"Space Age Whiz Kids" by Joe Walsh

1983 / #52

Rate Your Music score: 2.51 out of 5!

After over 2 years, it's finally happening. We're starting to run out of good stories for this blog.

Make no mistake. There's still lots of musically interesting lost hits out there. But how much can we possibly write about some of them?

I think this entry and the next are actually among the greatest and most musically distinctive lost hits of the 1980s. Don't let this record's disappointing Rate Your Music score fool you. It's blasphemy that this lost hit got a lower score than New Kids On The Block, but then again, George W. Bush somehow got 60 million votes, so what did we expect?

I haven't heard "Space Age Whiz Kids" on regular radio since the mid-'80s. I never even saw the video until I found it on YouTube. The clip features Joe Walsh strutting around in a video game arcade with a hilarious scowl on his face. The record was popular during the heyday of Starcade - a game show where contestants competed by playing video games. But it was also during what Wikipedia calls the video game crash of 1983. This was a recession in the gaming industry that was blamed on factors like the declining quality of games and a growing interest in computer programming instead of gaming.

I remember hearing the song on the radio in February 1985 on the same snowy Saturday that we went over to Devou Park to sled down the hill. I also heard "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the now-lost hit "The Bird" by the Time that day. I remember that we didn't stay very long at the park, because the weather made it so frustrating even for sledding.

Sometime after that, the song was on in the den, which provoked this standard parental reaction: "What are you listening to???"

I was living a life of illusion.

"Playing To Win" by Little River Band

1985 / #60

Rate Your Music score: 3.23 out of 5!

Why did a band from Melbourne, Australia, include the skyline of Cincinnati in a video?

"Playing To Win" was Little River Band's last Hot 100 hit, and I remember hearing it on album rock radio and MTV. The video was oddly appealing, but I could never figure out why a shot of the Cincinnati cityscape appears at 1:18. It's complete with Riverfront Stadium and the coliseum.

The video also has a few shots of a different city, which online sleuths have determined to be Minneapolis. Although I've been to Minneapolis a couple times, I couldn't recognize it from that angle.

The song is also interesting because its writers took the unusual step of analyzing all the lyrics to figure out a precise percentage of royalties that each writer would receive. The record also represents a brand of album rock that differs from some of the other musical styles we associate with that timeframe. This tune charted in early 1985, an era that otherwise brings to mind new wave and metal. People were staying up late and liking it fine that way, before they decided it was time for a cool change.

"Romeo" by Dolly Parton & Friends

1993 / #50

Rate Your Music score: 2.56 out of 5!

This Grammy-nominated lost hit brings back memories of when I first moved into my old apartment. This was where the neighbors almost blew up the gas station across the street with a bottle rocket. It's also where another set of neighbors flooded the building by angrily kicking the wall and rupturing the pipes.

For this single, Dolly Parton enlisted her friends Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, Kathy Mattea, and Tanya Tucker - as well as Billy Ray Cyrus for the song's bridge. Proceeds from the record sales were donated to the American Red Cross, in the wake of severe hurricane damage in Florida.

It's always interesting to have an occasional slice of country on this blog alongside the usual new wave, "yacht rock", and Electric Company music. Plus, this entry is from the second generation of lost hits - for maximum variety. It's a similar policy to what I use to sort music for my personal playlist, instead of having a strict specialty format.

Dolly Parton's recent death has set off worldwide mourning. Some states are flying flags at half-staff. Yet NBC embarrassed itself by running a photo of Loni Anderson instead of Dolly Parton.

It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it.

"Jesse" by Carly Simon

1980 / #11

Rate Your Music score: 2.93 out of 5!

"Jesse...I won't cut fresh flowers for you..."

Let's take a little trip back to 2nd grade. I went to a strange school. We had a blast!

The lost hit we're profiling today is one I associate with the start of 2nd grade because it - along with "Fame" by Irene Cara and "Lookin' For Love" by Johnny Lee - was always talked about by a group of several schoolmates. Some of these classmates later amassed some rather interesting life stories. One also had a close relative who I went to school with who recently got in trouble with the law in a somewhat interesting forgery case, but he has a lot of supporters who say he was railroaded. He always seemed like a nice guy. He also got yelled at once for chewing bubble gum during a field trip.

Anyway, in addition to having genuine fans, "Jesse" brang amusement to 2nd graders who couldn't resist coming up with a parody of a set of lines in the chorus. Considering the free-floating obsession with flatulence that enveloped the community for years, the new lyrics should be obvious: "Jesse...I won't cut a fart for you."

Nobody was really sure what "Jesse" was about. Some people thought it had something to do with Uncle Jesse of The Dukes Of Hazzard. Some thought it was called "Chessie", a reference to the Chessie System, the company that owned several railroads that operated in the eastern half of the country.

The "I won't cut a fart for you" parody flourished around the same time as many similar parodies that involved commercial slogans. Among them was "Cut a fart at Kroger." Another was "Poop is good food" for Campbell's soup. Still another was "#1 in people peein'" for Holiday Inn. There was also "Fall into the crap" for the Gap.

"Kiss You Back" by Digital Underground

1991 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 3.54 out of 5!

This lost hit straddles the frontier between the first and second generations of lost hits, as it was on the chart when Billboard made its much-ballyhooed change to its Hot 100 methodology. I think I heard it on the car radio one Saturday when we drove to Michigan and back and we were heading home through the Detroit area. I also remember that there was a dense layer of fog throughout the entire outing. This would have been a different event from a few months earlier when we drove through Detroit, which was one of very few times I ever heard a radio commercial for condoms.

Instead of "Kiss You Back" though, we may have just as much cause to focus on a much more well-known Digital Underground hit: "The Humpty Dance." The reason I'm not giving it its own entry is that I think it still gets some airplay on regular radio - seemingly more than it did when it was a current hit.

"The Humpty Dance" was a hit during my unfortunate dealings with a money-grubbing far-right cult just before junior year of high school. The controversy there was centered on the line, "I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom." One of the surest ways to get staffers to fall into a screeching temper tantrum was to parody that line by using the names of other fast food restaurants.

"I once got busy in a McDonald's bathroom."

"I once got busy in a Taco Bell bathroom."

"I once got busy in a Long John Silver's bathroom."

"I once got busy in an Arby's bathroom."

A similar technique involving the commercials for Sesame Street Band-Aids raised staffers' ire. You wouldn't believe the fit that they threw. The commersh had a jingle that went, "I am stuck on Big Bird 'cause Big Bird's stuck on me." It also named other lovable Sesame Street Muppets. We all got in trouble because we kept singing the jingle with different Muppets.

"I am stuck on Oscar 'cause Oscar's stuck on me."

"I am stuck on Guy Smiley 'cause Guy Smiley's stuck on me."

"I am stuck on Amazing Mumford 'cause Amazing Mumford's stuck on me."

Those staffers got mad at the weirdest things.

"Tell Me Why" by Exposé

1989 / #9

Rate Your Music: 2.72 out of 5!

"Tell me why...Oh won't you please tell me why..."

This lost hit has a story similar to that of "Skin Trade" by Duran Duran.

It's another vignette about my high school principal and his infamous temper. Recently, it occurred to me that he would have been perfect for right-wing talk radio. He had the right theatrics and intonation. Instead of the big stations though, he would have been better for one of those fringe stations that operated under the guise of religion and had its own parallel universe alongside the major stations.

Not long ago, I read that the format for one of the stations like that around here was instituted by a group of investors led by a well-known local industrialist who wanted a right-wing station but wanted to cloak it under the label of a ministry. My principal had sort of a messiah complex, so he would have been a good fit for that station. It would have been better for society for him to spew bullshit on a station that nobody listened to than for him to run a high school where he ruined so many young lives.

Also, while the aforementioned investors owned the station, their company was also one of the biggest donors to the effort to pass an anti-gay referendum in Cincinnati. But that's another sorry topic for another venue.

How does all of this fit in with Exposé's lost hit? A key set of lines in the chorus is, "Tell me why...Oh won't you please tell me why." This sounds like something my principal would have said when very frustrated - as he often was. He may have actually said it, but I think it was just someone doing an impression of him. I can just see him saying it as he stabbed the air with his hand.

I think the version of the song in the video was the one most stations played. An exception was Power 94½, which played a slightly different mix, which I never heard anywhere else. I think Q-102 used the same version that was in the video, when they started playing the song about 6 months later.

"Infatuation" by Rod Stewart

1984 / #6

Rate Your Music: 2.76 out of 5!

"Oh no! Not again!"

With a song titled "Infatuation" being unleashed on a world full of 11-year-olds who were obsessed with fart jokes, you can see exactly where this entry is headed.

This is one song where the parodies just wrote themselves. It was even more obvious than when "King Of Pain" by the Police was rewritten as "King Of Stain" with the opening line, "There's a little brown spot in my pants today."

Nobody could agree on what the title of a fart-related parody of "Infatuation" should be. It was everything between "Flatuation" and "Deflatulation." I seem to remember a local news anchor many years later reporting on a police officer who "flatuated" in a DUI suspect's face. I also remember an earlier elementary school teacher talking about how we should never say that someone "farted" but rather that they "flatulated."

As for the Rod Stewart parodies that were extant in 1984, the only line I can remember is, "Maybe it's cookies, maybe it's beans." Kids probably made flexagons to try to come up with random lines - sort of like Mad Libs. So the next line may have been something about checking your jeans or how something smells mean. Maybe it was something about how the stench made everyone flee the scene or how you should eat more greens or how you might rupture your spleen. Maybe it was something about a latrine.

Oh no! Not again!

"Read 'Em And Weep" by Barry Manilow

1983 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 3 out of 5!

Believe it or don't, I actually have the 45 of this. This record was also Barry Manilow's last top 40 hit - though he managed to reach the Hot 100 as late as 1988.

And the video was absolutely, positively ridiculous beyond description. I remember seeing the video on Solid Gold and thinking it was ridiculous then. It reminded me of some of the Solid Gold Dancers' "interpretations" of songs included on the show. Don't get me wrong: They were talented dancers. Just like how Barry is a talented singer. But their works appeared in contexts that were often pretty silly.

It seems like several years later, some of my peers planned to use a similar concept for some performance, but they goofed off so much that the event never took place. I'm not even sure what their point was going to be.

Barry's record was written and produced by Jim Steinman, who did a lot of work for Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler. One of Jim's trademarks was the type of thunderous, dramatic arrangement that we hear on "Read 'Em And Weep", especially during the song's bridge.

The main reason I'm giving this lost hit an entry on this blog is that it was played at a family wedding I attended in the early 1990s where I almost ate one of the small plastic birds from the cake. Each guest received a generous slice of the wedding cake. The reception hall was very dark, and the white plastic birds blended in with the white icing. So I could barely see the birds, let alone see that they were plastic.

After chewing on the bird for several minutes and not being able to swallow it, I finally realized it was plastic. I think I decided to chew on it a little bit more like it was bubble gum. But you couldn't blow bubbles with it.

Read it and weep!

"Candy Girl" by New Edition

1983 / #46

Rate Your Music score: 2.89 out of 5!

This Boston group was still teenagers in 1983. Many years after the group's heyday, I mentioned in an online forum that this now-lost hit used to be played on WCLU. Somebody insisted that no top 40 station outside New England would have ever played this record. But now, ARSA has some old WCLU surveys, and one of these surveys begs to differ.

The record is still known for its innovative production elements that inspired a generation of music. For instance, at 39 seconds in, there's this sigh of refreshment, like that sound you make after you take a big gulp of a cold beverage. It was the same sound we made when we went to the drinking fountain in high school and wanted to disturb some classes.

Another example is at 2:44. We hear some element that sounds like it's either vocals imitating an instrument, or an instrument imitating vocals. For years, whenever something gets spilled or something valuable gets destroyed, the fanfare from the Sesame Street segments where the baker falls down the steps has played in my head. The sound from "Candy Girl" is sort of like that. It actually sounds like it's laughing at someone because of some misfortune. Think if Charlie Brown's teacher laughed at somebody because they split their pants.

You're gonna lose control!

"Midnite Maniac" by Krokus

1984 / #71

Rate Your Music score: 3.17 out of 5!

Here's another lost hit that had a "Take It Away" moment of sorts.

This track was by the hard rock band from Switzerland named Krokus. As it happens, there's a flower called a crocus. This gave rise to an incident that took place in biology class when I was a high school sophomore only a few years after this record was a hit.

That class was insufferable. Everything about that school was, but particularly this class. It was a disaster from day one, and was never anything else. But one day, the teacher mentioned a crocus. As soon as that word was uttered, I knew exactly what would happen next.

True to form, I heard someone go, "Midnite maniac!" They sang it in the same style that Krokus did.

But the teacher didn't seem to notice. He also didn't notice on the day he got out his briefcase in class, and I chanted, "Briefcase full of bluuuuues..." This was inspired by the title of the Blues Brothers' debut album.

I forgot about the crocus incident until many years later when I had a work assignment. This was at the Department of the Interior gig that the George W. Bush regime unceremoniously discontinued (and which everyone neglected me on anyway). I found that there was a street in Taylor Mill called Crocus Lane. When I discovered this, I went, "Midnite maniac!"

Did you read it in the paper 'bout the danger comin' your way?

"No More Rhyme" by Debbie Gibson

1989 / #17

Rate Your Music Score: 2.97 out of 5!

By the end of the 1980s, pop radio was grasping at youth but had so little knowledge of what was hip that it buried itself in a cloud of sawdust.

There were a lot of young acts then whose fan base was generally much younger than the performers themselves. Debbie Gibson was only 19 in 1989, but by then, I considered myself too grownup to regularly listen to acts like Debbie. When "No More Rhyme" was on the chart, I was more interested in then-current hits by John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, Living Colour, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and the Bangles.

The real problems for me though came in 1990. I spent the summer being subjected to an organization that called me a liar right to my face because I dared to report the things that had taken place at my high school. There were witnesses, by the way, so anyone who says it didn't happen can shut their noisemaker now. I never went to any of my school dances, because I just wasn't interested, but this organization did have maybe 2 or 3 dances that I was at. But none of them was really much of a dance.

Remember the video of the prom in the early 2020s where kids were ridiculing the social distancing fad by dancing with their backs to each other? Well, the dances I went to were just as laughable. I don't think this organization even knew what a dance was.

A few months before, my high school had a dance that became the butt of jokes because the DJ only played old standards from the big band era instead of modern music. But one of the dances I attended at the organization that I was subjected to during the summer had the opposite problem. This kooky cult considered most current popular music too subversive and immoral for 17-year-olds. So the only pop music it allowed was acts like New Kids On The Block and Debbie Gibson that had a much younger fan base. These performers were considered innocent and safe to listen to.

A woman who worked there and was in charge of gym activities served as the DJ for this dance. All the music she played was too immature for older teenagers. So everyone just ignored the music. Instead, people just sulked and stewed about how lifeless this so-called dance was, and how we were being treated like kindergartners.

When we got near the end of the dance, the woman made a big issue of how there was only one song left. It was going to be a "special" tune. Nobody was paying attention though. But guess what song it was?

Yep. "No More Rhyme."

The woman made such a big deal out of playing the final song for the evening, only for it to be "No More Rhyme"! By that time though, nobody had high hopes for anything more mature.

At least I was around peers who knew how to act right - unlike at my old high school.

"Constant Craving" by k.d. lang

1992 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 3.74 out of 5!

This entry is not primarily about k.d.'s video for this song. Near the end of the video, it seems to include the McDonald's Moon Man, a character that McDonald's retired after a trademark lawsuit. Rather, much of this entry is about how radio people get upset over the weirdest things. I was in radio, and I've seen it happen firsthand.

There's an AM station in Nebraska that once received a write-up in Billboard. The station had a format consisting largely of agricultural information and was - and still is - owned by the Nebraska Rural Radio Association. Membership in this association is open only to Nebraska farmers, and each member owns a share of the station. The station also played a little bit of music, but it refused to play any song that included the words damn or hell. It appears that sometime later, the station carried some syndicated programming during the overnight hours, and complained about the lyrics of songs that were played.

Now, k.d. lang has been a vegetarian for many years. This didn't appeal to everyone in Nebraska, a state that is known as a leader in the production of beef, pork, and poultry. An estimated 1 in 5 hamburgers and steaks consumed in the U.S. is produced in Nebraska. How did the radio station handle k.d.'s vegetarianism? The station reacted by refusing to play her music.

Isn't that a little bit silly? Who ever heard of a station banning an act because of what they eat? That's like if a recording artist doesn't like cheese and beer, and stations in Wisconsin ban their music.

The situation in Nebraska apparently wasn't as bad as it was in k.d.'s home province of Alberta. It was reported that over 30 stations in Alberta banned her music.

You probably have a constant craving for more entries on this magnificent blog!

"Talking In Your Sleep" by Crystal Gayle

1978 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 2.8 out of 5!

This lost hit by the singer born in Paintsville, Kentucky, is a ballad that was - hey, wait a minute!

What do I see?

Look at the video again.

Is that a...Show Biz microphone?

I repeat: a Show Biz microphone???

For those unawares, that was a toy that was popular in the late 1970s. You could actually broadcast onto an AM frequency and listen to your friends on a regular AM radio. You didn't have to get an FCC license. And you didn't have to be a trillionaire or a phony ministry so you could buy an existing station. All you needed was plain old batteries.

An Internet search reveals a Show Biz microphone branded with Donny and Marie Osmond, and another branded with Andy Gibb. But I don't think the one we had featured any celebrity branding. Sadly, we didn't really use it that much. I remember using it once when we got it, and listening to ourselves on our beige AM radio with a big, round dial in the bedroom. I think we didn't use it much because we pretty much had to be in the same room for it to work, so it was probably full of feedback. Using an electronics kit to jam WLW when the elderly man next door blared the Reds game too loudly was much more exciting.

The microphone in Crystal's video looks just like a Show Biz! The only difference is that it looks like she broke off the antenna at the bottom of it and pasted a cord there.

I remember that we buyed a microphone around the turn of the '90s to use with a home cassette deck, but I don't know what we ever did with it. I don't think we ever opened it from the package.

There's no biz like Show Biz.

"Don't You Get So Mad" by Jeffrey Osborne

1983 / #25

Rate Your Music score: 3.11 out of 5!

"Then you went and spoiled the whole thing, baby...In front of everyone..."

I like certain words - especially words that convey negative actions, events, or feelings.

I especially enjoy it when these words appear in hit song lyrics.

I'm particularly fond of a certain set of words that mean pretty much the same thing. One of these words is ruin and its various forms. We can give credit to "China Girl" by David Bowie for the line, "I'll ruin everything you are," and "She's Always A Woman" by Billy Joel for the line, "She can ruin your faith with her casual lies." I always liked "Watching The Wheels" by John Lennon because it used ruin in its noun form.

Another song I always liked was "Hang On In There Baby" by Johnny Bristol, because it was one of few songs that used the word destroy - which means practically the same thing as ruin.

A word that often means something similar to ruin and destroy is spoil. And Jeffrey Osborne came through with the lost hit we're profiling today!

If he had instead sung, "Then you went and ruined the whole thing," it would have meant the same thing. Either way, every time I listened to the radio - or many years later, fired up a batch of MP3's I had purchased - and I heard that shuffling intro and that dramatic flourish with the strings, I knew I was going to hear Jeffrey sing about some event being spoiled, ruined, destroyed.

Another set of synonyms I like is tirade and harangue.

I didn't always appreciate Jeffrey's lost hit as much as I do now. Remember, it was popular in 1983, when I didn't appreciate much of anything that wasn't Men At Work. I also had bad luck that a project I started about a year earlier to poke fun at my 3rd grade teachers got ridiculously out of hand. When it moved on from teachers to well-known music performers, I always came up with jokes that included their lyrics. Thus, whenever this song came on the radio, I would glance at the radio and say, "Don't you get so mad" about being included in this endeavor.

Around the same time, I would also sing, "Chris de Burgh said, 'There is trouble ahead.'" This was a spoof of a line in Chris's now-lost hit "Don't Pay The Ferryman."

The "Don't You Get So Mad" saga didn't end in 1983. In 1990, Jeffrey was part of what appeared to be a command performance ordered by George H.W. Bush that took place at the White House. He sang this lost hit during that event. But the instrumentation at this concert was vastly different from the hit record. Although the version on the record conveyed excitement, the White House performance was accompanied by an orchestra that acted as if it was an episode of The Lawrence Welk Show...

The Bushes were so stodgy and had so little appreciation for modern music that this was about the upper limit of what they could handle. They had to have a pop chart hit from 7 years earlier toned down to make it suitable for their fogeyish tastes.

They went and spoiled the whole thing in front of everyone.

"New Frontier" by Donald Fagen

1983 / #70

Rate Your Music score: 3.69 out of 5!

When I had another heart surgery back in May, it must have been Yacht Rock Day at the hospital.

When I entered the operating room, a song that we once profiled here was playing: "I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)" by Donald Fagen. Later that night, when I was in the recovering room, I found that the hospital's cable TV system carried several local radio stations. To my absolute shock, WGRR played "Never Be The Same" by Christopher Cross - another record we once profiled as a lost hit, as we noted the bubble gum popping sound throughout. I was floored that WGRR played this, as the station has a very limited playlist and rarely plays lost hits outside of old American Top 40 shows.

Hearing "I.G.Y." brang to mind another Donald Fagen chart entry: "New Frontier."

Donald helped found Steely Dan and was the band's lead singer. I've always been amused by the fact that his name rhymes with Ronald Reagan. Donald once described the pain of having to move to the suburbs as a youngster. He said the suburbs were "like a prison."

"New Frontier" is about a young couple holding a party in a fallout shelter built by the young man's dad in their back yard. I remember hearing the song during one of those times when I kept changing the station on the radio at a therapist's office.

And Donald hates, hates, hates it when you talk about "yacht rock." A few years ago, the maker of a documentary about the genre called up Donald about it, and he replied with some choice words and hung up. He probably wouldn't have gotten so angry if the filmmaker had just called it Horizon music instead.

"Saved By Zero" by the Fixx

1983 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 3.58 out of 5!

The Fixx is exactly the sort of act that inspired this very blog. My go-to radio station in much of the mid-1980s seemed to be fast on new wave. While I try to make sure this blog has a good balance of music, it might at times lean slightly toward new wave. Maybe it only seems that way, because there's nothing resembling new wave on the charts today. We need a new wave revival.

And with a title like "Saved By Zero", we should have known this single would eventually be profiled here. It evokes an incident in life that was extensively rehashed many years after it took place.

I didn't even know what the title of this song meant or what the song was about until recently when I read that it's about the freedom of having nothing left in life to lose. Yet, every time I think of this song, I think of something that occurred in 5th grade. For months that year, we had to read books that had won the Newbery Medal. And they were hard books too. The other 5th grade class got to read books that had won the Caldecott Medal, so they got books like 1 Is One. But we had to read books like Smoky The Cowhorse that had about 1,000 pages. And we only got a few weeks to read each one.

There wasn't any logic to this, as we were assigned to these classes randomly.

Literature was not my strong suit. So when it became time for a very difficult test on one of these books, success was not an option. It was not an open book test, but I had the book open in my lap. I still got frustrated with the test, so I decided to see if I could get steam to shoot out my ears - like Fred Flintstone. I would clench my jaws tightly and hold my breath.

As I loudly paged through the book on my lap, the teacher finally noticed that I had the book open for a closed book test. By this point, I had long since given up completely, so I figured I might as well entertain the class as much as possible. The teacher took me out in the hall to lecture me. She declared I would receive a 0% for the test, because I had the book open when I wasn't supposed to.

I replied at the top of my lungs, "WHAT?!?!?! ZERO?!?!?!"

The kids in each of the classrooms must have been having the time of their lives listening to this exchange. Good for them! I was happy to provide the entertainment.

I forgot about this hilarious episode for over 10 years. Then, when I was in college, one of my schoolmates who was in one of the 4th grade classes down the hall from me when I was in 5th grade started talking about it. I was considered a hero by his 4th grade class because of the incident.

For months after it was first rehashed, this story kept getting repeated over and over. One of our most popular sayings became, "WHAT?!?!?! ZERO?!?!?!"

Maybe someday, saved by zero.

"Big Log" by Robert Plant

1983 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 3.66 out of 5!

"Led Zeppelin rules!"

Robert Plant was the legendary lead vocalist of Led Zeppelin, one of the pioneering bands of heavy metal. Of course, this blog is designed to cover every popular music genre, from metal to rap to country to soft rock to new wave to R&B, but metal might not be represented as well as many readers would like.

However, there was a time in my youth when I actually sort of admired some metal acts, including those with few or no chart singles. I had pals who liked metal to the complete exclusion of everything else. I also noticed that metal was under particular attack from the censors. But this censorship spread to other styles of music. A particularly aggravating incident took place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where some right-wing preacher forced the cancellation of an Ozzy Osbourne concert. The clergyman vowed to keep all hard rock shows out of Baton Rouge, but the ban also reportedly kept Barry Manilow and Alabama out of town. Forty years later, local residents said the Baton Rouge concert scene still hadn't recovered.

(Some years before the Baton Rouge ban, a city-owned venue in Denver banned rock concerts. The band America - who gave us such dangerous anthems as "Daisy Jane" and "The Border" - was deemed too hard to be allowed to perform there. A lawsuit by the band's promoter forced the city to relent. This venue is still said by music fans to be one of the worst around. Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles might be worse though, as it gets terrible reviews due to abusive staff.)

Led Zeppelin was still one of the most widely admired bands in the world even several years after they tragically disbanded. So at one point, MTV opted to air a Led Zeppelin special. It was around that time that I first heard the expression that something "rules." MTV kept running a promo for this special that featured a group of teenagers declaring, "Led Zeppelin rules!" It wasn't just a statement. It was an exhortation.

That was also after Robert Plant's solo single "Big Log." It's hard to imagine a slice of blues rock like "Big Log" appearing on top 40 radio today, but back then, it didn't seem strange to me. This was before pop stations began dropping each genre little by little (as another one of his singles would say) and not adding new ones quickly enough to replace them. By the end of the 1980s, I was told that songs like "Big Log" would never be played alongside later music, for fear that each would scare away fans of the other. This extreme narrowcasting signaled the rise of the 15-second mind.

And where did the title "Big Log" come from? I know you're getting excited hearing all this talk about "logs", much like how any mention of David Bowie is sure to rehash the story about "elimination", but we can only rely on toilet humor for so long. It turns out that the song is called "Big Log" all because Robert found an old log that he used for firewood.

The record might sound like it would have belonged on album rock radio. But with the narrowcasting of today, it now seems downright weird that it was ever heard on top 40 radio.

"Shake It" by Ian Matthews

1978 / #13

Rate Your Music score: 3.07 out of 5!

"She's got a picture in her locker...An autographed basketball..."

Don't be confused by websites that spell this performer's name Iain. He officially changed the spelling of his name in 1989.

People talk about how they remember a song on the radio in the late 1970s that sang about "an autographed basketball." Well, it's this one. It's about someone who keeps a picture of an autographed basketball in her locker.

When I was in school, I knew better than to store anything of such great value in my locker, because people kept breaking into the lockers. It was particularly bad in high school, when the locks were a separate piece from the locker instead of being built-in. Apparently, somebody kept sawing them off with a hacksaw. At least once, someone threw a lock into the toilet. The school refused to replace our locks when someone removed them. Then the school made us pay for textbooks that got stolen from our lockers because we didn't have a lock.

We had to pay for the stolen locks too. The school charged an inflated price for these. I saw this brand of lock being sold at a store for a fraction of the cost, but we were required to use the locks provided by the school.

Around the same time Iain's now-lost hit was popular, the sport of basketball had a big advertising campaign. I don't know who was paying for it. I don't think it was a major league like the NBA or a particular brand of basketballs like Spalding or Wilson. I remember a radio commercial that featured what sounded like a loud fart, followed by a woman singing, "Basketbaaaaaaaall!"

"Ppppphhh! Basketbaaaaaaaall!"

I also recall that around the same time, there was a gum commercial that seemed to have fart noises sprinkled throughout the jingle. People would dance around to this ad and act like they were farting, but unfortunately, not everyone saw the humor in this.

But it was truly a slam dunk!

"Love's Got A Line On You" by Scandal

1983 / #59

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

It's almost a matter of principle that we need to include more Scandal on this blog. Man, does Scandal ever rule!

I even saw them in concert a couple times more than 20 years after their heyday. Throughout each show, lead singer Patty Smyth was chewin' bubble gum! She didn't bubble. But she was chewin' bubble gum!

Here we're profiling another great Scandal single that sadly missed the top 40. I have to admit that the pop stations in Cincinnati actually made a good choice by playing this record despite its low chart peak. Along with hits by DeBarge and Kajagoogoo, I remember that this song would crop up during the summer before 5th grade when I took the infamous "Are you ready?" hearing test. I also had to take one of those tests where you arrange pieces of paper with drawings on them to form a story. What a waste of time those tests were.

Eventually, we buyed Scandal's self-titled EP that included the lost hit we're profiling today. Not only was the record full of great tracks, but I was also amused by the back cover of it. The back of the record jacket showed Patty dancing and making a funny face with her mouth open. During one of the concerts I attended, a fan had this record sleeve and was proudly holding it up and waving it around, with this picture visible.

For the most part, this blog deals with recordings, not concerts. I was a broadcaster. I was lucky ever to see Scandal in concert, because there weren't very many interesting acts that came to town. A lot of rockers avoided Cincinnati even before they saw how shabbily the Damn Yankees were treated. I do remember once around 1996 - about a decade before I saw Scandal - when I was woken up at about 3 PM when a family member called with the news that there was a concert coming to town by some act who might be fun to see. I was asleep at 3 PM because this was during the particularly crushing timeframe after the NKU disaster - an era that the media somehow thinks was some shimmering renaissance.

I am the warrior.

"When We Kiss" by Bardeux

1988 / #36

Rate Your Music score: 3.01 out of 5!

"I know all about your checkered past..."

This entry is a lesson in how to humiliate an adversary - 1988 style.

These days, paid troll farms might be too sophisticated to make comebacks like this effective. But it was dynamite in 1988.

Let's go back to when I was in high school - perhaps late during freshman year. Because I was surrounded by spoiled idiots all day, it was a guarantee that I'd catch them saying or doing something incredibly stupid at least once every 30 seconds.

They might start a typical conversation by asking something like, "Remember last year when you got a 68 on a history test?"

I might reply, "Remember last week when you got caught in the restroom with a Sears catalog?"

Pretty quickly, however, I realized that more had to be done to combat these little twerps. Bardeux to the rescue!

After Bardeux's now-lost hit was released, I used a line from the song as a new comeback: "I know all about your checkered past."

Anyone who I used that line on was huuuuuuuuuumiliated! They got a look on their face like Dan Quayle did after Lloyd Bentsen told him, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." The person stumbled backwards like a buffoon. Then they looked like they were about to cry!

Actually, I didn't know all about their checkered past. I just acted like I did, because present behavior seems to be a good indicator of past behavior. But the way they reacted to the Bardeux line shows my assumptions were correct.

This line usually didn't work over stupid stuff. After I began using this line, somebody tried using it to make some point that is now forgotten. It just bounced off like water off a duck's back.

We've played this game 1,000 times before.

"Solitaire" by Laura Branigan

1983 / #7

Rate Your Music score: 3.12 out of 5!

Whooooo, man!

You know exactly where this is headed, don't you?

As I've stated before, a top 10 hit shouldn't be lost. But the AM radio in the Horizon was still mostly pasted to the MOR mainstays of the era. My folks had only recently discovered that you didn't need a special permit to add WCLU to the presets, and old habits die hard. So "Solitaire" never felt like a #7.

With a title like "Solitaire", it's just too obvious where this is going. It sounds like one of these sayings we had a few years later in high school art class. The teacher would often just up and disappear for 40 minutes at a time. He'd suddenly announce he was going to his office, which was in another building. Then we didn't see him again until class was almost over.

In the meantime, people would be asking, "Where is he?"

One of the responses was, "Probably playing solitaire."

But there was no mention of a deck of 51 or Captain Kangaroo, much to the Statler Brothers' chagrin.

While the teacher was out of the room, we kept hitting the ceiling with a broom handle and yelling, "Boist!" so the classrooms upstairs could hear us. People kept farting really loud too. One time, a classmate farted, and somebody replied, "That sounded important." One other time, someone farted, and somebody responded, "Thanks for the news, Dan Rather."

The "Solitaire" video is amusing too. In that clip, Laura Branigan displays the utterly mature trick of holding up a deck of cards and bending them so they fly all over the room. When I was growing up, I was taught this valuable trick by a neighborhood teenager. It takes skill. Laura's technique was different though in that she bent the cards backward instead of forward. I always thought forward had funnier results.

Sadly, Laura died of a cerebral aneurysm in 2004. What Wikipedia calls an "age controversy" then emerged. At the time, her age was reported to be 47. It wasn't until 12 years later - in 2016 - that the Associated Press and other news outlets issued a correction. It was only then that they discovered she was actually 52.

"Music Time" by Styx

1984 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 2.77 out of 5!

"Hey everybody, it's music time!"

It's music time, everybody! This lost hit is known for its memorable opening exhortation - which I lampooned for many years thereafter. Every evening, I announced, "Hey everybody, it's homework time!" It was always homework time. For hours on end each night.

This went on for well over 5 years.

"Music Time" is a particularly odd entry in the Styx catalog. Though it was a studio track, it was added to what was otherwise a live double album to meet a contractual obligation. By the time the LP was released, the band had broken up. The song and its video also highlight the conflicts within the band. Guitarist Tommy Shaw hated the song and left Styx while the video was being made. He also refused to appear in the part of the video that showed band members' heads on plates in a restaurant.

The disagreements in the band often surrounded lead singer Dennis DeYoung's penchant for showmanship. For example, in 1982, he shaved off his mustache during a concert in Tokyo that drew 10,000 cheering fans. In the years after "Music Time", Styx got back together and broke up again and again. Apparently, they're back, and they still give concerts. But Dennis long ago left the band, which rarely performs his songs now. Guitarist James Young said, "This is a rock band. This is not a band that does show tunes."

But in my household for many years, it was always homework time. Hard work was the rule. And it was always all for naught. Every evening when I was done with dinner, I grabbed my books, marched into the den, and said, "Hey everybody, it's homework time!" This statement was delivered in the same robot-like manner as the intro to Styx's hit. But my heart sank every time I got my assignment back and saw my grade for it.

Something else like this is a conversation that took place every Friday evening in the mid-'80s.

"Dallas is on tonight."

"Who do they play?"

Get it? Like the Dallas Cowboys!

I had too little time on my hands.

"Mutual Surrender (What A Wonderful World)" by Bourgeois Tagg

1986 / #62

Rate Your Music score: 3.18 out of 5!

"I throw up my hands for you..."

This lost hit by this Sacramento band ranks up there with Crystal Gayle's line about "overflowing."

With lyrics like "I throw up my hands for you", the song doesn't need much elaboration. What makes it even funnier is that this act - though not a huge chart presence - had such a squeaky clean image like Judson Spence. They made Glass Tiger and Mr. Mister look like Marilyn Manson in comparison.

Lead singer Brent Bourgeois looked sort of like Chris de Burgh trying to emulate the Javier Milei look. Brent went on to have a solo hit that edged into the top 40 a few years later. Maybe we'll get to it someday. A friend of this blog once said that acts like Mr. Mister and Genesis circa their Invisible Touch set were like a "yacht rock" revival, but I think Brent's solo career might have a stronger claim on that.

Whatever the weather, the lost hit we're profiling today seems to represent a time when musical tastes and aesthetics shifted. It was roughly the era when MTV ditched its set that looked like the back room of a friendly record shop and replaced it with a background of forgettable sped-up film clips. I always think of the commercial for chocolate mint Bubblicious as an embodiment of this shift. It was also the same time everyone was supposed to start wearing flowered surfer shorts all the time. Or if that violated our school's dress code (as most things did), we were supposed to wear booger green pants that said "OFF DUTY" all over them.

"It's Money That Matters" by Randy Newman

1988 / #60

Rate Your Music score: 3.31 out of 5!

Unless you had the attention span of a grape, it was hard being a music fan in 1988. In fact, it was hard doing anything in 1988.

I was alive then, and a lot of things people did and said then were idiotic beyond belief. Remember, this was before social media, so we had to deal with most of it in person. Of all of the people I used to know, most never adjusted to the great big world.

The year only had a few music highlights. One of them was Randy Newman's single we're profiling today - though it sadly fell short of the top 40. In fact, his only top 40 hit was "Short People." I remember hearing "Short People" on the car radio when I was growing up and thinking it was hilarious. Randy also reminded me of my eye doctor who I used to visit in my day, as he had the same curly hair and glasses.

Life was a shambles by 1988 when "It's Money That Matters" rolled along. America was living up to the song's title. The excesses and vagaries of capitalism and militarism - though shunned by most people you met in normal venues - were honored by the media, my high school classmates, and computer bulletin board trolls. And we heard endless talk about the "drought" too, just for good measure - even though the Home Run Derby was supposed to be in Cincinnati that year, and rain forced it to be canceled for the only time in its history.

Also, I have a record of "It's Money That Matters." I remember listening to it one day and it skipped because the neighbors kept banging things around and I jumped to try to get them to stop.

Many years after the song charted, Will Sasso gave us some uproarious segments on Mad TV in which he played Randy Newman composing songs for the latest Star Wars and Toy Story films...

"Headed For A Heartbreak" by Winger

1989 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 2.96 out of 5!

When was the last time you even thought about this song?

I know where I was when I first heard this cut. It was in St. Louis during my trip where I wrote "Placed by the Gideons" on a record from a Froot Loops box and put it inside the Bible in a motel room. That followed a year that was completely shot to hell by my shitty high school.

Naturally, the school made me repeat the year. I spent the last 6 months of my first attempt at sophomore year goofing off after the principal told me I was going to fail anyway. For the life of me, I don't know why I came back to the same school, but it wasn't my choice.

This story is like a continuation of my entry on "Look Out Any Window" by Bruce Hornsby & the Range. During my first sophomore year, I took art, and the teacher often let us listen to the radio. When Bruce's now-lost hit was on, we lip-synced to it in a comically exaggerated fashion. Art class only had 5 students, and I think I failed the class by one point.

During my second sophomore year, this class was down to 3 students, and we were all among the 5 from the previous year. The other 2 had transferred out of the school completely, because it was such a bad school. At the start of the school year, Winger's now-lost hit was at its peak, and it too got the Bruce Hornsby treatment.

When the bridge of Winger's record came on, a student began lip-syncing it with a hilariously crazed look in his eye. He creepily glared as he mouthed the lyrics. It was as funny as you might imagine.

Whenever something like this happened and people started laughing, the teacher would always get an irritated look on his face and ask, "What's funny?"

Also, between sophomore years was when I had my first Fourth of July bonfire. I conducted this bonfire in my back yard, and I mostly burned textbooks that I was saddled with - which were already ripped to shreds because the school used books that were at least 15 years old. In later years, the bonfires mostly sipped away household trash like light bulbs and broken appliances, but this proud tradition withered and died after we could no longer find a place to do it.

"How You Gonna See Me Now" by Alice Cooper

1978 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.14 out of 5!

Alice Cooper, as you may know, was a pioneer of shock rock. In fact, he was so shocking that one of his biggest hits was the ballad we're profiling here today. Alice had become so soft by 1978 that this record even appeared on Billboard's middle-of-the-road chart alongside the Carpenters and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Yet - as is often the case with songs profiled here - I never saw the video for this now-lost hit until I stumbled upon it on YouTube. Believe it or not, YouTube used to have stuff other than police bodycam videos and AI-generated editorials attacking parents who speak at school board meetings. I found Alice's video back when the big YouTube fads were family vlogs and cosmetic dentistry ads. Those were the days, huh? The "How You Gonna See Me Now" clip actually is a conceptual video instead of just a stage performance, as Alice is wheeled into a psychiatric ward where he chews bubble gum.

One particular Alice Cooper-related incident highlights just how stodgy our local TV stations are. In 1972, ABC debuted a late-night series called In Concert, which featured taped performances of music acts of the era. The show's premiere included Alice Cooper. But our local ABC affiliate broke away from that episode, as they considered Alice too shocking for Cincinnati airwaves - even late at night. The show was replaced with a Rawhide rerun. It was believed that this was the only ABC affiliate in the whole country that didn't show this In Concert episode.

This censorship caused teenage fans of the singer to picket the station. Following these protests, the station decided to broadcast the episode later - but with Alice's appearance removed. The station's manager then said he wasn't opposed to all rock concerts, because "we think they're going to be a smashing success."

"Going to be"? It was already 1972. Rock concerts had been "a smashing success" for 20 years. That's like if somebody today said, "We think the Internet is going to be a smashing success."

That wasn't even the only incident like that on our local network affiliates in that era. A few years later, Cher got a new show, and our CBS affiliate reportedly refused to show it, as they considered Cher's outfits too revealing.

Alice Cooper was one of these acts who went on to make a stunning comeback in 1989 along with many other 1970s performers. A year or so after that, I was at my desk at school and was flipping through an atlas they had. That was one of approximately 3 books in the whole school, so that was the only activity we had. When I paged past the map of Michigan, one of my classmates saw it and noted that the Wolverine State is "Alice Cooper's hometown."

Not long after, this student came to school drunk. For him, school was out forever.

"Hearts In Trouble" by Chicago

1990 / #75

Rate Your Music score: 1.83 out of 5!

This blog is not a place for catatonic worship of musical artists, no matter how many positive contributions they've made.

In my day, I adored Chicago's now-lost hit "Alive Again." By the mid-1980s, we poked fun at the band a lot because they had softened up so much, but they still occasionally put out an action-packed rocker. But I think it was pretty much downhill for them after that.

One of my high school teachers noted that Chicago was one of the few major bands in popular music that had lasted 20 years. But they weren't really the same band, as they had so many membership changes.

"Hearts In Trouble" wasn't a really soft ballad, but it's associated with the frustration that coincided with Chicago's decline. A reviewer on Rate Your Music noted, "Great band; lousy track." This record rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but they just can't figure out why. I have to admit that when I used to hear this song, it wasn't under the best circumstances. It was like the grand finale of a series of crises that had built up over the preceding few years.

When I first heard this song, I knew it had to be from a movie. What's more is that I knew it had to be from a film I had no plans to see. Sure enough, it turns out it's from a motion picture titled Days Of Thunder - a movie that I don't even remember existing. On the page for "Hearts In Trouble", another Rate Your Music critic said Chicago "could turn in some of the best jazz/rock on the planet but got reduced to supplying songs for lame, crappy big budget films."

Wikipedia says Billboard reported that this single - even though it went on to peak only at #75 - was one of the most added records to American radio station playlists during the week of July 21, 1990. Oh, I believe that. Memories are long. It also appears to be one of few singles to make the Hot 100 whose flip side was by a different act. Its flip was "Car Building" by German composer Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is known for the quote, "I'd much rather everyone made music as opposed to going and beating the shit out of each other."

But no music today represents the culmination of a crisis, because no crisis today is ever dealt with, and the crisis simply becomes permanent.

"A Girl In Trouble (Is A Temporary Thing)" by Romeo Void

1984 / #35

Rate Your Music score: 3.64 out of 5!

This bouncy record by this San Francisco band is exactly the sort of mid-1980s song that got me interested in lost hits in the first place. It was just a big enough hit that it got a few spins on pop radio, but just minor enough that stations stopped playing it for good after only a few weeks. Most such tracks - like this one - fall into the category of new wave, but perhaps that's because it was the mid-'80s.

Romeo Void's fine single is particularly qualified for this blog because it peaked during a brief window after which life has never been able to recover its former glory. The late 2010s came close in some ways - but just not musically.

It helps that the mid-'80s were a good time for music - even by '80s standards. It beats the ballad-heavy early '80s and the often insufferably stale late '80s. I'm as fond of music from 1983-85 as I am of the great music of 1978-79.

Strangely, I don't ever remember seeing the "A Girl In Trouble" video back in the '80s. However, I seem to recall the instrumental break in the middle being used in an unlikely venue: Not Necessarily The News. I'm pretty sure this show once had a segment in which "A Girl In Trouble" served as the bed music.

Probably my favorite NNTN segment though was a parody of the Civil War Chess Set commercial that used different kinds of cheese as chess pieces, and they leaked all over the board. NNTN also once had a segment called "Senator Hogg" - a reference to Boss Hogg - that used footage of Jesse Helms.

Subscribing to a premium cable channel was a temporary thing. I don't know how much longer we had HBO, but we weren't made of money, and I don't remember ever seeing HBO much after the mid-'80s.

"My Love Is A Fire" by Donny Osmond

1990 / #21

Rate Your Music score: 2.34 out of 5!

"Baste!"

Remember the days when Donny Osmond, St. Paul, and Nelson (but especially the first two) seemed to be in a contest to see who could sound more like the others? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Donny had a big comeback that started in 1989, and his return was actually more commercially successful than that of other 1970s acts who reappeared at the same time. It was as if there was a constitutional provision that took effect then that required any '70s performer who was not Donny Osmond to be subsequently excluded from the top 6 of the Hot 100. Chart performance at the time was fueled overwhelmingly by radio, which could make or break hits at the snap of a finger.

Donny's comeback coincided with the "baste" craze. This tendency to say "baste" confronting almost every situation managed to spread to multiple schools locally. Just before the lost hit profiled in this entry charted, I had switched to a high school that was less bad than the one before, and all this "baste" business was just as big there - and just as hilarious.

This lost hit was like a basteplane of baste-o-matic proportions. At about 14 seconds in, Donny seems to declare, "Baste!"

I don't ever remember seeing the video back then, but the video just drives home the point.

One would almost think Donny also had a song called "5 Out Of 5" and that he followed up this set several years later with a cut titled "Burn Gum, It Melts." You may be surprised that he didn't later record a song called "Pooing Is Cool" that he released early on YouTube.

Donny filled in for Shadoe Stevens as host of American Top 40 for the week ending February 17, 1990. This brings to mind a funny recollection about AT40 of the early '90s. At the time, one of the show's jingles when coming out of a commercial break was preceded by a man bellowing, "Heeyyyyyyyy!" So I went up to the vents in the floor and yelled, "Heeyyyyyyyy!" That way, the rest of the house could hear it. My mom got mad because the noise kept her awake.

I remember another AT40 installment that was themed around something from Star Trek that only the most ardent Trekkies had ever heard of. Interestingly, this episode of the countdown is now highly desired by collectors.

The early '90s were full of records that charted much higher than this one that are completely forgotten now. Maybe we'll delve into this phenomenon in depth sometime.

"Let's Work" by Mick Jagger

1987 / #39

Rate Your Music score: 2.66 out of 5!

Let's work!

Let's not rest. Let's not play. Let's work!

This lost hit was a minor top 40 entry by the legendary Rolling Stones vocalist. You may remember the video with Mick running down a highway along with a huge group of people who appeared to be employed in various occupations. He wrote the song with the Eurythmics' Dave Stewart.

According to one website, Mick came up with the idea for the song when his girlfriend got mad at him because he refused to buy a house for their young daughter. She would have to work and earn it like everyone else.

A YouTube commenter said he was one of the firefighters in the video, but that he always hated the song. Another commenter said he was reminded of the song when his brother-in-law who he hired to do a job decided to just sit there and do nothing. Still another commenter said, "The left would call this song hate speech today." No we wouldn't. We would call it many things, but we wouldn't call it that. It's not like it's Ace Of Base or something.

Also, the surgeons in this video look like they're holding their knives and tools like they're about to kill someone.

If a song and video like this came out now, the entire endeavor would look mighty silly. It was bad enough that offshoring, corporate greed, and cronyism took so many jobs afterward, but now AI has stolen the rest of the jobs. These days, we'd see Mick Jagger being chased by an army of robots laughing at him because his royalty checks are taken to fund Parliament's leather stationery.