April 7, 1984 Part Two

Before we return to '84, let's take a very brief look at April 8, 1978.

The Bee Gees were at #1 and #2 with "Night Fever" and "Stayin' Alive," respectively. Other higlights of the Top Ten include "Lay Down Sally," "If I Can 't Have You," and "Dust in the Wind"...Very few newbies here, but one of them is "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)" by Styx, this week's #34 An unexceptional acoustic semi-ballad, broken up by some oddly placed synth solos. Just business as usual for the Bob Seger of Chicago...Dolly Parton followed up her pop breakthrough "Here You Come Again" with a song about a rebound hookup with a man she met at a party just "Two Doors Down" from her, this week at #36. Didn't know you had that in you, Dolly...And Earth, Wind and Fire were at 38 with the soaring "Fantasy." Apparently, it's been downladed 100,000 times by Japanese cell phone users as a ringtone. That's nice. But this week, I shine my spotlight on...

32 - "I'm Gonna Take Care of Everything," Rubicon
This ballad was the only hit for a band formed by Jerry Martini, a former member of Sly and the Family Stone. It's about reassuring a lover, and there's really not much more to it than that. But this band also contained two guys named Brad Gillis and Jack Blades, who would go on to form the corporate rock machine Night Ranger. And Blades would later form the band Damn Yankees with Ted Nugent and...Tommy Shaw of Styx. Wow, the connections you find between songs on the same chart never cease to amaze me.

All right, now let's get back to the buisness of 1984.

20 - "Love Somebody," Rick Springfield
19 - "You Might Think," The Cars
18 - "Got a Hold on Me," Christine McVie
17 - "Girls," Dwight Twilley
16 - "Radio Ga-Ga," Queen

The second half begins with the first single from the soundtrack of Rick Springfield's leading-man movie debut, Hard to Hold. The song is boilerplate rock about love and lust and stuff. The movie, I haven't seen, but the fact that he didn't get a second chance to carry a film probably tells me all I need to know.

The Cars picked up their second Top Ten hit with this lead single from their monster album Heartbeat City. A good pop-rocker about romantic obsession, but a lot of the responsiblity for its success may be attributable to the video, which used early computer animation to turn Ric Ocasek into, among other things, a fly and toothpaste. It looks so cheap now, but then, this was groundbreaking, mind-blowing stuff.

Next is Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie with her first and biggest solo hit. It's the kind of happy love song she did with her band, in the vein of "Say You Love Me" and "You Make Lovin' Fun." She definitely wasnt breaking any new ground, but this was nice enough to hear on the radio.

Nine years after hitting the charts with "I'm on Fire" (accompanied by an eponymous band, Oklahoma's Dwight Twilley returned to the charts with another catchy pop-rock gem about the mysteries of the fairer sex. Tom Petty provides able and welcome assistance on backing vocals. This guy should have had more hits. Twilley, I mean. Tom Petty had plenty.

Rounding out this bunch is the last U.S. Top 40 for Queen (not counting the 1992 re-release of "Bohemian Rhapsody"). It's a synth-pop ode to the golden age of radio, as well as a criticism of the current state of the medium. Maybe not one of their best, but Freddie was still singing with passion and intensity, so it's all good.

15 - "They Don't Know," Tracey Ullman
14 - "99 Luftballons," Nena
13 - "Eat It," "Weird Al" Yankovic
12 - "I Want a New Drug," Huey Lewis and the News
11 - "Hold Me Now," The Thompson Twins

This quintet is led off by British singer/comedienne Tracey Ullman with her biggest international hit, a 60s girl-group-styled cover of Kirsty MacColl's U.K. hit about being in love with someone regardless of the negative reactions of one's peers. I really liked both the song and the Paul McCartney cameo-featuring video, but little did I know that three years later, Tracey would move to the U.S. to help launch both the Fox network and a little international phenomenon known as The Simpsons.

German singer Gabriele Susanne Kerner and the band which took their name from her stage name had a long and prosperous career in their native land, but in the rest of the world, they're known only for one song, this synth-pop tale of two children who buy a bunch of balloons and release them into the air, only to have them mistaken for enemy aircraft by East German radar, which eventually leads to a nuclear war. The song was released in both German and English versions ("99 Red Balloons"), but like most right-thinking people, I preferred the former. Anyway, for reasons that should be quite apparent, this is this week's Uneasy Rider.

Next is the first Top 40 single for novelty singer/accordionist Alfred Matthew Yankovic. He first made his name recording parodies of popular hits and sending them to the Doctor Demento radio show, so of course, his pop breakthrough would come by taking one of Michael Jackson's Thriller smashes and turning it into a story about a picky eater. Of course, he's gone on to do this to dozens more songs, and it's come to the point where having your hit redone by Al is seen as a badge of honor. But as a fan of the man, I have to say, a lot of the original songs he does for his albums are pretty worthwhile as well.

Then it's Huey Lewis et al wtih a fun little pop number about wanting a new form of recreational medication. This narcotic, however, cannot come in a pill, must be inexpensive, cause insomnia or narcolepsy, make him prone to acne or nausea. And it must make him feel the way he feels when he's alone with his lady. Yeah, I'm sure Pfizer went right to work on that. But one thing's for sure: Ray Parker Jr. listened to this song quite a bit.

This section closes with the first American Top Ten for England's Thompson Twins. It's a sweet little midtempo ballad, perfect for slow dancing at the proms of the day. And the falsetto backup vocals near the end shouldn't work, and yet they do.

Go go gadget Top Ten!

10 - "Hello," Lionel Richie
The second hit from his blockbuster Can't Slow Down was this ballad that's perhaps best known for the video in which a blind woman sculpts a bust of Lionel's head. I'm not sure that's what he was looking for, but he seemed happy about it.

9 - "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," Cyndi Lauper
This flame-haired, raggedly-yet-fabulously-dressed Noo Yawker had her first hit with this boisterously immortal statement that what ladies want most is to enjoy themselves after a hard day at work. Vince McMahon must have a special place in his heart for this song, for it was Captain Lou Albano's appearance in this video that began the chain of events that led to the first WrestleMania and, eventually, to his current dominance of "sports entertainment."

8 - "Adult Education," Daryl Hall and John Oates
These guys added to their ball of hits with this uncharacteristically dark-sounding number in which they advise a teenage girl dealing with her problems to hang in there, because "believe it or not, there's life after high school." Shockingly, that is true. And this is probably one of H & O's more underrated singles.

7 - "Miss Me Blind," Culture Club
Boy George and the...boys had the last of their six Top Tens in the U.S. with this song how much his absence will be noticed. Perhaps one could see this as hubris, particularly give that the band's career would decline soon after, but I prefer just to enjoy it as another solid pop song from a guy who knew how to craft 'em.

6 - "Automatic," The Pointer Sisters
On this funk-pop tune about how she's so in love with a guy that it seems like he's manipulating her like a remote-controlled robot, Ruth Pointer's voice is manipulated to the point where it sounds so deep it's almost male. An odd choice, but somehow, it works. Good song.

5 - "Jump," Van Halen
The song that introduced the world to Eddie Van Halen's love affair with synthesizers also became the band's first #1. Coincidence? Perhaps not, but David Lee Roth's swaggering vocals probably helped as well. And Eddie did take time out from diddling with keyboards to contribute a decent solo on the instrument on which he made his name.

4 - "Here Comes the Rain Again," Eurythmics
Annie Lennox darkly observes the return of precipitation while asking for better communication with her partner. "Want to dive into your ocean," she sings. I'm not sure what that means, but I imagine I'd let her.

3 - "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)," Phil Collins
The Genesis drummer-turned-singer had his very first American charttopper with this big, catchy ballad that was the title song to a remake of the 1947 film noir Out of the Past. I haven't seen either, and it's unlikely I'll take a look at them now, or ever.

2 - "Somebody's Watching Me," Rockwell
Motown chief Berry Gordy's son Kennedy wanted to have a recording career, but he didn't want to be seen as riding on his father's coattails, so he got himself signed to Dad's label under a pseudonym. His career didn't last long, but it did leave behind this hauntingly awesome ode to paranoia. And I suppose having Michael Jackson sing part of the chorus didn't hurt either. Regardless, this has a definite place on my Top 100 of this decade.

And the #1 song 28 years ago was...

1 - "Footloose," Kenny Loggins
Kenny's only #1 was this pop-rock ode to kicking off one's shoes and boogieing. It also cemented him as the decade's Soundtrack King. The film it came from, of course, is the movie about a town where dancing is outlawed that introduced the world to Kevin Bacon. I've never seen it, but I can't rule out one day doing so. The same, however, can't be said for last year's remake.

This week's NotCaseys were "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Borderline" by Madonna, "Oh Sherrie" by Steve Perry, and "Let's Hear it for the Boy" by Deniece Williams. At the beginning of the show, Casey played "Footloose" because it had been the previous week's #1, and later, he played "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones to accompany a story about how a phone had been produced in the shape of the bands lips-and-tongue logo. And of course, there were two LDDs. First, a girl dedicated Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" to her fiance, whom she loved in spite of the fact that he would frequently embarrass her. And later, another girl dedicated Irene Cara's "Fame" to her former social worker, because their shared love of that TV series was one of the many things that they bonded over.

And...scene. Bye for another week.