"Three Times In Love" by Tommy James

1980 / #19

Rate Your Music score: 3.03 out of 5!

Time for some fond memories of the 1979-80 season. I was a youngster only 6 years of age, and America still had promise.

At the time, there were many weekday evenings when my mom dropped me off at my grandparents' house. They always had the TV on in the living room, and that was my introduction to The Joker's Wild, the game show hosted by the late Jack Barry. A strange thing, that Joker's Wild. A stranger thing, that Jack Barry. Jack's career was almost ruined in the 1950s by the quiz show scandals of the era. He revived his career by buying a radio station. If the FCC felt he was of good enough character to own a station, then game show producers could trust him to host game shows again.

That wouldn't work these days, because the FCC obviously no longer considers character as a factor in granting broadcasting licenses. But character used to be a big deal.

The Joker's Wild in the early 1980s had a lot of interesting incidents. One day, a contestant named Miya accidentally broke the lever that activated the part of the game where you'd "face the Devil." One other time, Jack accidentally gave away the answer to a question as he was reading it, and he dramatically ripped up the piece of paper.

Jim Peck occasionally filled in for Jack Barry. One of the most infamous series Jim regularly hosted was Three's A Crowd - which was sort of like The Newlywed Game except that it also included the husband's secretary. Nobody liked being on the show, and the show was blamed for ruining many marriages. Jim even hated hosting it. During each commercial break, he just locked himself in his dressing room.

Anyway, as I was watching The Joker's Wild at my grandparents' house, I remember some Zesta crackers with cheese on them being dropped down between the cushions of the couch. They weren't found for years.

There were a couple hit records back then that I remember hearing on the AM radio in my parents' Horizon to and from these outings. One of them was "You're Only Lonely" by J.D. Souther. The other was the lost hit we're profiling today, "Three Times In Love" by Tommy James.

If the "yacht rock 30" countdown was around in 1979-80, Tommy's hit probably would have done very well on it. For that matter, J.D.'s record probably would have too. But I only ever heard that countdown in 1982, though Nicolette Larson was still charting on it then.

Tommy once claimed that his old record label - Roulette Records - owed him $30 to $40 million in royalties. Roulette was actually tied to the Mafia.

But his comeback hit of 1980 brings back tender memories of a happy time in life!

"The Captain Of Her Heart" by Double

1986 / #16

Rate Your Music score: 3.67 out of 5!

Good morning, Captain!

This is a weird one. I remember when this song was popular, everyone called it "Kroger music." At a time when my favorite station was playing rockers by Heart or Falco, Double's now-lost hit was likened to the easy listening fare you might have heard over the speakers at a supermarket.

The main difference with grocery music is that this tune had some vocals. It was something about how too long ago and too long apart, someone kept waiting for the captain of her heart. All the rest of the lyrics after the first chorus are about she couldn't wait another day for the captain of her heart. Man, was she ever waiting for the captain of her heart!

Let me guess. At the end of the song, she still couldn't wait another day for the captain of her heart.

This was actually softer than most music you heard in stores - even stores that tuned their radios to some of the softest stations in town. There was a small bookstore at the Newport Shopping Center that we occasionally visited, and even the music there wasn't as soft as this. This bookstore, incidentally, was the site of a funny incident in which someone cussed in public. One day, we were at this store, when a biker couple walked in. The man asked the clerk where the road atlases were, and the clerk directed the couple to the proper shelf. Then, with the road atlases staring him right in the face, the man said to his partner, "Nah, bullshit, they don't have any road atlases here!"

Anyway, back to Double. Their lost hit prompted an obvious parody: "Too long ago, too long apart, she couldn't wait another day for Captain Kangaroo." These new lyrics conjured an image of somebody with the maturity level of a small child pacing back and forth in the living room all day with the TV on, waiting for Captain Kangaroo to come on.

"Welcome To The Boomtown" by David & David

1986 / #37

Rate Your Music Score: 3.53 out of 5!

This memorable lost hit tells the grim story of how hard it was becoming to get by in America in those years. Guess what? Things are worse now.

I'm giving this song an entry because when I was in 8th grade, some classmates made a parody of it called "Welcome To The Boogertown." As the title suggests, this parody was about mucus. Best all, they wrote it down and gave it to me. Unfortunately, this paper disappeared around the time of the home invasions.

Everyone back then was obsessed with boogers. At the same school, I once sneezed into my hand and then slapped my hand on the wall outside the office (right next to the window where they sold school supplies). The hand-shaped mucus stain stayed on the wall for months.

Another thing like the aforementioned paper that has vanished over the years is some notes someone passed in religion class in high school that contained funny rhymes. One of them was, "Kenny Rogers hates the Dodgers." Another was, "Kenny Loggins laid a log right outside of Boss Hogg." Later, the student who passed that note asked, "Remember Boss Hogg?" How can anyone forget Boss Hogg?

As for the song in this entry, it has a rather interesting line that refers to a once-widespread restaurant chain: "Deals dope out of Denny's, keeps a table in the back." But the official lyric sheet calls it "Danny's." It was speculated that this was to keep Denny's restaurants from suing David & David.

Pick a booger. We got plenty to go around.

"Take The L" by the Motels

1982 / #52

Rate Your Music score: 3.36 out of 5!

I think it's hilarious that a song title that nobody understood in 1982 is now a common expression.

When I used to hear this song when I was 9, I thought it had something to do with the Chicago "L" - the rapid transit system in that city. We had gone on a family trip to Chicago the year before, and someone kept talking about how Chicago had an "L."

This was different from the Chicago trip many years later when we protested the Par-King by blowing bubbles through the straw in our sodas at a Denny's restaurant. That was the same trip where someone tried to buy bubble gum from a machine at Six Flags and discovered it was actually a jawbreaker. It was later likened to reaching into your pocket and thinking you found a $20 bill, only to find it's a used tissue.

Although I heard "Take The L" when it was a hit in 1982, I never saw the video until at least the following year, when MTV finally came to town. I noticed that in most of the Motels' videos, lead singer Martha Davis always looked like she was about to cry as she sang. It was only then that I figured out the song had nothing to do with the Chicago "L." It also inevitably led to new Sesame Street-related lyrics being promulgated in our family digs: "Take the L out of lover and it's Grover."

Just in the past few years, "take the L" has become a common phrase. It's what you say to somebody when they need to accept losing an argument, an election, a court case, or some competitive activity. It has nothing to do with the Motels song, the Chicago "L", or Grover.

"I'm Not The Man I Used To Be" by Fine Young Cannibals

1989 / #54

Rate Your Music score: 3.52 out of 5!

This is a blog for lost hits. But you can almost write an entirely separate blog just for lost hits that sound like the Bee Gees but aren't. We need a place to discuss "Sexy Eyes" by Dr. Hook and "Never Let Me Down" by David Bowie.

The lost hit we're profiling today surely fits the bill. When I first heard this tune on the radio on a cold, snowy, blustery evening in late 1989, I actually thought it was the Bee Gees. But it was the Fine Young Cannibals - the band from Birmingham, England, that gave us chart toppers like "She Drives Me Crazy."

Despite what someone at school thought, they weren't called the Five Young Cannibals, but the Fine Young Cannibals.

The band's lead singer Roland Gift is one of these men who appeared nude in some context despite being well-known mostly for something else. You see, Roland is also an actor. He once appeared nude in a romantic comedy film. But in a magazine interview, he said, "I wouldn't do it for the sake of it, and I wouldn't make a habit of it." In this regard, Roland is like John Hoyt, the actor who played Carl Kanisky's dad on Gimme A Break! When this sitcom was at its height of popularity, John reportedly posed nude for a calendar that showed elderly men in their birthday suits.

Let this sink in. John played Chief Kanisky's dad, so he was almost 80 when he posed nude. John said that when his pastor heard about this endeavor, "he laughed for half an hour."

John Hoyt was probably not the man he used to be, yet he posed nude for that calendar.

"Boys Do Fall In Love" by Robin Gibb

1984 / #37

Rate Your Music score: 3.17 out of 5!

"At the end of the day, making love to a paper moon..."

The late Robin Gibb was one of the Gibb brothers who was a member of the Bee Gees, and this great lost hit is another that has a rather unusual line that I thought had to be a misheard lyric but is actually real.

"At the end of the day, making love to a paper moon." No way in hell was that the real lyrics. I have a record of this tune, and every time I listened to it, I tried to figure out what Robin was really singing. But nowadays, with lyrics websites, we learn that those were the actual lyrics.

Robin, you're weird.

What is that line even supposed to mean? It sounds like something involving a prop for a high school dance. If that's what the dances at my school were like, I'm glad I didn't go to any of them. From what I've heard though, most of the dances consisted of people throwing tantrums over the outcome of the big basketball game and fighting with the DJ because he only played music that was 50 years old.