"Life Goes On" by Poison

1991 / #35

Rate Your Music score: 3.17 out of 5!

Let's talk about glam metal and its downfall - and how it fits in with the pop radio doldrums of the early 1990s.

Top 40 radio is often said to have been in a malaise in the early '90s. It's not nearly as bad as now, but back then, it was the worst that had been experienced in the history of the format to date. In the early stages of this period, however, there were some outposts of the format that could be said to have had a reverse doldrums, if you will. It could be because the format was splintering at the time.

We weren't decrepit enough for the adult contemporary tendencies of some stations, but we were too mature for stations that went in the opposite direction. That's in addition to the fact that our attention spans were wide enough that we also liked bigger and broader playlists on top 40 radio. Remember, that was in the days when people had the radio on all day at gatherings and the like, instead of just during 5-minute car trips (if they can even afford a car or gas now).

Poison's now-lost hit "Life Goes On" seems to represent the reverse doldrums. Glam metal was becoming so clichéd that we now considered ourselves too sophisticated for much of it. It had gotten to the point where it seemed to appeal to a less mature crowd, maybe a couple years younger than me.

There were some weird things going on around that time too - in addition to the other weird things I've already discussed at length. This song somehow seemed evocative of these occurrences. The early '90s weirdnesses now have the same feeling as the mid-'80s weirdnesses in that they're buried in a remote part of my brain. Now I think there's actually some late '10s weirdnesses stored in those same cerebral caverns, which is especially stunning considering I was well into middle age then.

Another symptom of the reverse doldrums was stations putting 9-year-olds on the air to dedicate songs.

Life goes on.

"It Hit Me Like A Hammer" by Huey Lewis & the News

1991 / #21

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

"Hit me like a toilet lid..."

Because this is a day ending in y, it's time for yet another misheard lyric.

This was the last top 40 hit for Huey and his gang. It also highlights how so much of the hit music of 1990-91 is completely lost now. But it's not treated as badly as the late 1970s used to be treated. The late '70s had some of the best music ever but for a long time was unfairly ridiculed. Yet the early '90s are pretty much ignored completely.

Glossing over the early '90s isn't really fair either, because it did have some highlights. It had some depressing stinkers too, but I used to think of 1990 as being a pretty good year for music. It could just be because I finally found a school that was less bad and was able to salvage the last 4 months of 1990, and that personal experiences influenced my perceptions of pop culture. Usually, however, life experiences actually are better during times of better pop culture.

The misheard lyric in this song came in the chorus. The real line is, "Hit me like a ton of lead." But everyone always thought Huey was singing, "Hit me like a toilet lid."

When I was a high school senior, some girl in my class kept calling me at home. One day, she talked about this song and how it described the increasingly aggressive and condescending manner displayed by faculty at school regarding even the slightest offense. Come to think of it, senior year really didn't accomplish a lot. Back then, you could enter college at the age of 18 in 49 U.S. states and D.C. even if you hadn't graduated high school yet. Guess which state didn't allow it?

When I discovered how much worse our schools were compared to other areas, it hit me like a hammer! It hit me like a toilet lid!

"Stand By" by Roman Holliday

1983 / #54

Rate Your Music score: 3.08 out of 5!

I wanted to do this one a while ago, but I figured I should wait until a better copy of the video finally appeared on YouTube. (This is especially true because YouTube has begun to purposely degrade the quality of videos uploaded a long time ago. This is part of the broader campaign to cleanse content from that era.)

We really couldn't find much about this band from England. Their video got a few plays on MTV a couple months after our local cable system finally picked up that channel.

A particular scene in the video drew inevitable comparisons to Big Bird. The band goes into a diner, and one of the band members grabs what appears to be a menu, holds it up to his mouth, and starts opening and closing it - like a beak. Actually, I'm not even sure it's a menu. It looks almost like a book, except the pages are blank. In any event, because of that scene, any time we heard this song, somebody would invariably grab a book and start opening and closing it like a beak.

The title "Stand By" is also of importance to anyone raised in the TV age. Several years earlier, when I was a tiny tot, my favorite programs would occasionally be disrupted by technical difficulties. Usually, a voiceover announcer would urge viewers, "Please stand by."

When the announcer said this, I would get up and stand by the TV set. I actually thought this would fix the problem.

Stand by for more lost hits!

"That Was Then, This Is Now" by the Monkees

1986 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 2.85 out of 5!

Let's set the stage for this entry by going back to circa 1977. This would have been when I was about 4, and it seemed that nobody cared about the Monkees anymore. This was my earliest memory of us having a family yard sale. One of few things I remember about this event was that my mom sold a vintage Monkees album as well as a record player. I remember that she played the record on this record player just before the sale.

I don't remember the details, but I think we sold the record to a young man who thought it was just the greatest thing ever. He seemed to be one of few people around who still cared about the Monkees.

We lived to regret selling this album. Fast-forward to 1986. The Monkees staged an unexpected comeback. Anything to do with the Monkees from 20 years earlier was now worth a fortune. The feller who purchased that record from us probably discovered it was a rare collector's item in 1986, sold it, and spent all the money on bubble gum.

The reunited Monkees even scored a brand new top 40 hit: "That Was Then, This Is Now."

As Monkee mania roared back in the summer of '86, it's also responsible for a flatulence-related memory. Remember, that was "Rumbleseat" summer. This memory involves the theme song from the Monkees' TV show. At the time, it was common to preface a fart by saying, "Here it comes." Well, at least once, a bunker blast was preceded by singing, "Here it comes...Walkin' down the street."

There was also a renewed interest in the Beatles at the time, so much so that "Twist And Shout" reentered the top 40. It also prompted a kid at school to say when confronting almost any situation, "Beatle Beatle!" This was different from the battle cry "beedle-eedle-eed!", which was an uncontrollable reflex rather than a voluntary declaration.

"That Was Then, This Is Now" is also evocative of one of the worst commercial slogans in history. Years after this song, the Bill Knapp's restaurant chain tried to recover from its sagging fortunes. By then, its shrinking customer base consisted mostly of senior citizens. The restaurant also received bad publicity from a Listeria outbreak. So it tried to revive business with a new tagline: "That was then, this is wow!" The commercial showed the old restaurant sign suddenly morphing into a new style. This campaign suggested that there was something wrong with Bill Knapp's before. So why should anyone go there now? After all, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Furthermore, customers rejected the changes that the restaurant made, and the chain went out of business not long after.

That was then. This is now.

"Rock Of Life" by Rick Springfield

1988 / #22

Rate Your Music score: 2.92 out of 5!

"I smell the baked beans...The rock of life..."

Ready for another misheard lyric?

"Rock Of Life" was Rick Springfield's last Hot 100 hit - and his only Hot 100 entry after 1985. By 1988, Rick seemed to be a bit of a relic. Also by 1988, I'd pretty much completely had it with everything.

I really can't find much about this lost hit. When I try doing a Google search for it, about the only thing that comes up is earlier publicity photos of Rick from his heyday. This brings back memories of the early days of MTV's top 20 countdown. I recall Rick appearing in promos for this program. One of these promos was posted on YouTube many years later, prompting someone to comment that each video in the countdown was preceded by a short clip showing the number in various settings, "creating somewhat of a 'Sesame Street' effect."

A couple years before MTV's countdown debuted, several local radio stations had a call-in feature where listeners were asked what famous person they'd most like to throw a pie at. Rick Springfield was among the most widely mentioned targets, along with Ronald Reagan and Ozzy Osbourne.

Now, back to "Rock Of Life." The chorus featured the line, "I feel a big beat...The rock of life." But everyone thought Rick was singing, "I smell the baked beans...The rock of life." This misheard lyric fits into the flatulence theme that's loomed large on this blog. Fart jokes were still going strong in 1988, as that was also the year my dog released a series of bunker blasts in the living room as we were watching the vice-presidential debate. People were always farting at school too.

We felt a big beat!

"Who Said I Would" by Phil Collins

1991 / #73

Rate Your Music score: 2.7 out of 5!

We could discuss how weird it is that Phil Collins - possibly the most played act on pop radio in the late 1980s and early 1990s - would have a lost hit.

What we really want to talk about though is the late Joel Whitburn, the legendary record collector known for his Record Research books that catalogued data from the Billboard charts. Joel collected every single to make the Hot 100 as well as many other records that made Billboard's other charts. He once told Billboard that his collection included over 200,000 singles. By the time of his death, his collection had become so big that he was building a second vault to protect it.

Among his books was one that listed every record that reached the Hot 100, along with their peak position and number of weeks on the chart. I remember seeing an edition of this book printed in the 1990s that listed the collector value of each record. One section of the book ranked the most valuable records. If I remember correctly, one of the most valuable - maybe the most valuable - was, of all things, "Who Said I Would" by Phil Collins.

It does indeed appear to be a very rare record. The single was only a few years old when that book was published, so there must have been very few copies in circulation to begin with - especially for a record that got gobs of airplay and made the Hot 100. The only American release of the single that appears on record kablammoin' website Discogs is a promo CD. But if there was no commercial single, how was it eligible for the Hot 100 back then? A few years later, "When I Come Around" by Green Day did not appear on the Hot 100, supposedly because it was ineligible. Yet it clearly had a commercial single, as someone once posted a video on YouTube of the 45 being played, and Discogs shows what appears to be an American commercial 45 release. How was Phil eligible for the chart but Green Day wasn't?

"Who Said I Would" was originally a track from Phil's 1985 LP No Jacket Required. The single version was from his live 1990 album Serious Hits...Live! The first time I ever heard of that album was when I was a junior in high school. It was on the same day someone shit on the floor of the school bus, and I was up at Kmart. I saw a whole rack of Phil's new LP on cassette there. (Kmart wouldn't dare sell vinyl records anymore.)

Despite him earning an entry in our online museum of lost hits, one thing is for sure: Everyone in the early '90s had their fill of Phil.

"The Wild Boys" by Duran Duran

1984 / #2

Rate Your Music score: 2.98 out of 5!

"Where is all you angels..."

This record got all the way up to #2 yet somehow became a lost hit almost right away. Remember, this was when Q-102 didn't know how to respond to the advent of MTV. They were stuck in the era of "yacht rock" and disco, and kept playing songs that were at least 5 years old all the time. Anything associated with MTV looked like a freakish jumble to our big radio stations.

As with "Move Any Mountain" by the Shamen, this lost hit is also an example of an act that ostensibly spoke English actually having little command of the English language. Duran Duran was from England, the very birthplace of English. Yet they gave us this brilliant line: "Where is all you angels?"

That's just like when George W. Bush asked, "Is our children learning?"

This also underscores how much the "Wild Boys" story is associated with my 6th grade experience. For one thing, everyone in 6th grade kept using bad grammar all the time. This prompted my teacher for English class to make a poster titled "Grammar Busters" that showed examples of poor English. The name of the poster was inspired by Ghostbusters. In addition, the "Wild Boys" video showed people throwing desks and chairs - which kids at school did on a daily basis. A similar association arose less than 2 years later with the appearance of the chart-topping "West End Girls" by the Pet Shop Boys, which included the line, "Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables."

They had come undone!