"Think Of Laura" by Christopher Cross

1983 / #9

Rate Your Music score: 2.69 out of 5!

Even the most high-energy radio stations smuggle tame ballads onto the airwaves. But it's an easier pill to swallow if it's treated as a novelty.

This brings to mind a feature that peopled local radio in 1985. Each weekday evening, not long before the station's nightly signoff, Joey T of WCLU gave us the "Mellow Yellow Combo." Two songs - usually ballads - were played in each installment. It was where the station relegated all the Dan Hill and Air Supply. Joey would introduce each "Mellow Yellow Combo" by singing, "They call me Mellow Yellow...Oh yes, oh yes, it's extra, extra sickening!"

Joey proceeded to heap industrial-strength ridicule on each record in the combo. Not all of the songs he featured were really wimpy ballads, but they weren't blazing rockers either. I remember some ABBA and Gino Vannelli making it onto the "Mellow Yellow Combo."

This must have inspired my own choice of music years later when I was on WRFN, the carrier current station at Northern Kentucky University. Probably 95% of what I played was energetic rockers. But I had to make an occasional exception, and when I did, that's when the real fun took place. As Steve Hawkins of Q-102 used to say, "I don't cool off very often, but when I do it's dynamite stuff!"

One afternoon, I wanted to slip in one of the mellowest hit ballads of the 1980s - just for shits and giggles. That tune was Christopher Cross's "Think Of Laura." I thumbed through the record rack in the studio and found the album jacket emblazoned with a pink flamingo. Why, it was our old friend Christopher Cross! The record, not the flamingo.

When I aired this song, I really didn't even need to say much about it. That I played it at all spoke for itself.

I may have a tape of this broadcast buried somewhere, but if I remember correctly, all I needed to say to bring a reaction was 3 little words: "Here's Christopher Cross."

Now the thing about this was that WRFN was heard over speakers in the hallway. There were some guys hanging out in the lounge and walking through the hall as I was on the air. As soon as the 3 dreaded words were spoken, I heard one of them in the hall yell out, "Oh no!"

He was loud enough that I could hear him through the booth at the station. Best all, his outburst went out over the air.

This differed from many of our other local stations in that they actually expected to be taken seriously when they played ballads all the time.