American Top 40 PastBlast, 12/20/86: Timbuk3, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”

Two memories from December of my first winter break while in grad school:

1) It was probably on this date that some of my college friends and I gathered at James’s apartment on Lafayette Ave in Lexington for a six-month reunion.  We were keeping up with each other’s news to some extent via letter, but didn’t want to miss an opportunity to have face-to-face conversations.  While I imagine current music wasn’t discussed in all that much depth, I do remember the oddity that is today’s song coming up at one point; it’s one spot shy of its #19 peak here.

(Somewhere along the way, I think I heard Timbuk3 described as “a man, a woman, and their boombox,” which sounds right to me.  They only had this one hit, though a follow-up single, “Life is Hard,” got decent airplay on WPGU in the first months of 87.)

2) One of the last two shows of 86–not sure which–was almost certainly the last time I heard Casey during his original AT40 run.  It was in our living room in Florence; I was hanging out with the Christmas tree.  I didn’t listen long, catching just a few songs in the 30s (it’s one of the few times in my life I’ve heard “For Tonight” by Nancy Martinez).  I wasn’t thinking then about how big a part the show had occupied in my life—kinda wish now I’d soaked in it a little longer that evening.