"Can't Stop" by Rick James

1985 / #50

Rate Your Music score: 2.73 out of 5!

"There's something in the air...It's telling me I should beware..."

You can already see where this is headed, right?

Rick James was the stuff of legends. When I was growing up, a TV announcer said Rick had been expelled from 6 schools in his youth. I wondered if I could beat his record. But I only made it up to 4. Oh well. Can't always win.

"Can't Stop" was Rick's last record to make the Hot 100. I always heard it while I was sitting in the den listening to the boom box in the spring of 1985. Now, about those lines, "There's something in the air...It's telling me I should beware." Ahem. Ahem ahem ahem. These lines prompted the obvious fart jokes.

This was still 1985. It wasn't wall-to-wall flatulence like 1986 was. But the way things were in 1986 were the way things were getting to be in 1985. Granted, we still had a ways to go early in the year. But we were making progress slowly but surely. I believe it was around the time of "Can't Stop" that a good fart story took place. One day, the unmistakable aroma of a silent-but-deadly filled the den. The obligatory finger-pointing ensued. Nobody could agree on who the culprit was. Nobody could even agree on what species the culprit was.

Finally, I saw that a Price Is Right board game was resting on the floor. We had found this game at a yard sale but never actually played it. I don't know why we had it out that day. I noticed the box for the game included a drawing of a woman celebrating her winnings. She was holding money and standing in front of the Lucky Seven set. (It's the 1974 version of the box that appears in several photos online.) I blamed the box lid for the wafting bunker blast. I pointed at the woman in the drawing and said, "It was her."

Then I burst out laughing!

After I fell into uncontrollable laughter after blaming a fart on a drawing on a Price Is Right board game box, the resulting angry response made me laugh even harder. It was too bad that some people had no sense of humor.

It's a shame there were no family vlogs yet in 1985. This would have had a million views within a day.

Many years later, a man who happened to be named Rick James ran for city council in a small Southern town. He posted his campaign signs on his lawn. He became irate when people kept driving up and down his street and yelling at his house, "Super freak! Super freak!"

There's more lost hits in the air, so beware!

"The Kid's American" by Matthew Wilder

1984 / #33

Rate Your Music score: 2.89 out of 5!

This is probably the first time in many, many, many years that you heard those opening notes and it didn't turn out to be "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous" by Good Charlotte - which today is itself also a lost hit. (Incidentally, Rate Your Music reviewers just hate, hate, hate that Good Charlotte track. Maybe we'll discuss it sometime.)

I first heard of Matthew Wilder when local stations kept playing his single "Work So Hard" constantly. That record surprisingly did not reach the Hot 100. The main reason I heard it so much was that it fell into the "yacht rock" category that was so common on the MOR stations my parents subjected me to. None of that dangerous Soft Cell or Steve Miller Band for us!

Matthew's big successes came later with hits like the one we're profiling today. Thankfully, we were out of the adult contemporary malaise by then. "The Kid's American" got some radio play, but sometime not long after, we noticed something amusing about Matthew. It just so happened that he bore a strong physical resemblance to a certain local Republican politician known for erratic behavior.

You might think the song's phrase "underneath the hood" refers to that politician's supporters.

If this song had come out a couple years later, I would have noted the line, "Something's in the wind and it's comin' fast." This line fits with the flatulence theme that was so big then. One example we've covered is "Hanging On A Heart Attack" by Device, which includes the line, "You try to get up and here it comes again." This theme is also found in song titles like "No One Is To Blame" by Howard Jones and the lost hit "Rumbleseat" by John Mellencamp.

"Smokin' In The Boys Room" by Mötley Crüe

1985 / #16

Rate Your Music score: 2.22 out of 5!

Did Mr. Hooper appear in a rock video? No. He did not. At least not that I know of. Let's get that out of the way.

I didn't want to give this lost hit an entry, because it was a remake of a song whose earlier version still receives some play. Brownsville Station's recording of this song was a big hit in 1973. But when Mötley Crüe came out with their remake in 1985, I noticed something hilarious.

The video starts out funny enough, with the mean dog chewing up the kid's homework and the angry principal wielding his "board of education." But there's something really funny at 2:40. I saw it right away back in 1985.

Look at the man playing the accordion up on the stage. When I first saw that, I thought he looked just like Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street! But I knew it wasn't him, because I knew that Will Lee, the actor who played ol' Hoops, had died several years earlier. If he hadn't died, I would have thought it was him!

In fact, some people today actually think it was him.

It gets funnier, as we see the Mr. Hooper look-alike wrapped in toilet paper and sticking out his tongue.

I think the character in the video was designed to be sort of a typecast of an unhip performer that school officials might invite to play at a school event. It's like how in 1990, when I was in high school, my school had a dance where they hired a DJ who only played old MOR standards instead of exciting new rock 'n' roll. My school pals made fun of that dance for months.

Another organization I dealt with shortly thereafter was just as bad. It had a dance that was as tame as a 2020 Zoom prom, and its idea of contemporary music in 1990 was acts such as New Kids On The Block who appealed mostly to young kids. It didn't allow music that older teenagers listened to, such as rock, rap, and some other styles. In fact, one of my contemporaries tried smuggling in a Mötley Crüe tape in the front of his pants, and it was confiscated and destroyed.

"A Fine Fine Day" by Tony Carey

1984 / #22

Rate Your Music score: 3.25 out of 5!

Did Boss Hogg appear in a rock video?

In my day, I probably saw this video more than any other on MTV, with the possible exception of Paul McCartney's "No More Lonely Nights", which is now also a lost hit. Tony's song was a tale of an uncle who was in the Mafia who escaped from prison. But I don't think it was a real story. I remember some spoiled kid in school trying to glamorize his uncle who was involved in organized crime. Later I found out the real story, and it was actually almost as sinister as what you'd expect from a Mob guy, and not glamorous at all. But my schoolmate couldn't have told the story as well as Tony Carey did.

I also remember hearing this song on the car radio in a school parking lot, but MTV gave it more exposure than anyone. Every time I turned on MTV, those black-and-white photos of Uncle Sonny would inevitably appear on the screen.

But all the times I saw this video, I missed something that should have been very obvious. Fast-forward to the bridge of the song at 3:45. Pay attention to the man in the suit in the meatpacking plant lip-syncing the lyrics.

Isn't that Sorrell Booke, who played Boss Hogg on The Dukes Of Hazzard? I'm pretty sure that's him, but he wore a wig to hide his bald dome, so I never realized it was him.

I loved The Dukes Of Hazzard in its heyday and even went to see Boss Hogg when he came to the Cavalcade of Customs. That was one of the greatest days of my life! I even had the toy cars. But the show was starting to wrap things up by 1984. By the time Tony's video came out, I had practically forgotten the show ever existed. So it was only recently that I realized the man in the clip was probably Sorrell Booke.

The idea of Boss Hogg lip-syncing a rousing rock 'n' roll track is amusing enough. But there was another lost hit with a similar story. I didn't want to give it a separate entry, because it was a remake of a well-known song. But I'll give it one anyway. The smoke-filled room in the next entry has nothing to do with mobsters.

"Come As You Are" by Peter Wolf

1987 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

Peter Wolf is like the patron saint of lost hits. The former J. Geils Band lead singer had 3 solo top 40 hits, and all of them became lost hits right away. Peter is also known for his resemblance to Michael Richards after the defective shower head flattened his hair.

Among his lost hits is this feel-good rocker. Some have surmised that airplay for this tune was stymied somewhat because radio programmers misheard the line, "Ain't gonna be no masquerade," and thought it was something off-color. Yet I remember similarly misheard lyrics in other late '80s songs that seemed to get more radio play yet charted much lower. In fact, I remember real lyrics in that era that clearly used one of the "7 dirty words" and got gobs of pop radio airplay. Yes, Huey, we're getting to you.

The "Come As You Are" video is noteworthy for Peter jumping, hopping, and dancing throughout the song. I don't know how he did it. Peter turned 41 in 1987, and I could barely walk or stay awake more than an hour at a time by the time I was 24. It's like how Brett Favre somehow still played football when he was 41.

Sharp-eyed music and TV fans have noted that the video was filmed on the same Warner Brothers backlot used for The Dukes Of Hazzard. There are several telltale signs. This was a couple years after The Dukes Of Hazzard ended its run, and we can see the Route 36 sign that depicts that mystery state that looked like a cross between Georgia and Missouri. I'm pretty sure the gazebo at the end of the video was also in The Dukes Of Hazzard, and some have noted that it also appeared in Gilmore Girls.

What can be more entertaining than Peter Wolf jumping all over the Dukes Of Hazzard set?

"Move Any Mountain" by the Shamen

1991 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 3.4 out of 5!

Time for a lesson on the English language. This lesson seems to have been lost on this Scottish band, even though they ostensibly spoke English.

A shaman is a traditional faith healer. The word came from a German or Russian word, which in turn came from a word in Evenki, a language found in Inner Mongolia. Now, the thing about this is that the word shaman is unrelated to the word man. Thus, the plural of shaman is shamans, not shamen.

Likewise, a female shaman is not called a shawoman - and the plural is not shawomen.

English is a funny language sometimes.

This also brings to mind how George Orwell's 1984 had a big section about Newspeak, the only language whose vocabulary kept getting smaller. Well, except English, judging by all the bad radio edits and banned books these days. In Newspeak, the plural of man was not men but mans, e.g., "Three mans walked into the store."

Thus, you'd think the past tense of be would be beed, but I think that might have been an exception to the rule of abolishing irregular forms of words. Language police were probably working on it though. It's like how these days, people keep replacing letters in half the words in their Twitter posts with asterisks, even if the words aren't even remotely vulgar.

You might also suspect that the band Journey would be spelled Jernie - or that Ernie from Sesame Street would be spelled Ourney.

"I Live By The Groove" by Paul Carrack

1989 / #31

Rate Your Music score: 2.84 out of 5!

"It ain't written in the statute books...It can't be learned in school..."

Power 94½ loved this guy. If Paul Carrack had recorded "B Is For Bubble", Power 94½ would have played it once an hour. Paul was also known for his physical resemblance to Phil Collins. Now Paul has become a wellspring of lost hits.

This action-packed lost hit had a long tail at Power 94½. I'll give that station credit, as this was a better choice than many of the selections Q-102 made. Remember, Q-102 would still occasionally play Dan Hill's "Never Thought" in 1990. A few years earlier, WCLU actually made very good choices as to what minor hits to occasionally throw into the mix after these songs had peaked, such as "Space Age Whiz Kids" by Joe Walsh and "10-9-8" by Face To Face - both of which are now lost hits. But it was Paul's hit that elicited one of my great bursts of lyrical genius.

I think "I Live By The Groove" was popular right when we buyed a new stereo for the den, and the song blasted across the airwaves for months on end. This was also around the time people kept setting fires at my high school. I think that started when the cardboard pizza box got burned on the front steps after the Walk-a-Thon. In any event, I spoofed the line that went, "It can't be learned in school." I would always sing, "It can't be burned in school."

I went to a strange school.

"Runner" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band

1984 / #22

Rate Your Music score: 3.51 out of 5!

I don't know why Manfred Mann called his ensemble the Earth Band. Maybe it's like how there was an act called the Dirt Band. What's next? The Poo Band? Maybe it's like how Q-102 kept conducting a One Earth Party (mentioned on some old websites on Angelfire that haven't been maintained in decades).

In any event, the lead vocals on the Earth Band's big hits in the 1970s and 1980s were handled by Chris Thompson. I believe that's him singing in the video above. Hearing this lost hit today brings back memories of the musical excitement that loomed large in 1984. That was probably also the year in which I watched MTV more than any other. But I usually wasn't allowed to watch it for hours on end. I had things I had to do.

Fast-forward to 2013, when one of the strangest Earth Band-related incidents ever took place. That was when I had a weird dream that involved Little River Band and the Earth Band. In this dream, the lead singer of Little River Band posted a message insulting me on an online message board about the radio industry. This prompted me to get in a lengthy online argument with him. In response, the Earth Band's Chris Thompson - the man you see above - also started attacking me. He posted a message that said, "Some people are like mice disguised as dachshunds. At first, Mr. Brown appeared to be a dachshund. Now he has proven himself to be a mouse."

This prompted me to track him down. I discovered that Chris was lodged at a hotel in Missouri, so I made a special trip to the Show Me State to confront him. I entered the hotel lobby and found him there. When he refused to apologize, I grabbed his glasses off his face and hurled them across the room.

But this was just a dream! A ridiculous, absurd, preposterous dream!

It wasn't real! Get a grip!

Hopefully, Q-102 won't be having a One Poo Party anytime soon.

"Caravan Of Love" by Isley-Jasper-Isley

1985 / #51

Rate Your Music score: 3.33 out of 5!

This Cincinnati trio gave us this lost hit, and hearing it again brings back memories of sitting on the floor in the den listening to the boom box.

After the song fell off the chart, I hardly ever heard it again. But it did resurface once in 2022.

That was when I took a Greyhound bus to and from an event in Chicago. Greyhound is not the most efficient outfit around, but I didn't have a choice. For some reason, the route home from Chicago to Cincinnati took us through Louisville. And every Greyhound route leaving the Louisville terminal that morning was hours late. It was so bad that Greyhound had to call an Uber for folks going to Lexington.

The men's restroom at the Louisville bus station had pee-soaked toilet paper all over the floor. I also heard a squeak of flatulence while I was waiting for the bus.

I overheard a man saying that another man was picking paper off the floor in the bus terminal and eating it. Later on, the first man started singing. Guess what song? "Caravan Of Love"!

Greyhound isn't a caravan of love. I've heard horror stories about Greyhound that are even worse than anything I've been forced to put up with from them. It's a shame they're a monopoly. If any song title describes Greyhound, it's Supertramp's "Take The Long Way Home."

The "Caravan Of Love" video represents its era well. But why are people watching TV in their car? I think having a TV in your car is illegal, because it distracts the driver. I've heard of people installing TV sets in their car, but I'm pretty sure it's against the law.

"Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" by Baz Luhrmann

1999 / #45

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

"Worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum..."

You knew we'd get to this one eventually, didn't you?

This lost hit was a spoken word record that recites a commencement speech that might be delivered to a graduating class. I'm not sure if this speech ever was read at any graduations though. I didn't attend my high school graduation, so I don't know if it had any speeches like this. I didn't attend my 8th grade graduation either, because I was kicked out of the school a few days before it for getting in a fight which caused the school's precious drinking fountain to get dented. It was a good thing I got kicked out, because I hated that school so much and would have done anything to avoid even going to my own graduation.

I hated, hated, hated that school. My mom thought I was the victim of some grave injustice by being barred from the ceremony, but I thought it was a reward. The real injustice was having to go to this school at all.

The kid I got in a fight with had the brains of a rock, but I heard that he went on to attend a very prestigious high school for "academically talented" students. So obviously I didn't go to high school with him. He wasn't even punished for fighting with me, because his folks had money.

I probably should have gone to my high school graduation, but I had only gone to school there for a year. I don't have a senior photo either. But I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, because many graduating seniors of 2020-22 were robbed of their graduation ceremonies. Society was ruled by people who had zero regard for special milestones in life.

This lost hit was a shoo-in to be included in this blog because the line about how "worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum" brings a hilarious image to mind. You could just imagine someone poring over an algebra book with a huge, pink bubble expanding from their piehole. This record was a hit at the same time we drove to southwestern Indiana and first heard Jordan Knight's ridiculous "Give It To You." I remember hearing Baz's track on the car radio and trying to avoid bursting into laughter over the line about bubble gum.

Also, 1999 wasn't exactly full of economic or social dynamism, so my memories of that year consist mostly of watching daytime TV and repeatedly seeing the Arm & Hammer toothpaste commercial where the guy's yellow teeth scare the woman away in the art gallery. I think that was also the year I threw up at Americana and their bear mascot cleaned it up. It may have also been the year a man dropped a hamburger on the floor at Wendy's and ate it, but I'm not sure.

"Gold" by Spandau Ballet

1983 / #29

Rate Your Music score: 3.63 out of 5!

My dream of hoarding gold and living off of it in perpetuity was shattered when I was 10.

I was in 5th grade when this lost hit was popular, and I noted that the song said gold was "indestructible." So I got the brilliant idea that I could get a bunch of gold, hide it somewhere, and not have to worry about it getting ruined. I didn't think of one important thing though: Where would I get all that gold? Gold doesn't grow on trees. But not knowing where to get gold wasn't what dashed my hopes.

My dream was demolished one day when I was in the car in the school parking lot. The Spandaus' hit was on the radio. I asked my mom if gold was indeed "indestructible."

The answer? No, it was not. There were certain chemicals that could destroy gold on contact.

That meant I couldn't stockpile gold and count on it not falling to shambles. I was doomed to be near the lower end of the economic ladder forever. What a life!

By then, Spandau Ballet was like an entire universe itching to be ridiculed. The "Gold" video showed lead singer Tony Hadley wearing his famous suit that looked like it had a necklace embedded in it.

In later years, it became clear that theft would have been a bigger threat to my gold stash than corrosive chemicals. People stole valuables from me at school no matter how tightly I guarded them. The exact same thing would happen repeatedly - at several different schools - and the school wouldn't do anything about it.

I also got a book that had a brief article on how to pan for gold. The funniest part is where it says that if you find gold, you're supposed to put up a sign advertising it, instead of taking your prize and running home with it.

"Love Is Like Oxygen" by Sweet

1978 / #8

Rate Your Music score: 3.73 out of 5!

Let's again slog back to my college radio days, circa 1993-94. Let's take another peek behind the big door to room 205. "You've got a buddy in the condom business!"

I am of course talking about WRFN, the carrier current station at Northern Kentucky University. As you know, I had a show on WRFN in which I would throw in a lost hit here and there. It's a shame it all ended on the wrong foot, but that was the school's stupid fault. After all, it's a pretty stupid school.

One afternoon, "Love Is Like Oxygen" bounced to the top of the hopper for lost hits. When I say lost, I mean it was lost. I was floored to hear it once on WCLU in 1985, as it had already been lost for years then. But when I was on WRFN, it elicited a funny.

You may remember when Johnny Fever of WKRP In Cincinnati said, "Boooooger!" I did something similar on WRFN. After I played the Sweet record, I said over the air, "'Love Is Like Oxygen', except there's none of it in a fart." The airwaves became a funnier place!

Flatulence does contain some oxygen, but it has more nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane. I'm going by scholarly books and websites, not the AI feature on Google that has a section called "Key points about fart composition." Hydrogen sulfide provides much of the peculiar aroma. One site gives the percentage of each chemical that makes up a fart, but I have no idea how they measured it.

My commentary on Sweet's lost hit isn't what got me hounded out of the station. That happened later.

I miss WRFN. I want to go back there and blast some tunes! Unfortunately, retirement homes are far less likely to have radio stations than colleges are.

"Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk" by Dr. Hook

1982 / #25

Rate Your Music score: 2.9 out of 5!

"The queen of falling diapers..."

Because this is a day ending in y, it's time for another misheard lyric!

This was the last top 40 hit for these guys from New Jersey, and it was all over the airwaves just before I turned 9. I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of one line in the song: "The queen of falling diapers."

Unfortunately, that's not the real lyrics. It might as well be, because the misheard words actually sound real. But the real line is, "The queen of all the night birds."

Oh, the video. It is hilarious. I never saw the video until YouTube came along. When I did finally see it, I burst out laughing! The clip mostly consists of members of Dr. Hook following a woman as she walks down the street and staring at her butt. Bystanders stand around chewing bubble gum (but they don't bubble).

This isn't the only jeans-related surprise ending story from that era. Around the same time as this song, there was a TV commercial for Lee jeans that was even more ridiculous...

What sort of weirdo came up with the idea for that ad? In that commersh, some little kid walks around in a hardware store and brands random people's butts with his fingers. He angers most of them, but the ad still tries to portray him as some sort of macho hero.

What an incredibly idiotic ad. People probably went around grabbing strangers' asses in public because of that commercial.

"Dream Lover" by the Rebel Pebbles

1991 / #42

Rate Your Music score: 2.38 out of 5!

Fond memories of the spring of 1991!

That was when a kid at school showed up drunk. It was also when a student who attended my school for one day goofed off all day.

And it was the spring of the "Coke can trip." I went on a trip to Pittsburgh back then in which a Coke can kept crinkling in the middle of the night. Someone kept farting really loud too. That was also when the motel was hosting a convention of dog lovers, but dogs barking wasn't nearly as loud as the flatulence or the soft drink can.

The lost hit profiled in this entry brings back memories of the "Coke can trip"!

By 1991, however, major pop stations in large cities played very little rock. So I probably didn't hear this record on a Pittsburgh station. It might have been when we had the radio on a Steubenville station.

One of the reasons I'm profiling this lost hit is to note that the Rebel Pebbles might be the highest charting act in the history of Billboard's Hot 100 to not have a Wikipedia entry. But they've had stiff competition from Colourhaus, the Johnny Average Band, Or-N-More, and St. Paul.

I wouldn't expect World Book in 1991 to have an entry on the Rebel Pebbles, because encyclopedias always excluded famous rock acts, even though they included other contemporary entertainers (such as Dan Quayle). But Wikipedia even has an entry on Domino Rally, so it should have an entry on music notables like the Rebel Pebbles.

"Something Real (Inside Me/Inside You)" by Mr. Mister

1987 / #29

Rate Your Music score: 2.95 out of 5!

Almost nobody remembers this song, but they remember the video. But mostly they only recall the first verse, where lead singer Richard Page's disembodied head floats through an alley like it's on a conveyor belt.

I think music videos were past their peak of influence by 1987, so I guess it's surprising that people remember the video at all. Videos shouldn't have been losing influence, but much of this loss was MTV's doing. The channel started to slowly but surely replace its old format of music video clips with shows that had nothing to do with videos or music. I don't even have the faintest idea what MTV airs now.

But let's talk about something that happened when I was in 7th grade - about 18 months before this record was a hit. That was when Mr. Mister was concluding a string of #1 hits.

This story is about an 8th grade girl at school. She was absolutely obsessed with Mr. Mister. She was weird. I know the preceding two sentences are redundant, but anyway, any male student was subject to ribbing by their friends about how they should take her out on a date. Apparently, Mr. Mister was coming to town for a concert. So people joked about taking her to the Mr. Mister show.

There were a few problems with that. For one, nobody in our class was old enough to drive, so how would they get to the concert? For another, how could kids who were only 12 or 13 afford Mr. Mister tickets? My allowance each week was only a dime or something like that, and I often didn't get one at all, because I had to pay for things the school falsely accused me of ruining.

Back then, you had more responsibilities at a younger age, but you also had more privileges. However, they didn't give driver's licenses to 12-year-olds.

I admit that I did destroy something once in high school and had to pay for it. There was some counselor or social worker type at my school who kept deliberately goading me to get angry. I kept my cool as long as I could. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore, so I picked up some toy that had some name like Binary Beads and just snapped it right in two. There was one other time when they kept goading another student all day, and finally, he lost his shit. He did something really horrible like knock a book onto the floor. They wrestled him to the ground, and I never saw him again.

I shouldn't have had to pay for the Binary Beads, because everyone has their breaking point if they're being egged on. Angrily damaging books and toys was sort of like John McEnroe smashing tennis rackets. Breaking inanimate objects wasn't nearly as bad as if we had actually injured people.

But by then, it was the '90s, so most of the time, we were being talked down to like a baby.

"Sign Your Name" by Terence Trent D'Arby

1988 / #4

Rate Your Music score: 3.49 out of 5!

You knew this one was coming, didn't you?

You'd think a record that went all the way to #4 wouldn't be lost, but I can't even remember the last time I heard this song on regular radio, except maybe in an American Top 40 rebroadcast. Also, don't be confused by the YouTube link: Terence legally changed his name to Sananda Maitreya in 2001.

I'm profiling this lost hit because of the treatment it got from my high school sophomore class. We had an assignment in English class that was supposed to involve pop music somehow. Someone used the bridge of this song - specifically, the "shoo-bee-doo" background vocals - for their assignment. I can't remember any details of how the song was supposed to be used for this project. But for months after, people kept singing that bridge in a hilariously exaggerated manner.

It was like how everyone kept replacing words in songs with "baste." I remember "Armageddon It" by Def Leppard becoming "Armabastin' It." "Blame It On The Rain" by Milli Vanilli became "Blame It On The Baste."

That assignment was in the same class where a student kept loudly passing gas and another student told the teacher, "He's back here fartin' up a storm!" And it was the same class where I had a textbook that had been defaced because a guy in a photo looked like Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet.

"Ready For The 80's" by the Village People

1979 / #52

Rate Your Music score: 2.67 out of 5!

Who ever thought the Village People were the right group to sing a song called "Ready For The 80's"? That's like when Air Supply sang, "I can make all the stadiums rock!"

I remember the Village People performing this song on TV on New Year's Eve to ring in 1980. Much as the '70s were the decade of the Bee Gees, the '80s were going to be the decade of the Village People! The nation's youth were probably buying up construction worker and cowboy outfits after seeing that performance.

Actually, not quite. "Ready For The 80's" was the group's last chart appearance. They weren't ready for the '80s! This single actually charted months after Disco Demolition Night. By the time it charted, the Hot 100 was starting to look more like an '80s chart, so they were lucky the record even reached #52.

Although the Village People never charted again, you'd still occasionally see them mentioned. When I was in high school, a teacher gave us an old Village People word search to work on after we finished our busywork. By then, it was the '90s, which the Village People weren't ready for either.

Years later, the cop from the Village People got in trouble for a series of run-ins with the law. He gave police a fake name during one of the incidents, but the police recognized him as the Village People cop.

I don't know of anyone making a song about being ready for the 2020s. If they did, it's already aged poorly.

"C-I-T-Y" by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band

1985 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 2.55 out of 5!

Remember the city craze of 1985?

With songs like "You Belong To The City" and "We Built This City", cities loomed large. That may have also been the same year I borrowed a book from the public library about the design of buildings in several of America's major cities. Cities were the home of pioneers, since that was before gentrification ruined our cities.

It was also the year of towns. We had "Small Town" and "Life In A Northern Town." Bruce Springsteen gave us "My Hometown." When that song came on the radio in 7th grade home ec, it prompted a response from a particularly troubled student. He declared, "My hometown is Pennsylvania, Kentucky!" Also, he used to fight by biting his adversaries.

And John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band graced us with "C-I-T-Y." This memorable song is now a lost hit.

While John is a real person, it appears as if we can't say the same for ol' Beav. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the band got the name Beaver Brown from a color of paint. I'm not sure how much we can still trust Wikipedia though, since the CIA makes so many edits that are full of disinformation. If anyone would make up something about John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, it's the CIA.

The band's musical spelling lesson was all the rage in the fall of 1985. I remember one time we were in the car on Interstate 71, and I noticed the people in the car next to us were spelling out "C-I-T-Y" with their hands - just like in the video. So I knew what song was on their car radio.

Apparently, this band is still around, and has been in existence since 1972.

"Fool's Game" by Michael Bolton

1983 / #82

Rate Your Music score: 3.04 out of 5!

Michael Bolton a hard rocker?

I repeat: Michael Bolton a hard rocker?????

This lost hit appeared in 1983, when I really didn't appreciate all the interesting music that was out there. I had a few rough times with some things in life during the preceding time frame. Fourth grade was a disaster (but still somehow less of a disaster than high school). Even outside of school, there were a couple of incidents that still stuck in my craw.

So I hated to lose, and almost anyone who challenged Men At Work's dominance met my wrath. Take the Eurythmics and the Police, for instance. These were generally decent bands. But they incurred the displeasure of the Great Royal Tim when their hit singles prevented Men At Work from charting higher.

I think I liked "Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band. But even Greg wasn't safe from my disappointment, because he was one of many music stars of the era who appeared in annoying radio or TV commercials for soft drinks. I think it was the same for Laura Branigan.

Anyway, back to Michael Bolton. "Fool's Game" only peaked at #82, so it wasn't much of a threat to Men At Work's chart prominence. But Michael elicited my chagrin because stations kept playing this track when they could have been playing Men At Work instead.

It's actually surprising that this lost hit only got to #82. I know competition was fierce in 1983, but maybe the sound was just too familiar. I think "Fool's Game" sounded a little bit like the previously popular "Shadows Of The Night" by Pat Benatar, so maybe that sound wasn't considered new anymore. But, a couple years later, "Crazy In The Night (Barking At Airplanes)" by Kim Carnes - which is now a lost hit - actually did pretty well on the chart, and it had that same sound.

A few years after "Fool's Game", Michael reemerged as an MOR crooner. I kept reminding folks that he had that action-packed rocker "Fool's Game" a few years earlier, but somehow that song had been consigned to the memory hole. Everyone thought I was making it up.

Michael Bolton. The man, the myth, the legend!

"High Time" by Styx

1983 / #48

Rate Your Music score: 2.64 out of 5!

Cashbox called this lost hit a "strong defense of freedom of expression." What a novel idea!

These days, there are entire agencies to find things to get offended about. Things weren't as bad in the 1980s, but they weren't perfectly hunky-dory either. Our cable system took forever to get MTV, and Q-102 reportedly refused to play certain songs because "morality" groups threatened to picket the station's advertisers. According to an online post, the records in question included "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. The picketers were probably just bluffing, as I don't remember anyone picketing Campbell County Chevrolet because WCLU played "Relax." (This station went under just weeks before George's hit was released.)

As for "High Time", I didn't hear it much when it was a current hit, but I know I did hear it some. That's sufficient for it to be profiled here as a lost hit. It's like the kid in school who you didn't see much but you remember because they understood free expression better than school officials did.

What makes this track especially amusing is that ARSA has a WCLU survey sheet that mistakenly (?) calls it "High Times" - as in High Times magazine. There was one time in high school when an anti-drug speaker came, and he held up a copy of High Times. He called it a "druggie magazine." At another one of his presentations, we were all supposed to keep stomping our feet and flailing our arms in unison.

In the lost hit profiled in this entry, singer Dennis DeYoung declared, "I see the kids of a new generation...And they won't stand for this mind control." I guess he never saw my high school. Outside of my school, however, the 1980s were better than today. These days, everyone - even at other schools - just snaps into line.

"Alibis" by Sérgio Mendes

1984 / #29

Rate Your Music score: 3.13 out of 5!

Although this lost hit was credited to Sérgio Mendes, the lead vocal was by Joe Pizzulo. Joe was the guy who attempted the Lyle Alzado look in the above video. This single was at the tail end of the era in which everyone tried to sound like Michael McDonald.

And the beat of this song still comes in handy after 41 years. Every time someone accuses me of something I didn't do, and I have an alibi that proves I didn't do it, I start humming this beat. That usually shuts them up right quick, but some people are allergic to facts, so they continue to keep up with their bullshit.

Probably the most noteworthy example of this was in 1997 when one of the usual suspects on the Internet accused me of hacking his ISP and knocking it offline. The problem with this was that it went offline while I was on a little road trip - specifically, the one that included Mount Mitchell - and this was before wi-fi access was as ubiquitous as it is today. Unless you seriously think I lugged my Power Mac and dialup modem into a motel room, I think we can establish my innocence. I couldn't broadcast myself humming "Alibis" across the Internet back then, but I'm sure I hummed it to myself when the accusation arose.

For years and years, there has also been a strange tendency by some to charge that anyone who agrees with me on any online forum is actually me using a sockpuppet account. That has been debunked so many times it'll make your face spin. Some people just can't accept that their opinions are in the minority. I've often had an alibi on these occasions too, but sometimes the person who I allegedly impersonated appears in plain sight in a video. This proves they're real people, but for some, even that isn't proof enough.

The only times I did use a phony account were the times I wasn't actually accused. I once made an account on a dialup bulletin board with the name of a porn publisher (not one of the big 3), and it was met with just a shrug. Later, I made an Internet account with an obviously fake name. I didn't even try to hide that it was me. Only one person ever made an issue of it, and he was the same guy who accused me of hacking his ISP.

Dum-da-dum-dum-dummm-dum, dum-da-dum-dum-dummm-dum...

"Talk To Me" by Fiona

1985 / #64

Rate Your Music score: 3.25 out of 5!

Let's talk about MTV Top 20 Video Countdown. A weird thing, that countdown. MTV used to compile its own weekly ranking of its top 20 hottest music videos - or "video songs", as it called them. This program debuted in early 1984 and apparently ran all the way until 1998 - which seemed like a completely different world from when the show first aired. The show started in the days of 45 RPM singles and the Atari 800, and ended in the era of MP3's and the World Wide Web.

I always watched this countdown in the mid-'80s, when it was hosted by Mark Goodman. But at some point, I gave up on it, because I was hardly ever allowed to watch it anymore. That may have been for the better, because then I had more time to spend on dialup bulletin boards and road map collecting instead.

In our last entry, I made a reference to a 1985 installment of this show in which Mark wore a shirt that was so ridiculous that I couldn't contain my laughter. I said it had been posted on YouTube but later taken down. Well, guess what? It's back...

And trust me, nobody except Mark Goodman wore anything that hideous in 1985. I was around in 1985. I remember what people wore. Nobody wore anything like that. This is like when someone made a webpage about how they found a 1970s clothes catalog and thought that guys back then wore oversized orange shirts that looked like a bath towel.

I'm not going to wade through that entire episode. Not even the interview where Molly Ringwald appears to be chewing bubble gum. Since we're on the topic of Molly Ringwald, I should also mention that one of my 8th grade teachers later railed against The Breakfast Club much as she crusaded against the Benjamin Orr hit song "Stay The Night."

In that episode of MTV's countdown, Fiona's lost hit appeared at #18. I remember this tune clanking out of the boom box in the den, but I think it got more exposure on MTV. Fiona once told Dick Clark that her parents hated radio so much that they didn't let her listen to it. That's what a lot of adults thought about MTV in the mid-'80s, even though they thought radio stations that played the same music were just fine.

My folks must have really hated MTV's top 20 countdown. They tolerated it at first, but eventually, they went to great lengths to stop me from watching it. When I declared I would watch it, the resulting conversation was like the Simpsons episode where Marge tries to get cartoons banned and Bart keeps saying he's gonna relax and go watch some toonies.

"Go For Soda" by Kim Mitchell

1985 / #86

Rate Your Music score: 3.11 out of 5!

The man from Sarnia, Ontario, gave us this lost hit, which is about one of the strangest topics of any record ever to chart.

This song is about how if you've had a long day and you find yourself in any sort of disagreement, and you feel like angrily chugging beer and smoking cigarettes, you should drink soft drinks instead. To drive home this point, the video features Kim jumping out of a TV screen and kicking a cigarette out of an ashtray.

Remember, this song was from 40 years ago, so there were still fresh memories of soft drinks being better than they are now. The song was popular around the time most such products - at least those sold in the U.S. - added more weird additives. These ingredients are the main reason these products aren't as good as they once were. Other viands have also acquired more strange additives since then - bubble gum being another prime example. As a connoisseur of soft drinks, I've noticed that the major brands were much better before the mid-'80s. Makers of these products seemed to be admitting as much during the brief "throwback" craze of several years ago, when they sold varieties of sodas that were promoted as using real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, a substitute that did not appear until the 1980s. They even used 1970s logos. Supposedly, they still sell this line of bevs, but you can't get them around here anymore (of course).

In fact, it is reported that 1985 - the very year "Go For Soda" charted - was coincidentally the exact same year the last major soft drinks sold in the U.S. switched away from real sugar. And it was the year of the New Coke debacle. It was also around the time RC ran a commercial where the KGB shows up at a get-together where people are guzzling RC, and that's the end of it...

I goed for the soda. I think Kim's tune appeared on MTV's top 20 countdown that aired on Friday nights. I remember watching this show and smuggling soft drinks and Fritos in from the kitchen, which prompted the oldsters to hide the bottle cap opener. I also remember a 1985 episode of this countdown in which host Mark Goodman wore a shirt that looked so ridiculous that I burst out laughing. That very episode later showed up on YouTube, but it's gone now.

And I was in 7th grade in 1985-86. That was when soda sales saw a spike locally because our water system got so contaminated. It's like how water in the 1890s wasn't safe to drink so people drank a lot more beer. On the day our water crisis began, they let us out of school early, and a kid from school threw my bookbag onto U.S. 27 in the rain and a truck ran over it.

The mid-1980s were pivotal in soft drink history!

"Who's Behind The Door?" by Zebra

1983 / #61

Rate Your Music score: 3.63 out of 5!

Forgot about this one?

This lost hit by this New Orleans band got a few airings on MTV in my day. And the video dredges up a memorable battle we had with our TV set.

Fast-forward to 1:39 in the above video. For no apparent reason, some kids appear on a computer monitor - and they're green. When I saw this video when I was growing up, I thought our TV was acting up again - because our TV used to do this very thing.

For several years, images on our TV screen - including people - would frequently turn green. If you'd stomp your foot, it might return to normal. Sometimes I'd be in another room when my parents were watching TV. I knew the TV was turning green when I heard feet stomping in the living room.

This set also cut off the edges of the picture. I thought U2 was just called 2, because the title and artist tags that appeared on one of their videos on MTV were cut off.

We invested much of our hard-earned money into trying to get the TV fixed. It seems like we lost much of 1981 because the TV was in the shop so much. But nothing fixed it. The TV would still occasionally turn green until we got rid of it.

If I remember correctly, we sold this set to a guy my dad knew at work for something like a dollar. Later, I was told that the TV worked beautifully after that guy purchased it from us. By the time we sold it, we had also gotten a small set for the den, because nobody could agree on what to watch. That's Incredible! often lost out to college basketball.

The TV that we sold was replaced by a new set that worked great for years. But it was reduced to shambles when a power outage somehow shorted out most of our appliances. The electric company refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever, and we only got something like $10 from our insurer. The TV was probably the biggest loss. That was right after I moved out when I was in college, so I didn't have standing to handle the situation my way. If it was up to me, a minimum of one complimentary booger would have been imminent. An insulting booger would have been even better!

I now recall that having the extra set for the den didn't solve our problems completely. People who ended up watching their shows in the den often left garbage laying around and were always stinking up the place. It got to be as bad as a public restroom.

Who's behind the door? In our household in much of the 1980s, whoever was behind the door of the den must have been a slob!

"One" by the Bee Gees

1989 / #7

Rate Your Music: 3.14 out of 5!

Was I ever glad when these guys came back! And good on Power 94½ for adding this record in a timely manner - which is more than I can say for some other pop stations.

Sometimes, a previously big musical artist will go so long without any major successes that people start ridiculing them as just a remnant of the past that will never stage a comeback. But when people hear their music again, they realize they were actually a pretty good act after all. I think that's sort of what happened with the Bee Gees. In the late 1980s, we dug up our old Bee Gees records so we could ponder just how far back in the past the band was. It actually hadn't been that long since their peak. The equivalent now would be to dig up music from the mid-2010s, which actually seems futuristic to the graying population of today. Yet, as we were listening to our Bee Gees discs, we decided they were actually still a pretty good group.

We also unearthed an order form included with a Bee Gees album where you could order a Bee Gees poster with "a striking yellow background."

Music, TV, and other pop culture of the late '80s was often stale and trite. It got to the point where some of it literally made me angry. I thought the Bee Gees were far more exciting than most of what was going on then.

So "One" came at the perfect time!

About a year after "One", a weird battle cry emerged among some of my pals: "One, one, do it again!" It sounded like a mash-up of the chorus of this song with that of a Kinks lost hit. I have no idea what the hell it was supposed to mean. This saying also had variations that were even sillier and made even less sense.

It's also unfortunate that late '70s nostalgia never has gotten the respect it deserves.

"Just When I Needed You Most" by Randy VanWarmer

1979 / #4

Rate Your Music score: 2.71 out of 5!

Were Jennifer Warnes and Randy VanWarmer separated at birth?

Go look at the video for our previous entry and compare it with this one. You be the judge!

As with Jennifer's lost hit, Randy's tune was popular around the time I attended that summer class just before 1st grade. It was also around the time that most current pop disappeared from local AM radio for a couple years. Much of the then-current music that was played was softer stuff like this. Remember, I was only 6, so I had too much energy to be interested in soft ballads. Thus, the MOR malaise that was soon to get under way blunted my interest in popular music.

I forgot about this song for about 10 years after that. I remembered it when I was flipping through the channels on TV and it was playing on one of those local cable channels that had computerized text ads. Despite radio's preference for softer music, I rarely heard it again after that.

Randy wasn't exclusively an adult contemporary warhorse. He also gave us the minor chart entry "Suzi Found A Weapon." It seems like I may have heard that song once a long time ago and mistook it for the Cars. The Wikipedia article on Randy says "Suzi" went to #1 in Alaska - which is interesting because I didn't know Alaska had its own music chart.

Also, I used to get Randy VanWarmer confused with Michael Johnson, another Coloradan. And I used to get Michael Johnson confused with Michael Jackson.

"I Know A Heartache When I See One" by Jennifer Warnes

1979 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 3.17 out of 5!

There was a brief but interesting period in my life that took place during the summer before 1st grade. That was when I attended some class up at NKU for elementary school kids. I think the teacher was an NKU student working on her degree. It's been 46 years, but I still think about this class a lot.

It wasn't a class for "bad" kids, and anyone could have attended it. The Campbell County Schools did seem to have a strange vendetta against some of us though that lasted for years. But this class didn't have a lot of busywork like our main schools did. People mostly just made filmstrips with one of those do-it-yourself kits and chewed bubble gum. We also made chess pieces out of plaster, and someone famously broke one of the molds.

And the teacher was obsessed with this Jennifer Warnes song. She kept talking about it all the time.

When the regular school year started at my new school, there were several times when this teacher drove me to school. She would always crank the radio every time this song came on.

Her class was also the first place I ever saw a Speak & Spell. Kids got in trouble for pressing the "module select" button to hear the funny sound it made. The teacher thought it would break the Speak & Spell. But why would Texas Instruments make a toy for little kids that was so easy to break just by pressing a button?

This entry ties in with the next entry. And if you like 1979 adult contemporary, then whooooo, man, you're gonna love the next entry even more than this one! If you've stumbled upon some of the YouTube clips, you might know right where this is headed.

"Catch Me I'm Falling" by Real Life

1984 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 3.5 out of 5!

I promised to include more 1983-85 amazingness on this blog, as I try to recreate the pizzazz from before everything fell to shit. The era is rich in some of the best lost hits around, and some of them even have surprise ending stories that we love so much.

This entry is oddly funny yet left me scratching my head.

Peep the first scene in the video. That scene appears to include the band members, and the first thing you notice is that strange effect that makes one of them look like Big Bird. I'm talking about the guy you see from the side.

I wasn't even the only one who noticed this. The first time I saw this video on MTV when I was growing up, someone pointed this out right away.

More importantly, what in the hell is going on? There were a lot of goofy videos on MTV back then. But that scene is one of the most inexplicable that I can recall.

Maybe we need a secret decoder ring to figure it out. I remember when MTV ran ads trying to get hapless suckers to buy a "license" to watch their channel. Maybe they also sold little decoders you could look through like that little red thing that came in a Trix box that made red roads on a map disappear. They probably even had a commercial where some kid said, "Wow!"

Another thing like that is that weird gesture that music stars made in MTV promo bumpers that looked like a lion holding up its paw and moving its claws. What was that all about?

I guess we can't assume the music charts have heard the last of Real Life, because apparently they released a new album as recently as 2020.

"Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive" by Men At Work

1983 / #28

Rate Your Music score: 3.12 out of 5!

Man, I felt good to be alive when this great song charted! But I was absolutely livid that it only peaked at #28, when it should have been a chart-topping smash. This was one of many hit records from that era that WCLU regularly played but Q-102 did not. Unfortunately, only the latter station was on Billboard's Hot 100 panel.

This track came from Men At Work's Cargo album. We rushed out and buyed that LP as soon as it came out. Now, this was right at the end of 4th grade, and my teacher for the second half of the school year was absolutely obsessed with Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. She was also obsessed with a book titled Babushka. I couldn't make heads or tails out of either book. Evidently, Babushka was about an elderly woman, but I didn't know what the title referred to. After I gave up on the book, the teacher interrogated me and said, "You thought Babushka was a little boy." Actually, I didn't think any such thing. I didn't even know the title referred to a person.

At least I understood one of the other books I read in 4th grade. It seems like during the early part of the school year, I read a Judy Blume book where a bunch of people peed on some stuff. But I might just be imagining this, because our schools around here are so conservative that they probably banned all of Judy Blume's books.

Now, back to Men At Work. My disappointment over the low chart peak of "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive" knew no bounds. So, for months after the song dropped out of the top 40, I had a ritual I performed each week. Every Sunday morning, when American Top 40 got up to #28, I would kneel for 28 seconds before a folder that had the cover art of the band's Business As Usual LP. Then, at the end of the 28 seconds, I would solemnly salute the folder.

Things weren't business as usual during those months, but sooner or later, we had to accept that Men At Work would probably never be seen in the top 40 again.

"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" by Judson Spence

1988 / #32

Rate Your Music score: 1.84 out of 5!

Remember this feel-good jam by the man from Pascagoula, Mississippi?

I'm shocked that this record has such a low Rate Your Music score. Power 94½ would have begged to differ with Rate Your Music, as this record seemed to be the glue that held the station together for months on end. This song always provided a much-needed break from the 5 hours of homework I got each night as a high school sophomore.

It even has a feel-good video. Judson throws off his hat - which resembles that worn by Al Lewis of The Uncle Al Show - and dances all over the stage like a madman!

In some ways, however, Judson mania didn't really age well. A website called Pop Dose has an article on Judson's self-titled LP. The piece calls Judson "Robbie Nevil's undescended testicle." The article pokes fun at the tame lyrics of the album's songs. Judson sounds like a guy who enrolls in college and is shocked that there are bars within 10 miles of campus. However, someone replied to that article saying Judson "is a major talent" who later beat alcoholism.

I'm not sure if Judson had any involvement with "Up All Night" by Annica, which happens to bear more than a passing resemblance to "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." I'm not sure if anyone even noticed, as I don't think Annica's track ever got much radio play. It may have been one of these tracks that you mostly heard on websites that specialized in indie albums - back before Mitch McConnell led a boycott that put these sites out of business because they were based in countries where the government wouldn't support the Iraq War. A senator from my state put indie musicians out of work. Happy now, Mitch?