Oodles of Late-Year Charts

November featured several rebroadcasts from my charting years; I decided to hold off another write-up until the end of the year, since I didn’t expect many more in December. But now that they’re all done…

First, it’s 11/13/76. The paper was originally a bluish-green, though it’s faded some over the years. As I think I’ve noted before, my phone’s camera doesn’t do colors justice when it comes to many of my charts, though.

Looks like I initially tried to make it Opposite Day with the England Dan/John Ford Coley title…

Hello/Goodbye: If you look a week or two back or forward you’ll find plenty, but there are no acts in their first or last week ever on this chart.

Stuff from 81, 80, and 78 on the flip (added: and 79!):

How about 11/28/81? This is the show when they put a bow on the 60s Archive tunes; it’s also the first of nine consecutive weeks with ON-J and Foreigner in the top two slots. Two signs I didn’t listen to the whole show: 1) the third hour LDD of Paul Davis’s “Sweet Life” is nowhere to be seen; 2) the mix-up at #6 and #7 likely comes from mis-remembering what I’d seen on the wall at Recordland in the Florence Mall.

Hello/Goodbye: Say howdy to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and bid adieu to Chris Christian.

As for me:

As in real life, “Private Eyes” and “Arthur’s Theme” had reached #1; I wouldn’t have either of them do that now. I’ll stand by the current occupant and the next two to hit the top, the Police and Journey, though.

Next we’ve got 11/29/80. Just like one year later, there are missing extras (“Our Day Will Come,” by Ruby and the Romantics, was the third hour 60s archive song, and the fourth hour LDD was the frequently chosen “Thank You for Being a Friend), and a mix-up of two songs’ positions (I don’t think that happened that often?).

Hello/Goodbye: No first-timers coming aboard, but it’s sayonara to the Vapors.

In Harris-land:

Devo’s one and only week on top; Benatar’s monster six-week run would begin on the following list. “Midnight Rocks,” completely out of the Hot 100 by this point, would stay in my Top 10 for the rest of the year (faithful readers can’t be too surprised, can they?). I’m hard pressed now to think why (or even believe that) I was so hot for “Love on the Rocks”–it was my #2 for five weeks…

Finally, another visit to 1978. I do wish I hadn’t crammed all those extra songs together like that. I will take a small bow for correctly predicting “Le Freak” would go back to #1 the following week.

Hello/Goodbye: Lots of action on this one. Say hi to Chanson and Livingston Taylor, and I guess we’ll extend the greeting to Ian Matthews, too (his group Matthews Southern Comfort hit #23 in the spring of 71 with a cover of “Woodstock”). The most notable farewell goes to Glen Campbell, but it’s the last round-up for Switch, Lindisfarne, and Tim Weisberg, as well.

Late addition: The oodles have been so many recently that I initially forgot to include 11/17/79. Note that I went 0-for-2 on picks: “Peter Piper” climbed as high as #48, and “Ready for the 80s” would reach #52–apparently we didn’t need the Village People any more to transition over to the new decade.