30 - "Home and Dry," Gerry Rafferty
29 - "Blue Morning, Blue Day," Foreigner
28 - "Take Me to the River," Talking Heads
27 - "We've Got Tonight," Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
26 - "Heaven Knows," Donna Summer and Brooklyn Dreams
25 - "Don't Cry Out Loud," Melissa Manchester
24 - "The Gambler," Kenny Rogers
23 - "Promises," Eric Clapton
22 - "Don't Hold Back," Chanson
21 - "No Tell Lover," Chicago
We'll start with the easy listening brigade. Gerry Rafferty, who recently passed away, leads off with the hit he had after the much more successful "Baker Street" and "Right Down the Line." Don't remember this one, and it's not much, but "Baker Street" still rules. Melissa Manchester is here with the song she's probably best remembered for, a bombastic ballad promoting emotional repression in the face of circus-related failures. Kenny Rogers' eternal ballad about a guy who learns when to hold and fold from some stranger on a train is in this group in the absence of other country songs. And Chicago had their last hit of the decade with a less-than-urgent ballad about adultery. Probably appropriate that they went out with a whimper. But they'd be back. Lord knows they'd be back.
There are two bands here that qualify as "rock," but they couldn't be much more different. Foreigner did the basic arena-rock thing, and got on the radio frequently with uptempo, poppy numbers like the fairly decent "Blue Morning, Blue Day." Talking Heads, meanwhile, were art-schoolers who were at the forefront of new wave and played the legendary CBGB. They didn't exactly seek out pop airplay, but they would manage to hit the Top 40 three times, the first being with this Al Green cover. And no, I haven't heard Al's version yet. Shoot me.
Two rock ballads in this bunch. Bob Seger returns from our last visit to this time period, asking a woman to spend the night in a slightly more classy way than Rod Stewart did on "Tonight's the Night." And Eric Clapton scored a Top Ten with this countryish snoozer. "I don't love you, and you don't love me" he sings. Well, Eric, I don't love this, but you would do much worse in the 80s and 90s.
We close out with a couple of disco numbers. Donna Summer teams up with vocal group Brooklyn Dreams on yet another of her string of floor-fillers. The most prominent male voice on this track is that of Joe "Bean" Esposito, who is probably best known nowadays for being the guy who performed that "You're the best....Around!" song from The Karate Kid. And one-hit wonders Chanson show up with boilerplate, midtempo disco that contains the motto of many a Studio 54-goer: "If it feels good, do it." Of course, that ethos was once adopted by the people of Springfield at the behest of motivational speaker Brad Goodman, and it ended with a collapsed bandstand that James Brown figured out wasn't double-bolted, and a riot ensued. So...maybe those aren't words to live by.
20 - "I Will Survive," Gloria Gaynor
19 - "Soul Man," The Blues Brothers
18 - "Shake It," Iain Matthews17 - "Got to be Real," Cheryl Lynn
16 - "I was Made for Dancing," Leif Garrett
This group starts with the song that is probably neck-and-neck with "Stayin' Alive" as the most overplayed disco track ever. Listening to it without the baggage, it's still an effective if bizarre (back from outer space?!) cry of independence. And even though I like Cake, I never thought much of their cover of this. I'll take Gloria every time.
The Blues Brothers, of course, were characters originated by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi on Saturday Night Live, and were born out of Aykroyd's love for Toronto's Downchild Blues Band. Eventually, they did outside gigs, and recorded the live record Briefcase Full of Blues, from which this energetic Sam and Dave cover comes. Then they did a movie. Then Belushi died. Then came Blies Brothers 2000, unfortunately.
Iain Matthews was a founding member of the legendary British folk group Fairport Convention, and later had some success with his band Southern Comfort. His biggest solo hit was this slick pop ode to a girl who could be politely described as a "tease." But he seems strangely admiring of this trait. That's refreshing, I guess.
Cheryl Lynn was discovered on The Gong Show, but not in the way the Unknown Comic or Gene Gene the Dancing Machine was. She actually won an episode singing "You Are So Beautiful." and attracted the attention of record labels. This was her only major hit, but I'm sure you all know it. If you've ever heard a distinctive female voice in the background of a movie or commercial sing "to be REEEEEAL!" that's Cheryl.
Finally it's that curly-locked teen idol Leif Garrett with his biggest hit, where he exchanges old-school covers for tepid yet fun disco. My clearest memory of this song was when Carol Burnett performed an increasingly speeded-up version on The Muppet Show to try and end a protracted dance marathon so she could have time to perform "the carrot sketch." Wow, haven't dropped a Muppet Show reference in a while.
15 - "Somewhere in the Night," Barry Manilow
14 - "New York Groove," Ace Frehley
13 - "Lotta Love," Nicolette Larson
12 - "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond
11 - "Fire," The Pointer Sisters
This bunch begins with our old friend Barry, who succeeded with this song where previous performers (including Helen Reddy) could not. The man had a five to six-year run where he was just hot hot hot.
In September 1978, the four members of Kiss all released simultaneous solo albums. They would all go platinum, but surprisingly, only Ace Frehley's would produce a Top 40 hit, this snappy cover of a song by British glam rockers Hello. His post-Kiss solo career, however, would not reach anywhere near these heights.
Nicolette Larson was a veteran session singer who finally hit it big when Neil Young, one of the many artists she had backed up, let her record this composition of his. It's a slick bit of easy-listening comfort food that's helped by Larson's grittier-than-you'd-expect delivery. It was a Top Ten smash, but she wasn't able to follow it up.
Babs and Neil return with their duet about dying love. Nice, but I think I prefer the version Streisand did with Slim Whitman on Lee Iacocca's Rock Concert. Oh SCTV, how you've warped me. And I wouldn't want it any way.
Finally we have the Pointer Sisters with a song that Bruce Springsteen originally wrote for Elvis Presley. I loved this one as a kid, and I grew to love it even more in high school, because a friend of mine would occasionally start singing it out of nowhere, and I would obligingly vocally mimic the bassline. And man, she had a tremendous voice. Luckily, I'm still great friends with her, but I haven't had the chance to back her up on this song lately. But maybe it'll happen one more time, someday.
And here are your Top Ten:
10 - "September," Earth, Wind and Fire
The EWF everybody knows. "Do you rememBAH, the twenty-first night of SeptemBAH?" It's been played to death, but still somehow, I know I would not turn down a chance to dance to it. "Never was a cloudy DAAAAAAAAY!"
9 - "Every 1's a Winner," Hot Chocolate
The second-best known song by these Brits on this side of the Atlantic, after "You Sexy Thing." One of the funkiest guitar riffs ever. That's no lie.
8 - "Hold the Line," Toto
7 - "Ooh Baby Baby," Linda Ronstadt
I go from week to week on Linda. One week she's overrated, the next week underrated. This week, because of this track, I'm on the "overrated" side.
6 - "A Little More Love," Olivia Newton-John
This was her first post-Grease single, and perhaps coincidentally, it was her most rawly sexual hit to that point. Of course, there was a little tune called "Physical" in her future.
5 - "My Life," Billy Joel
Billy returns, declaring "I don't need you to worry for me 'cause I'm all right." I wonder if that was the line he used to use before getting behind the wheel loaded.
4 - "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy," Rod Stewart
Rod's back singing about sex, but this is a little less creepy, and much more fun to dance to. He would, however, end up losing a plagiarism lawsuit to a Brazilian singer named Jorge Ben Jor for this song's similiarities to Jor's song "Taj Mahal." Oh Rod, no one thinks ripoff artists are sexy.
3 - "Y.M.C.A.," The Village People
I don't have much more to add about this one from last time, except to give it this week's Uneasy Rider award. Yeah, we're all used to them now, but the spectacle of those costumed men singing about what fun can be had in an all-male environment stands out just a little bit.
2 - "Too Much Heaven," The Bee Gees
The Gibbs had another biggie singing about something they claim nobody gets too much of anymore. I think they see this as a bad thing, but I'm not sure why. Ideally, we should all get just as much heaven as we need. Or does that make me a communist.
And the uberhit of the day was...
1 - "Le Freak," Chic
At one point, this disco classic seems to compare Studio 54 to the Savoy Ballroom, the integrated Harlem dance club that stood from 1926 to 1958. Um, I'm not sure they did mountains of coke in between Lindy Hops back then. But oh well. Freak Out!
Like I said, a ton of extras. The two NotCaseys were the Little River Band's "Lady" (#39 on this chart) and "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb (#36). Casey played two #1s from 1972: America's "A Horse with No Name," and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack. He also played, for various reasons, "Shame" by Evelyn "Champagne" King, "You're All I Need to Get By" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and the Bee Gees' "New York Mining Disaster 1941." And the Long Distance Dedication was Barry Manilow's "Looks Like We Made It," which Casey played for a woman named Tanna who dedicated it to the soldier she had a passionate love affair with for four months and remained good friends with even though he married someone else.
Next week is the Super Bowl, so I don't plan to listen to the chart live, but I'm still aiming to be here at some point next week. Stay tuned.
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