to accommodate radio airplay. As heard in the clip below, it originally went, “I done told you once, you son of a bitch, I’m the best that’s ever been.” 

Today’s Top 5: July 20, 1969, Part Deux

Posted: July 20, 2019 in 1960s, 1969, Henry Mancini, Neil Diamond, Stevie Wonder, The Dells, The Rolling Stones, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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As far as summer days go, July 20th, 1969, was a pleasant (Delaware) valley Sunday in the Philadelphia area: After a string of hot-and-humid days caused the Philadelphia Electric Co. to issue a power emergency due to the increased use of air conditioning and a generator failure, the temperature wasn’t predicted to push past 85 degrees Fahrenheit (and, as the day played out, never made it past the upper 70s). The only downside: It was cloudy, and thunderstorms were possible at just about any moment.

The biggest news of the day, as evidenced by the front page of “the oldest daily newspaper in the United States,” the Philadelphia Inquirer, was the Apollo 11 mission. The culmination of President John F. Kennedy’s push to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it was and remains a breathtaking human achievement.

The other headline is for a story that likely changed the course of history: Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a Chappaquiddick Island bridge. He escaped the wreck, of course, but Mary Jo Kopechne – one of the “Boiler Room Girls” of Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign – died. Kennedy claimed he made repeated attempts to save Kopechne before leaving the scene of the accident, which he didn’t report to the police until the next morning.

Prior to the accident, he was considered the frontrunner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. After? The questions of what happened haunted him for the rest of his days, and shifted his national appeal into the “what if” territory. 

On the entertainment front, here’s a list of movies playing the theaters.

As I’ve noted before, movie distribution was very different back then: There were no large-scale openings. All films started in select markets, and gradually made their way across the country. (That would change in the early-mid ’70s.) And, too, they hung around longer, as there was no actual after-market. The Graduate, for example, dates to 1967, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Love Bug to late 1968. Goodbye, Columbus and Popi, as well as True Grit, were more recent flicks.

Then, as now, Philly was a hot bed for concert-goers. Interestingly, however, one of the ads is for a three-day music festival happening in upstate New York…

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Now, as astute readers may remember, I covered this same date last year, so am delving deeper into the same Weekly Top 40 chart (for the week ending July 19th) for today’s Top 5: July 20, 1969 (Part Deux).

1) Stevie Wonder – “My Cherie Amour.” The No. 9 single in the land is this classic song from Stevie Wonder, who was 18 when he released it and possibly 19 in this vintage clip…

2) Henry Mancini & His Orchestra – “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet.” Yes, there was a time when the singles chart consisted of more than songs targeted at the young. One example: Mancini’s rendition of the theme to Franco Zeffirelli’s classic adaptation of the Shakespeare play, which dropped to No. 10 this week during a slow drop from the top of the charts. The film, as evidenced by the above movie listings, was still in some theaters nine months after its premiere, and quickly became a mandatory class outing for middle-school students.

3) The Dells – “I Can Sing a Rainbow/Love Is Blue.” Written by Arthur Hamilton, “Sing a Rainbow” – which became the theme song to the Philly children’s TV show Captain Noah and His Magical Ark TV, which aired from 1967 to 1994 – was first recorded by Peggy Lee for the 1954 movie Pete Kelly’s Blues, covered by Andy Williams in 1964 and Cilia Black in 1966, and then as part of a medley by the Dells in 1969, whose version peaked this week at No. 22 on the pop charts.

4) Neil Diamond – “Sweet Caroline (Good Times Never Seemed So Good).” On its way up the charts is this now beloved-detested song, which sits at No. 24 while on its way to its peak, No. 4, which it would hit the following month.

5) The Rolling Stones – “Honky Tonky Women.” Debuting on the charts, at No. 79, is this classic tune from Mick, Keef and the boys. 

Today’s Top 5: January 27, 1984 (via Weekly Top 40)…Further Down the Charts

Posted: January 27, 2019 in 1980s, 1984, Irene Cara, John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, John Mellencamp, Nena, The Motels, The Pretenders, Top 5, Van Halen
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Thirty-five years ago today was a Friday and, although a winter’s day, calm and not too frigid in the Delaware Valley. The daytime high soared to 55 degrees (Fahrenheit) before dipping to 26 at night.

The New York Time’s summary of that day’s edition can be found here. A big pop-culture story unfolded after the issue was put to bed, however: While filming a Pepsi commercial that afternoon in L.A., Michael Jackson’s hair caught fire. What else? I recapped February ’84 (via Record Magazine) a few years back, so won’t go too in depth into the economic concerns of the era beyond to say that the early ’80s/Reagan Recession was beginning to ebb.

Beyond that: Cold War worries also kept some folks up at night – as did bad TV. And NBC, in a masterful stroke of programming, married the two in the wretched World War III miniseries, which aired on January 31st and February 1st:

A more major media milestone occurred on Jan. 22, 1984 during Super Bowl XVIII, which saw the L.A. Raiders trounce the Washington squad 38-9. No, not the game, but the debut of Apple’s famous “1984” commercial for the Macintosh personal computer.

The following day, Jan 23rd, another historic event occurred: the Iron Sheik, who’d thumped Bob Backlund for the WWF championship the previous month, lost the coveted title to Hulk Hogan at Madison Square Garden. It was the first step in Vince McMahon’s masterful plan to take the WWF national.

On the personal front: I was 18, attending Penn State’s Ogontz campus in Abington, and working part-time as an usher at the Hatboro Theater, a single-screen movie house that was destined to be demolished by summer’s end. Early in the month, I scored a temporary gig working inventory at the A&S department store in the Willow Grove Park Mall, and that extra cash helped fuel a month-long shopping spree – according to my Doonesbury-themed desk calendar, I picked up 15 albums and one single over the course of those 31 days. Most were purchased at Memory Lane Records, a used-record store in Horsham where the platters were plentiful and prices cheap, but two relatively new releases came either from the Hatboro Music Shop or the Listening Booth at the mall: the Pretenders’ Learning to Crawl and Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man.

As evidenced by the picture, I was knee-deep into all things Crosby, Stills & Nash this month. In other words, I was out of step with the mainstream pop world – and not for the first or last time.

Here’s the Top 10 for the week ending on the 28th via Weekly Top 40:

And, with that, here’s today’s Top 5: January 27th, 1984 (via Weekly Top 40)…Further Down the Charts. 

1) John Mellencamp – “Pink Houses.” At No. 12 is this classic populist ode from the Heartland rocker – still one of the greatest such songs.

2) Van Halen – “Jump.” There’s no denying the utter joy of this single and its synth-driven riff, even if it was inspired by a man who was threatening to leap from the ledge of a downtown L.A. building. (“Go ahead and jump” was what Roth imagined people were yelling at him.) The group’s first and only No. 1 single was on its way to the top of the pop chart, rising in one fell swoop from No. 34 to No. 20.

3) The Pretenders – “Middle of the Road.” It’s no surprise that Learning to Crawl was one of the two new LPs I picked up this month. I’d argue that it encapsulates rock’s past, present and future in its four minutes and 15 seconds, but I’m sure others would disagree. Anyway, this week it edges up to No. 21 from No. 25. 

4) Nena – “99 Luftbalons.” The success of this song in both its German- and English-language incarnations speaks as much to the Cold War concerns of the era as to its catchy beat. On its way to No. 2, this week it floats to No. 22. 

5) The Motels – “Remember the Nights.” Martha Davis & Co. never quite caught on as much as it seemed they might, but they did release a handful of classic tracks. This, the third single from their 1983 album Little Robbers, clocks in at No. 36. 

And two bonuses…

6) Irene Cara – “The Dream.” The theme song from D.C. Cab inches up to No. 39 from No. 41. It follows the “Flashdance…What a Feeling” blueprint – though it doesn’t capture the same euphoria, it’s still a fun listen.

7) John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band – “Tender Years.” So the Eddie & the Cruisers movie was based on a best-selling book, and Cafferty & Co. were tapped to provide the soundtrack. The classic E Street Band sound rankled the critics… but also scored them some hits. This week, “Tender Years” debuts at No. 94. It would eventually stall at No. 78 before being re-issued in the fall, when it made its way to No. 31. Here they are on Solid Gold…  

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