"Symptoms Of True Love" by Tracie Spencer

1988 / #38

Rate Your Music score: 2.7 out of 5!

Let's talk about American Top 40. In my day, AT40 was hosted by Casey Kasem and later by Shadoe Stevens - both of whom were legends. From its 1970 debut until 1991, this radio program counted down the top 40 of Billboard's weekly Hot 100 singles chart, which was compiled from record sales and radio station playlists. AT40 and the Hot 100 were also special because of the way they were woven into each other.

For much of my youth, I moved all the heavens to listen to American Top 40 every Sunday. And my parents absolutely hated it. Hated, hated, hated it! Or at least that was the impression I got. I'm not sure if they hated the show itself that much, but they hated the fact that I devoted so much interest to it. One time in the mid-1980s, when I was about 11, my mom warned me that I couldn't let my life "revolve around" AT40.

There was a period of a couple years around that time when I had several running gags that involved a significant chunk of the music industry. That timeframe was also one of the high water marks of pop radio.

Fast-forward to 1988. I was still an AT40 fan. But the tables were turned! For weeks on end, my parents decided they weren't going to let me listen to AT40. But by then, I was absolutely fed up, so I devised a way to catch this great program and not miss any of it.

How did I accomplish this?

I made sure to clear my bottom drawer so a boom box would fit snugly therein. I had stockpiled a few blank cassettes. I turned the volume all the way down on the boom box as it was tuned to AT40 - so nobody would know it was on - and recorded the show onto tape. Each cassette held 30 minutes per side, so every half-hour, I'd sneak into my room and change the tape. At night, after I had supposedly gone to bed, I listened to AT40 off of cassette - with the volume down very low so I wouldn't get caught.

It was like the RC Cola commercials where people had to smuggle RC into prison or hide it from the KGB.

The lost hit profiled in this entry was by 12-year-old Tracie Spencer from Waterloo, Iowa. It scraped into the top 40 during some of the weeks in which I carried out the above plan. In fact, I think AT40 was the only place I ever heard this song. There were getting to be more and more top 40 hits that I didn't hear anywhere except the countdown, thanks to the narrowing of radio playlists and the minds that compiled them.

I don't think my folks banned me from listening to AT40 again after that timeframe. I guess they got it out of their system. I think somehow they eventually discovered that I had taped the program when I wasn't allowed to - but that wasn't until years later, after the statute of limitations had run out.

"Button Off My Shirt" by Paul Carrack

1988 / #91

Rate Your Music score: 3.38 out of 5!

"You'd be overreacting if you think that I still hurt..."

If Peter Wolf is like the patron saint of lost hits, Paul Carrack would be like a venerable.

This tune was a rare highlight of 1988. As is usual when Paul Carrack is involved, there's lots to say about it. And it's not just because the album sleeve appears to show Paul urinating.

The song was so well-liked that someone once called up Power 94½ to declare that it was the "best song" they ever heard - but they inserted another word between "best" and "song." I never heard the particular DJ who was on the air that evening again.

I think someone in high school had the LP on cassette. Maybe it was a different LP by someone else, but I think it was this one. One day, the tape was sitting on a table at lunch. The principal saw the list of songs on it, and he asked, "These are songs?" These tracks had such unbelievably wacky titles as "Don't Shed A Tear" and "When You Walk In The Room."

"Button Off My Shirt" is also notable because it uses the word overreacting. I heard that word a lot, because I was always accused of "overreacting" to adverse situations, even though I actually underreacted. It went something like this...

"Today at school, somebody punched me in the face, so I said, 'Please don't punch me in the face anymore.'"

"TIM, YOU'RE OVERREACTING!!!!!!!!!!"

The song also had a version by Ronnie Milsap that was a big hit on country stations...

Now you know the legend of one of the greatest songs to fill the airwaves in 1988!

"Feels So Good" by Chuck Mangione

1978 / #4

Rate Your Music score: 3.38 out of 5!

This jazzy instrumental was a big hit back in 1978 but never gets any airplay on regular radio now. And when I say regular radio, I mean FM or AM broadcasting like we had in 1978. We don't call it "terrestrial radio." We just call it radio. Radio is what comes out of a radio.

As Chuck's record was one of very few instrumentals to be such a success in 1978, it prompted an obvious joke: Whenever someone mentioned "Feels So Good", somebody would inevitably ask, "Who sings it?" I also remember hearing the track emanating from a speaker when I was on a giant slide (the kind where you sit on a "magic carpet") at some park.

I also recall being at my grandparents' house and seeing Chuck perform this tune live on TV. It was widely noted in the media that Chuck pressed the wrong valve on his flugelhorn as he was playing, but a flugelhorn is a very hard instrument to play, so there was sure to be some spontaneity like this - even from a talented musician such as he.

In my entry on "Runner" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, I talked about how I had a funny dream in which the Manfreds' lead singer Chris Thompson attacked me in an online post. I have a similar story about Chuck Mangione. In 2017, I had a hilarious dream in which I was watching a TV show where Chuck was performing. During the performance, he blew a bubble with bubble gum through his flugelhorn.

After I posted about this online, a friend commented that Chuck's signature tune was an example of a genre of music that was particularly popular in the 1970s: Electric Company music. That term actually has a real meaning. It's not one of these terms like "yacht rock" or "bubble gum" that is applied to certain songs or acts but you don't know what the origin of the term is. Electric Company music is a style of music that sounds like the funky music beds that were used on The Electric Company. Maybe in a future entry, I'll explore how that sound suddenly went away as soon as the 1980s hit.

"Hold Me 'Til The Mornin' Comes" by Paul Anka

1983 / #40

Rate Your Music score: 2.6 out of 5!

Look out. It's Paul Anka!

When I first heard this ballad, I thought it was by Chicago. That's because it included backing vocals by Peter Cetera. In fact, I'm not even sure if those are backing vocals. It sounds like Peter practically sang the chorus and ending himself.

Suffice it to say, not everyone is a fan of this tune. A reviewer on Rate Your Music opined, "I can't believe this shit charted."

I don't know if I ever heard this record on our top 40 stations except on American Top 40. My biggest exposure to this song was of course from a format that had many more stations: adult contemporary, which at the time was the latest development in what was once called a middle-of-the-road format. There were gobs of these stations. I couldn't avoid them, because my parents usually controlled the car radio. Occasionally they relented, but our crumbling Plymouth Horizon seemed almost synonymous with the big MOR stations on Cincinnati AM radio like WLW and WKRC.

Paul's lost hit dredges up memories of the Saturdays of the era that we wasted on a rather pointless endeavor. This actually lasted for years after. In the later years, it was occasional weekday evenings that were monopolized by this silliness, but around 1983, it was usually Saturdays that were afflicted. It wasn't the worst thing in the world - especially compared to school and church - but I felt like it didn't accomplish much either.

This series of outings contributed to some running jokes that we had. It actually kicked off my renewed attention to Sesame Street after I had outgrown the show.

I don't want to go into detail about the aforementioned undertaking in this entry, because you'd think there was something wrong with us that prompted it. I've alluded to this venture before, and it wasn't really anything that disastrous. Later, when our proprietors didn't get the answers they wanted, they shopped around until they did, which yielded incalculably bad results. But the entities we encountered circa 1983 were rather benign.

On those particular Saturdays, we would sometimes also do other things, like see a movie or visit electronics shops. We also ate lunch at restaurants. I remember one such eatery that held promise. I thought it was funny because of the remote Sesame Street connection: The name of the restaurant was the same as that of a character played by an actor who also appeared on Sesame Street.

This establishment opened to much fanfare. At first glance, it seemed to be a real showcase. The restaurant offered a smorgasbord format, and we kiddos got complimentary tokens for the video game arcade it had. Later accounts say it was known for its skillet-fried chicken and its meatloaf, but I don't remember those. I seem to recall a large room you could enter where a cook prepared and directly served food, but I might be confusing that with a post someone made on a message board I used to have on my website describing how a cook's nose ran onto some food.

Unfortunately, I found much of the food at this restaurant to be thoroughly inedible. Not long after, it was repeatedly sued for allegedly serving tainted food. Then it was reportedly shut down by the health department.

And Paul Anka brings back memories of the entire era!

"Walking On A Thin Line" by Huey Lewis & the News

1984 / #18

Rate Your Music score: 3.37 out of 5!

According to numerous sources, this rocker is about a Vietnam War veteran's struggles with readjusting to regular life. This is among the more serious songs to reach the top 40 at the time.

It also generated a story that's been embedded in family lore for 40 years. This anecdote centers on the line, "Taught me how to shoot to kill." The line is immediately followed by a gunshot sound effect. One day, this song came on the radio. When the gunshot was heard, my brother held out his index finger to mimic firing a gun. In doing so, he somehow poked me in the eye.

According to legend, he then declared, "That's what you get for existing." Pure genius!

Maybe I should have worn goggles around the house to avoid dangers like that. We probably should have all worn gas masks too, judging by the stories surrounding the "Rumbleseat" and "Can't Stop" entries.

"Half The Way" by Crystal Gayle

1979 / #15

Rate Your Music score: 3.16 out of 5!

Hearing this song brings back memories of a 1979 trip in which we visited relatives near Philadelphia for Thanksgiving. I think this track was even on the car radio the night the Horizon broke down in Maryland and we played with the Speak & Spell while stranded at a Boron station.

Throughout the trip, I kept snickering when this song came on, because it used the word overflowing, a word that was associated with toilets. When I started working on this entry, however, "Half The Way" brang back a particular recollection from that trip that I forgot about for 45 years.

We stayed with relatives through much of this trip. One day, we played in the woods adjoining their back yard. For some reason, I discarded part of an orange popsicle in the woods when nobody was looking. I don't know why. Maybe I just thought it was funny. More likely, it had been reduced to a state in which the remainder was not retrievable for consumption, or the wooden stick ruined the taste. This wasn't like in high school when kids kept throwing popsicles on the floor at lunch after taking only one bite. They were being wasteful just for the sheer hell of it.

When I think about the popsicle episode, "Half The Way" plays in my mind.

At least I got the mischief rating up for that trip!

In the years after, Crystal Gayle's floor-length hair prompted questions from radio shock jocks asking how she was able to go to the bathroom. These questions lingered even into the Reddit era.

"I'll Be" by Edwin McCain

1998 / #5

Rate Your Music score: 2.34 out of 5!

"I'll be your cryin' shoulder..."

Everyone remembers "I Swear." This tender love ballad had hit versions by All-4-One and John Michael Montgomery. It also has a funny - if not childish - story. Back when the song was popular, there was a kid of elementary school age who lived upstairs from me above my old apartment. One of his specialties at the time was throwing perfectly good toy trucks in the air and hitting them with a baseball bat. Anyway, one day, he was in the back yard, and I overheard him loudly singing, "I swear...By the pee and the poo in the sky..."

Now there's some man out there who is going on 40 who probably has to disclose that on job applications. That is, if there were any jobs out there.

"I'll Be" has a similar story to "I Swear." Given radio's propensity for big ballads, it's surprising that a ballad that made the top 10 like "I'll Be" is so seldom heard now. This record by the man from Greenville, South Carolina, might be heard on a soft rock specialty station, but I rarely listen to those.

Now, "I'll Be" loomed large during the infamous Usenet war. At the time, there was a way to encode entire files to post on Usenet to be downloaded. On one of the newsgroups I read, somebody asked that someone post or send them an MP3 of "I'll Be."

This wasn't quite legal, of course. This was before YouTube, so Edwin McCain couldn't monetize this transaction. It's not as if the recording was out of print. Apparently, it even came out as a 45 RPM single, and that was as late as 1998. On the other hand, I still tried to buy 45's in 1998, but it was slim pickings by then.

After someone posted this request for an Edwin McCain bootleg, somebody responded with a truly enlightening reply.

Ready for it?

"I'll be the pee-pee that you poo-poo."

That was one of the most intelligent things posted on Usenet all year.

Usenet looks like a pillar of democracy compared to the heavily censored Internet of today, but it was actually taking rapid steps backward in the late '90s. Still, which would you rather have: newsgroups with occasional offhanded toilet references, or corporate-owned social media sites that collude to censor anyone who disagrees with their local unelected public health director or the ever-growing war machine?