It's toward the beginning of my senior year of high school. I'm spinning up Hi Infidelity and Long Distance Voyager with decent frequency. Before long, 4 and Escape will be purchased by me and my sister, respectively. The Hot 100 is replete with covers that will fail to advance to its upper 40% ("Dedicated to the One I Love" by Bernadette Peters, "House of the Rising Sun" from Dolly, a duet version of "All I Have to Do Is Dream" by Victoria Principal and Andy Gibb, and Devo's Heavy Metal soundtrack contribution "Working in the Coal Mine"). Instead of talking about any of those, though, here are seven other songs we never got to hear on AT40; you should be enormously grateful for that in one case.
#91. Art Garfunkel, "A Heart in New York"
Everyone's favorite singer with a graduate degree in math education was done generating solo Top 40 hits. However, one week before this chart date, Garfunkel had joined Simon for their reunion concert in Central Park. That generated one more trip to Casey-land as a duo the following spring, a remake of a different Everlys song. Art performed "A Heart in New York" (falling from its peak of #66) that night, too.
#89. Freddy Cannon and the Belmonts, "Let's Put the Fun Back in Rock 'n' Roll"
Cannon's "Palisades Park" ranked 24th on my father's list of favorite tunes, and you can hear echoes of that song on "Let's Put the Fun Back in Rock 'n' Roll." I don't think Dad was aware of this one, as surely he would have sought out the 45 and played it over and again on his old hi-fi. It only climbed to #81 in a four-week run.
Cannon will turn 88 in early December; I hope you're doing well, Freddy.
#87. Herb Alpert, "Magic Man"
Speaking of folks still with us, Alpert is about six months away from his 90th birthday. And he's still touring; I see a concert at the Lexington Opera House is on the books for mid-February.
"Magic Man" had already topped out at #79; it's no "Rise" but I could see it deserving a somewhat better fate than that.
#84. Meat Loaf, "I'm Gonna Love Her for Both of Us"
Is it possible that I completely missed the release of Dead Ringer? I mean, Jim Steinman's Bad for Good had been prominently featured at the mall record store throughout the summer of '81 as "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" hung out in the 30s on AT40. But this second album from Mr. Loaf? I'm coming up empty.
Based on "I'm Gonna Love Her for Both of Us," I sure didn't miss anything. It's...bad. Really bad. I think the premise is that our hero sees a good friend (?) mistreating his girlfriend and hopes for the opportunity that she'll be...no, I can't go on. You can see from the title what's being wished. This was as high as it got.
#75. Tarney/Spencer Band, "No Time to Lose"
Score one, maybe the first one, for MTV. The upstart video channel, dealing with a relative dearth of available material, filled some of its air time by playing a clip for "No Time to Lose," a #84 hit from May/June of '79. A re-release quickly ensued, and this already-disbanded British/Australian band got a few moments of additional minor fame, reaching ten spots higher than the previous time.
While I'm pretty certain I heard "No Time to Lose" during at least one of its chart runs, there's another song that comes to mind whenever I think of Tarney/Spencer. That same mall store mentioned above played their album Three's a Crowd more than once when I was there (and I was there a lot in 1978). The phrase, "It's a capital shame but it's true that I can't get along without you" puts me right there in the LP racks at Recordland every single time.
#57. Teena Marie, "Square Biz"
While "No Time to Lose" is my favorite among these seven songs, it's the most surprising that "Square Biz" fell short of AT40 glory, coming off a #50 high. I don't have particular memories of hearing "Square Biz" back then, but it had to have been a jam for some of the folks I knew in high school. It was Teena's biggest hit on the R&B chart, hitting #3 there.
#47. Debbie Harry, "Backfired"
Just six months earlier, "Rapture" had ascended to #1. Nine months after this, we were subjected to "Island of Lost Souls." I'd say "Backfired" is a way station on that steep descent. It's not a particularly great effort from Rodgers/Edwards, Howard Johnson's reference notwithstanding. Had stalled out at #43 the previous week.
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