Here’s an idea of what my 79 and 80 charts looked like. First up, this past weekend’s 3/10/79 show:
The names of artists who were new to the chart were known to befuddle me; I clearly didn’t always understand what Casey was saying. Here, I botched Giorgio Moroder, Sister Sledge, and Bell and James (looks like I ultimately decided James was a first, not a last name).
At the beginning of 79, I started at the bottom of page two, worked my way up and then to the front. As you can see, I inserted extras, LDDs, and archive #1 songs where they were played in the show. That regularly left blank lines at the top of the front page, as I couldn’t know how many extra songs would be played (this was especially true early in the year, before they started recapping the top three from the previous week). About halfway through the year, I began dedicating the top twenty lines of each side to the forty songs charting that week, leaving the other tunes played to live at the bottom. The only period in my chart-keeping that I consistently used cursive was March through December of 79.
And here’s 3/1/80 from the previous weekend’s 80s show:
This time I goofed up on Syreeta Wright. Ugh! (I did ace Christopher Cross, however–insert smiley emoji.) It appears I first wrote down Linda Ronstadt as singing “An American Dream.” (Did Casey mention she was doing back-up before he played it on this show? That might explain my carelessness.) I also first claimed that John Stewart sang “I’m Sorry.” Definitely was off my game…
80 was the year I used yellow legal paper (it’s more yellow in real life than it looks here). Stylistically it’s similar to the 78 charts, getting everything on one side of a sheet. I changed things up a bit at mid-year again, rearranging to allow the top 20 songs to each get their own line.
As far as predictions go, I was pretty bad in 79 and a little better in 80 (got all of the top 5 plus several others).
The Music of My Life 