Month: September 2017

–This song is so close to perfect, it’s truly surprising that the group never had anything else remotely close to a hit single. It’s #25 here, falling from its peak of #9 the previous week. I recall liking it then, but my appreciation for it has grown immensely over the decades since. Tightly played, well-written and -sung–it’s the whole package.

–About a month ago, a mutual music blogging friend led me to HERC’s Hideaway. That joint’s proprietor was in the midst of counting down his personal Top 100 of 1977. HERC is just a little younger than I am, and he sure seems like a kindred spirit–I immensely enjoyed all the personal remembrances and stories associated with the songs in his countdown. While my own rankings of many of the hits from 77 would certainly be different from his, we very much agree on where to place “Smoke From A Distant Fire.” If you sorta like what I do, you’ll very much enjoy this series of posts.

–This is the countdown whose beginning I caught the night of my grandparents’ 50^th anniversary reception. It was almost certainly the first time I heard the songs “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You” and “Help Is On Its Way,” both of which debuted this week–I suppose I was generally listening to stations that were more reactive, as opposed to interested in breaking songs.

–It’s a repeat re-broadcast; I heard it when it was played three years ago. Casey tells a hilarious and somewhat hard-to-believe story about Sanford and Townsend in this show. It concerns a way that S and T scrounged for $ as struggling, starving artists in LA. At one point they stumbled across a crate of bottles returnable for deposit in an alley behind a grocery store and came up with the genius plan of duping the owners by taking the crate around to the front of the store and claiming the deposit. It worked–over and over again, as employees kept placing the bottles back in the alley, without ever catching on! At the end of the tale, Casey claims that AT40 sent a staff member to check on its veracity and reports back that they did indeed see that crate, still in the alley.

Before I started this blog, I posted about songs from old AT40s on Facebook, January-July 2017.  I’ll be moving them here over time.  This entry has been edited slightly from the original.

One of the groups I most consistently enjoyed during my middle and high school years was Australia’s Little River Band. I didn’t buy any of their albums until they released a GH disk in 82, but I don’t recall being meh on any of their singles–many were big favorites. Their fortunes started changing during my freshman year of college after lead singer Glenn Shorrock left to try a solo career. John Farnham, the replacement, sounded good (he had a huge international hit on his own a few years later with “You’re the Voice”), but apparently they were coming to the end of their rainbow. I very much like this tale of love slipping away, from their first post-Shorrock album (here it’s #24, heading to #22), but it’s the last song of theirs I really dug.

Legal issues regarding who owns the rights to the name Little River Band have prevented the folks who comprised much of the group in its heyday from using it on the reunion tour circuit. I find that a bit of a shame.

In taking a quick look over posts from recent weeks, I’ve noticed that I make mention of my father and his musical tastes with some frequency. Even though it’s starting to approach four years since his death, his presence still reverberates; I’m not expecting that to change.

This manifests itself when I hear Dad’s favorite songs from my youth. For instance, I think of him every time Heart’s “Barracuda” comes on (he would playfully mispronounce the title as “Baccaruda”). Another tune with this power is Wings’ live recording of “Maybe I’m Amazed.” When that one came on in the car back in 77, Dad would crank up the volume every single time Paul banged the piano after belting out, “Maybe I’m a lonely man who’s in the middle of something that he doesn’t really understand.” I’ve been known to do the same in recent years.

A perusal of the playlist of IRH’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Revue, Part I reveals two of Dad’s favorites from that era that at first feel out of place with the 50s and 60s sounds he loved so much. One is Elton’s “Philadelphia Freedom.” I knew he liked it but I’m not sure I realized he thought that much of it–I would have deemed “Crocodile Rock” more likely to be here (and it did appear on Part III). I was well aware, though, of his acute fondness for the other one, apparently at #21 on his all-time list. Jeff Lynne clearly loved the rock of yesteryear as much as Dad did, so it really isn’t a surprise that a driving number from ELO would catch my father’s fancy. It’s one spot away from its peak of #10 in this show. Rock on, and hold on tight, Dad.

Even though Leon Russell didn’t have a ton of commercial success as a performer, he was highly regarded among his peers both as musician and songwriter. This is one of this two Top 40 hits (#34 here, although Casey mistakenly plays it at #39; headed toward a peak of #11). It’s fair to say that his voice is an acquired taste, but I’m there.

Connections with recent posts abound. His other big hit, “Lady Blue” was on last week’s 75 countdown and is yet another song I first heard as an oldie on WLAP in 82. He wrote my favorite Carpenters song, “Superstar.” (That one is a cinch to be played the next time they run a 71 show, perhaps as soon as next week.) He also penned “This Masquerade,” done so well by George Benson.

My favorite discovery in putting this together: Russell played piano on Badfinger’s incredible “Day After Day.” He died somewhat unexpectedly last November at age 74.