"Body" by the Jacksons

1984 / #47

Rate Your Music score: 2.72 out of 5!

Sometimes, when you get a booger in your nose, it's got to go. Otherwise, it can dry up and really irritate.

That's why sometimes we'd find them wiped on walls and furniture. They even got wiped in textbooks and library books at school. And I'll never forget the time in geometry class when I was a high school sophomore when I saw a humongous boog stuck to the back of a chair.

But let's go back to when I was 11. One of the first big-box stores in the area was Bigg's. If Rink's stinks, Bigg's was big. We went out to Bigg's back when it first opened.

As was normal for retailers back then, Bigg's had a record aisle, and it carried 45 RPM singles. You can see where this story is headed, right? Anyway, we stopped by the record department and looked at its offerings. It was something to see!

A young man was purchasing a 45 of "Easy Lover" by Philip Bailey & Phil Collins to replace his copy that got stolen. I know firsthand that nothing is safe in a home invasion, so it's a believable story. But while I was in the record aisle, my nose started to tickle. Why, it was a boog! And it had to be discarded somewhere.

What record could it be wiped on? It couldn't be "Private Dancer" by Tina Turner, as that was too sophisticated. I also decided to spare "Had A Dream (Sleeping With The Enemy)" by Roger Hodgson, which today is itself a lost hit. Hey! I know! How about "Body" by the Jacksons?

Perfect!

Before anyone asks, the chunk of mucus was wiped on the record itself - not the sleeve.

If the record skipped, you could just blame it on the boogie!

I remember visiting this store again not long after, and some woman who worked there got really mad at me for misbehaving in the store. What did she expect? It's not like I was 40 or something.

"Body" - along with "Material Girl" by Madonna and "All She Wants To Do Is Dance" by Don Henley - was also one of the hits of the era that everyone called "the owl songs." Listen to each of these songs to hear why.

"Some Kind Of Friend" by Barry Manilow

1983 / #26

Rate Your Music score: 2.74 out of 5!

Big or small, short or tall, you will all have a ball, it's the Tom & Jerry show! Wait, actually it isn't. It's Barry Manilow!

I remember being 9 years old and riding around in my parents' dilapidated Plymouth Horizon. Many Saturdays in that era were essentially wasted on a pointless endeavor. It wasn't nearly as grueling as school or church, but there were things I'd rather be doing, like flicking Stay Alive marbles at antique lamps or trying to blow bubbles with glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty. We usually had good choices for lunch though.

On one of those Saturdays, we drove up to the north side of Cincinnati where there was a family restaurant in which the eating area overlooked a huge stage where a man played an organ. It was when we were riding around near there that Barry Manilow's latest hit came blasting through the AM radio in the Horizon.

I immediately noticed something interesting about this new release. It sounded exactly like the theme music for some 1970s Tom & Jerry shorts!

Listen to Barry's hit in the clip above. Fast-forward to about 6 seconds in.

Now peep the Tom & Jerry theme. Jump to about 27 seconds in...

If our society was as litigious in 1983 as it is now, copyright lawyers would have had a field day!

And what about those '70s Tom & Jerry cartoons? I think most fans of the cat-and-mouse duo would rather forget those shorts existed. These were the ones where Jerry wore a red bowtie, and he and Tom were actually friends. My 4th grade classmates didn't seem too interested in those episodes.

"Hanging On A Heart Attack" by Device

1986 / #35

Rate Your Music score: 3.16 out of 5!

"You try to get up and here it comes again..."

Device was a band whose lead singers looked like Billy Idol and Joan Jett.

My memories of this lost hit are strikingly similar to those for John Mellencamp's "Rumbleseat." It was popular right at the same time, and it had a line that was associated with flatulence.

In 1986, as you know, ripping trouser sneezes was quite the production. At some point, a new custom took hold. Any time you were about to crack a loud-and-proud bunker blast, you would warn, "Here it comes." After the air biscuit was released, you'd say, "There it went."

That was also the year of supposed flatulence references in music. In addition to "Rumbleseat", 1986 saw "Why Can't This Be Love" by Van Halen, whose opening lines declare, "Whoa, here it comes...That funny feeling again." Unlike the lost hits profiled on this blog, that song still receives a lot of play.

"Hanging On A Heart Attack" didn't get to chart as high as those other tracks. But it too had an apparent flatus reference: "You try to get up and here it comes again."

Naturally, a nice, loud pooteroony was supposed to be unleashed after that line every time this song was played. The response to this was the same as it was for "Rumbleseat." I remember playing Dungeons & Dragons in the den, and this song would start sizzling out of the boom box. When the very first note was heard, a fist was brandished as a warning to those who might let one fly. Some people have no appreciation for humor.

It wasn't only songs that prompted a backdoor breeze. For years, The Price Is Right opened each episode with the announcer declaring, "Here it comes!" If we were home on a weekday, and if we knew The Price Is Right would be on, a fart would be saved up for the occasion.

"Hanging On A Heart Attack" was also climbing the chart at the time of my mom's company picnic at Coney Island that went hilariously awry, so that's a bonus.

"Man On The Moon" by R.E.M.

1993 / #30

Rate Your Music score: 3.94 out of 5!

You'd think a band as respected as R.E.M. would still see airplay for all their hits, but I don't think I've heard this one on the radio in 30 years. Most of our local stations aren't exactly known for playing quality music like this, but you'd still think it would turn up at some point.

I was on the radio in 1993 during "Man On The Moon" mania. Northern Kentucky University had a small student station called WRFN, and I was a DJ there. WRFN was not an FCC-licensed station but was somehow available in some buildings on campus. They called it a carrier current station. According to Wikipedia, this means the station broadcast with very low power using existing electrical wiring.

The important thing here is that it did somehow broadcast. I was told that you could pick it up on a standard AM radio if you were within a very short distance of the wiring. The airwaves are public, and being available over the air meant the station had a great responsibility to the community. Keep that in mind, because this point is central to this story.

"Man On The Moon" was a tribute to Andy Kaufman and was full of references to the comedian's Elvis Presley impressions. The song was near the top of WRFN's playlist back then, so we played it quite a bit. One day when I was on the air, one of the other DJ's - who was one of the managers of the station - was in the lobby of the studio and started loudly singing his own lyrics to the song. He was easily loud enough to be heard over the air.

"Elvis Presley gettin' a blowjob...Yeah yeah yeah yeah," he sang.

That was aired to much of the campus.

That's called broadcasting in the public interest! Or at least it served the public interest better than TV talk shows sending kids to boot camps.

"Cry" by Godley & Creme

1985 / #16

Rate Your Music score: 3.73 out of 5!

Not all of the entries on this lost hits blog are about the song itself. Some of them are about my memories of events that took place while I heard the song.

For instance, this hit will forever be known as the song that was playing when we coaxed a booger from the inside of our Atari 800.

Imagine sitting at your computer and working on BASIC programs such as a flatulence simulator or a game in which you slay Sesame Street characters. Imagine if a dried hunk of mucus flies in from out of nowhere and falls down between the keys of the keyboard. This really happened when I was 12. A crusty crew got flung across the den, landed between the keys, and fell down inside the computer. Best all, it happened while the computer was in use.

This was not intentional. The goal was for the booger to land on the TV screen instead.

Sometime later, we lugged the computer into the kitchen to pry out the terrible boog.

We removed the base of the computer with a screwdriver. As the base was slowly lifted away, the gob of mucus that had earlier slipped through the keyboard plopped squarely onto the kitchen table. A cheer was heard: "Taa-daa!"

We had a radio on in the kitchen, and guess what song was on?

WCLU was the only radio station I remember that regularly played "Cry." I remember that the record always skipped during the second verse. The song appeared on a few Q-102 surveys found on the ARSA website, but I don't remember hearing it on Q-102 outside of American Top 40.

"Cry" was better known for its video with the faces morphing. Some of the people in the video were said to resemble celebrities such as Mr. T and Ed McMahon. Most of them looked like nobody in particular, so everyone just said they looked like "a member of the Ronald Reagan Club" or something like that.

If the booger had destroyed our computer, it would have made me want to cry!

"There's The Girl" by Heart

1987 / #12

Rate Your Music score: 3.5 out of 5!

"Broken glass, complete disaster..."

This song did well enough on the chart that you might not think of it as lost, and it took a while for it to vanish completely from Power 94½. At least Power 94½ played this high-energy rocker instead of some of the music that other stations kept playing. But I haven't heard it in a station's regular rotation in decades now.

In late 1987, you may have been dancing around your living room, chewing bubble gum, passing gas, and dreaming of becoming an elite computer hacker. That's what cool people did back then. And this was when this exciting new Heart single grew on everyone even as everything came crashing down - literally.

I was a freshman at a Catholic high school then. My school made a struggle of 3 whole years. It was intentional and malicious. By late 1987, I was sort of shutting down. The school knew, and didn't do their job. It was already clear that I needed to find a better school. I complained bitterly but was told to be quiet. The school let me languish there for a couple more years because I was of no use to the school elsewhere.

Just before Christmas, the school had a huge Christmas tree in the hallway. It was adorned with gobs of glass ornaments. One afternoon right after lunch, we were filing into religion class. Then we heard a horrendous crash coming from the hall.

You guessed it! It was the Christmas tree!

And this was no accident. There was a fight in the hall, and somebody deliberately pulled the tree down onto a schoolmate.

The toppled tree blocked the hall right in front of the principal's office. There were shattered ornaments all over the floor.

Heart's latest hit had a line describing the school perfectly: "Broken glass, complete disaster." After the tree was knocked over, that line reminded me of that incident every time I heard it. It reminded me of everything about that school.

And trust me, the school was a disaster. Thank heavens I got out before junior year.

Also, pay attention to the above video at 1:35. Notice the gesture Nancy Wilson is making. I almost expect to hear someone yell, "Boist!"

Aah, memories!

"Only When You Leave" by Spandau Ballet

1984 / #34

Rate Your Music score: 3.55 out of 5!

Where do we start with these guys?

This is the most recent Hot 100 hit by this band from London. The Spandaus always seemed like a fair target for ridicule. They were best known for their big ballad "True." Lead singer Tony Hadley was seen on TV shows wearing a weird suit that looked like it had a giant necklace embedded in it.

They charted in their homeland for decades after their last American chart appearance. Here in the good ol' U.S. and A., people hardly ever talked about Spandau Ballet after 1984. Any mention of them after that had to be a relic.

By the time I was a high school sophomore, it had been years since the Spandaus were the big thing. That was the era of Poison and Bobby McFerrin. So I was surprised to find some Spandau-inspired criminal mischief in my literature textbook. This book included a play that had the memorable line, "Damnable cough!" I don't remember anything else about this script, and I never understood it anyway. But it was accompanied by a memorable photo. It was a black-and-white picture of a man in a suit with his mouth open in frustration.

Somebody had written next to the photo, "Tony Hadley." And let me tell you, he looked just like the Spandau Ballet frontman!

This shows that the book had to have been at least 5 years old. This was fine, as long as the information in it was still relevant - and if the school didn't blame me for the condition it was in. It had to have gone through at least 5 cycles of rough treatment. And it showed. The school kept making me pay for books damaged by others - and then not replacing them. That way, the school could use the book again the next year and make the next student pay for it too. You had to have been there. My school did shit like that.

The Tony Hadley comment wasn't the only damage like that in that book. The book also included a short story about an unruly youngster who carried away his dad's electric razor and shaved his own head completely bald. I've now figured out the story was titled "The Beginning Of Grief." The book included a drawing of the boy with a shaven head. Someone had written "chrome dome" right on his noggin!

I don't think it mattered in the end, because after I was forced to pay for this book that others had torn up, I'm pretty sure it became firewood for my Fourth of July bonfire.

In recent years, Tony has emerged as a bit of a right-wing curmudgeon. He has attended the Conservative Party's annual conference and has threatened to run for Parliament as he has spouted a number of reactionary grievances.

This might not be the last entry devoted to Spandau Ballet on this blog.

"Nobody's Perfect" by Mike & the Mechanics

1988 / #63

Rate Your Music score: 3.16 out of 5!

We got a chuckle out of this one, but things weren't so funny for very long.

You may know that Mike & the Mechanics were a project led by Genesis's Mike Rutherford. But this song didn't get quite the airplay that many Genesis efforts did. I did hear it on the radio a little bit though. The first time I heard it, I burst out laughing at the very notion that the clanking production of this record was expected to see major pop success.

This sound might make a fine music bed for a 30-second TV commercial for a financial firm. But it makes a downright weird hit single. I actually remember a commercial that used to air during 60 Minutes that used music like this, except it was less sparse and more electronic.

The existence of "Nobody's Perfect" wasn't something that kept me awake at night. It was nothing like the truly insufferable music in the ensuing months that shot straight to #1 on the chart. If it charted today, it would be a highlight.

I never saw the video for this song until I found it on YouTube recently. The video is exactly what you might expect. It's full of fast-paced shots of graphs and computer screens containing financial data, and people in business suits frantically milling about an office.

People have posted online comments saying they were 3 or 4 when this song came out and it's one of the first songs they remember hearing on the radio. They never heard it for years after, but they remember it because it sounded so strange.

It just goes to show that even lost hits are not always forgotten.

"It's Sad To Belong" by England Dan & John Ford Coley

1977 / #21

Rate Your Music score: 2.73 out of 5!

"So I'm gonna take the Big Bird for the rest of my days..."

Are you ready for some misheard lyrics?

So far, this blog has featured metal, rap, a couple good ol' heartland rockers, and more! But now we have to pay the piper by featuring a tame ballad instead of the high-energy lost hits we usually use. In the immortal words of Steve Hawkins of Q-102: I don't cool off very often but when I do it's dynamite stuff!

One day when I was very young, we were in some store like a Frank's Nursery & Crafts or a Ben Franklin. Their music system didn't seem to play Quiet Riot or the Geto Boys. Instead, it fed us a steady stream of light and easy "favorites."

One song in particular caught my ear. I noticed an interesting line in the bridge of the song. The singer crooned, "So I'm gonna take the Big Bird for the rest of my days."

This conjured a hilarious image. I envisioned a guy with big sideburns and a mustache - like a lot of soft rock acts who played on TV back then - being carried through the sky on Big Bird's back. This was even though Big Bird could not fly. Even if Big Bird could fly, why would he want to fly people around all day? How can the singer plan in advance to "take the Big Bird for the rest of my days" when there was always a possibility Big Bird could go on strike?

I wondered for years what song it was that I had heard that day, but eventually I figured out it was a top 40 hit for this Dallas duo that I actually used to hear quite a bit. And I had misheard the words to the song. The real lyrics are, "So I'll live my life in a dream world for the rest of my days."

This won't be the last time this blog strays from the action-packed rockers that are so common here. I'm warning you in advance!