Tag: RFTS (Page 12 of 12)

Chart Week: March 26, 1983
Song: “Little Red Corvette” – Prince
Chart Position: #27, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #6 for two weeks in May.

A few weeks back I heard Prince’s first Top 40 hit, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and wondered when the first time I ever heard a Prince song was. “Lover” reached #11 in 1979, and the radio stations my parents listened to at the time were likely to have had it in their rotations. So odds are I heard it back when it was first released. Later in the early 80s, Prince had several songs that charted on the R&B lists, and my mom spent a good chunk of her radio time listening to our local R&B station. There’s a good chance I heard songs like “Controversy” and “Uptown,” too.

While I have some very vague, and most likely imagined, memories of “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” as I thought it through I decided “Little Red Corvette” was the first Prince song I ever heard. The Music Gods were listening because this countdown played later that week. What became Prince’s biggest pre-Purple Rain song jumped ten spots back in that week of 1983.

I like imagining the first time people heard artists that took music and shifted it in dramatically new directions. Teenage girls who were enamored with the Beatles putting Revolver on for the first time. Disaffected youth in London’s tower block apartments putting on The Clash for the first time in 1977. Suburban white kids listening to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988.[1] I imagine their little minds being blown by music they probably couldn’t totally comprehend or appreciate. I know some of them are turned off by these new sounds, but others take to them immediately and have their worlds opened up because of it.

I and a lot of my friends had that experience with Prince in 1983. We were all bumping up against puberty, bodies changing, hormones raging, minds going down sometimes disturbing paths. And then this song and the album 1999 showed up to work us into a frenzy. There was something in that slow, synth fade up that begins “Corvette” that triggered all our hormonal antennae and had us sitting up, blocking out distractions, and paying very close attention to what followed.

“Little Red Corvette” is probably the first song that I immediately knew was about sex. Not sweet and tender kisses. Not holding hands. Not even making sweet love. Nope, this weird cat Prince was singing about something I had no comprehension of: hot, sweaty, crazy-ass S-E-X. But I knew I wanted to know about it. Maybe with that cute girl who had a locker next to mine, or the girl who sat across from me in art class and always laughed at my dumb jokes. I remember thinking there was some secret message deep in Prince’s music that would unlock all the secrets to this amazing new world that involved getting naked with girls.

Eventually I bought the 1999 album and my mind was further blown. Whatever subtleties Prince used on “Corvette” and “1999” were totally shed on songs like “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and “Lady Cab Driver.” I could get away with playing side one of the extended cassette when my mom was around. But side two? Hell no. But I made sure to listen to it often, and carefully, when she wasn’t around.

These awakenings are inevitable, regardless of era we grow up in or the music we listen to. There’s a direct connection between the flood of hormones and the music of our youth that combine to make us look at the world a little, no, a lot differently than we had before.

There’s a whole generation of us who have Prince to thank for helping us to make that leap.

This song also has one of the sneakily greatest lyrics of the 80s in it. However, most folks missed it until years later as the line was cut from the radio version. Today you’ll almost always hear the album version played, but in 1983 saving those nearly two minutes was more important and it rarely got radio time. Of course, America probably wasn’t ready for what Prince shared at the end of the album version:

Girl, you got an ass like I never seen, ow!
And the ride
I say the ride is so smooth, you must be a limousine
Ow!

I remember rolling on the floor the first time I heard those words. When I got older I realized as much as young Prince tried to camouflage his horniness in metaphor and misdirection, he couldn’t complete hold it back. These lines are like the hyper kid who has behaved all the way through a church service and then loses it just before its end.

Chart Week: March 8, 1986
Song: “Kyrie” – Mr. Mister
Chart Position: #1, 12th week on the chart, second week at #1.

One of my favorite things to do when I hear old music is consider artists who had really brief, but really amazing runs. “Did so-and-so have the best year ever?” I’ll ask myself when I hear a song by an artist who was massive for a few months and then disappeared.

One of the best artists to do this with is Mr. Mister. They were a mostly unknown band with one single that had peaked at 57 on the Hot 100 before the fall of 1985 rolled around. Then, over a nine-month stretch, they were as big as any band in the world. After that, they pretty much disappeared.

The run began with “Broken Wings.” Released in September of 1985, it topped the charts for two weeks that November. Next up was “Kyrie,” which also spent two weeks at #1. From October ’85 through April of ’86, Mr. Mister was inescapable on pop radio. The strength of those two singles pushed the band’s second album, Welcome to the Real World, to #1 on the album chart as well. Eventually it sold over a million copies in the US. A third single, the perfectly fine “Is It Love,” peaked at #8 on the Billboard charts in July of 1986.

The band did have another Top 40 hit, 1987’s “Something Real,” which stalled out at #29. But I almost guarantee none of you remember that. I don’t remember it, and I pride myself on remembering obscure songs by bands that had one or two huge hits.

That was a pretty solid run. And I bet Richard Page and the rest of the band had a thoroughly incredible 1986, as they toured the world opening for Tina Turner, got fat checks for their songs topping the charts, and did an endless series of interviews with TV and print journalists who wanted to know their story. I bet the women around them were a lot hotter, the cocaine a little purer, and the pre-show catering a little bit nicer when they were on top of the world.

Other artists had better and bigger music years in the 1980s. Michael Jackson in 1983. Prince and Bruce in 1984. Madonna in 1985. But those were all massive stars that remained massive stars. Mr. Mister’s 1985–86 could be one of the best stand-alone years of the decade.

We like to make fun of artists like Mr. Mister, who made music that seemed perfectly suited for a specific moment but were unable to adjust as time passed. But how many artists would give anything to have one top ten hit, let alone three, including two #1’s, from a single album? Yep, the Mr. Mister guys are laughing last.

Quick trivia from this countdown: Casey shared that lead single Richard Page was offered the frontman spots in both Toto and Chicago after each of those bands lost their lead singers in the mid–80s. But he chose to stick with the band he had started years earlier. Smart move. I’m sure he’d rather look back on his success with Mr. Mister than have spent years singing other people’s songs with Toto or Chicago.

Chart Week: March 5, 1983
Song: “Allentown” – Billy Joel
Chart Position: #17, 15th week on the chart. Peaked at #17 for six straight weeks from February through March.

This week’s edition is the first that draws from SiriusXM’s VJ Big 40 show on its Eighties on 8 channel. For those not familiar, Eighties on 8 features three of the original MTV VJs – Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, and Alan Hunter – pumping out classic tunes all day.[1] Each weekend they take an old Billboard Top 40 list and do their own recreation of a countdown of that week’s hits. The show runs several times over the weekend, beginning Friday night and finishing with a Monday morning airing.

Last week’s show was from 1983. And I believe it proves the existence of the Music Gods.

There’s no doubt there are Woof Gods, beings poised to punish players and fans for hubris in sports. They are why no real fan thinks about the Final Four when your team hasn’t even made it out of the first weekend of the tournament yet. The Woof Gods are always listening and know if you’re imagining hanging a banner when there’s still a nasty 8-seed to get past.[2]

As for the Music Gods, their existence and purpose is more complex. Are these beings that play the right song at the exact right moment on a date? Do they allow you to, somehow, know what song is coming next on the radio before it plays? Or are they more like the Woof Gods in making sure any song you hate will be played far too often on a radio you have no control over?[3]

Whatever their cause, I think the Music Gods have messed with me twice in the past year. Sometime late last winter, when another VJ Big 40 was also from 1983, I flipped by the show just in time to hear “Allentown” at least four different times. It happened on Saturday, twice on Sunday, and again on Monday.

Last weekend it happened again. I heard “Allentown” once while dropping M off at volleyball practice Saturday afternoon. In the evening I heard it again while taking C to the store to get some school supplies. Sunday I ran out to get some stuff for breakfast. The moment the electronic system lit up, I heard the sharp factory whistle that opens the song. It’s as though the Music Gods had their collective finger poised over the play button until I triggered the ignition. And Monday morning, after leaving an appointment, I heard the final five or so seconds of the song as soon as I got in the car.

Pretty weird, huh?

I swore I wrote about Billy Joel way back in the early days of the blog, about how I attempted to use his music to woo a foxy girl from Omaha that lived in my dorm my freshman year.[4] I searched the archives and could not find the post, which means it must have been lost in one of my 800 redesigns of the site over the years. Or maybe I just imagined writing about it.

Anyways…part of that post was about how I grew up listening to a lot of Billy Joel. That was mostly because my mom loved him. She had all of his albums and played them often. One of my earliest music memories was her asking me to play “Piano Man” over and over again one day. As I got older, Joel was a good meeting point of our respective musical tastes. She was listening to more adult contemporary, I was mostly listening to Top 40 pop, and he was one of a handful of artists where those genres met. I continued to like Joel into college, until I went hard core New Jack Swing and Hip Hop, and later alternative rock. Billy’s music was not cool anymore, so I packed his tapes away at home and never listened to them again. Unlike some other artists of that era, I’ve never rediscovered my childhood love for his music. For awhile I hated it. Now I can tolerate some of his songs, but it doesn’t move me the way, say, Hall & Oates does.

But, hey, respect to Billy for one of the greatest careers in American pop music.

This song is one of the ones I can handle. Since it has been forced upon me these two weekends over the past year, I’ve come to admire its lyrics, its sound, and its intent. Although Joel’s music would never be called Heartland Rock, this song can certainly claim a thematic connection with that genre. “Allentown” fits right in with Bruce’s songs about the factory workers of New Jersey, and Mellencamp’s stories about Midwestern farmers who faced uncertain futures in the 1980s.

I generally think of Joel’s music being, ultimately, hopeful. “Allentown” ends suggesting that better days will come. But it also contains likely the bleakest lyrics of his career.

Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved

Every child has a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face

Joel’s lyrics were also generally timeless, meaning they were not anchored into a specific era. But in “Allentown” you hear all the anger, frustration, and confusion of the time in which the song was written. A time when large parts of the country were undergoing dramatic changes from economic systems that had been in place since World War II.

Perhaps that’s the message the Music Gods were pushing on me. I’ve often made fun of Billy Joel over the years. By forcing me to listen to “Allentown” four times a weekend, twice in a year, and getting the song stuck in my head, I suppose they wanted to remind me that Joel was worthy of some respect.

Chart Week: February 18, 1984
Song: “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” – Elton John
Chart Position: #18, 17th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 the week of January 28, 1984.

A countdown from 1984, my favorite musical year! So many fantastic songs to pick from. “Thriller” had just hit the top 10 in its second week in the top 40, the fastest rising song since 1972. Several other monster hits from 1983 were still scattered throughout the chart. “Jump”, the first huge song of ’84, was at #2. Some soon-to-be 84 classics were making their way up the chart: “Footloose”, “New Moon on Monday”, and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”.

But this Elton John track was the one that struck me. That might seem odd given the songs listed above. But with the significance of this week, it’s probably not a surprise that this was the one that got me thinking last Sunday.

Often when you’re a kid, you don’t realize what your parents are going through. I knew times were tough for my mom in the early 80s. I didn’t really appreciate how tough they were, though, because I was a dumb kid.

After working at a mall jewelry store for seven months, she finally landed a job with a decent company in the spring of 1981. Because of debt that was already hanging over her head, additional money issues incurred through her divorce, and my dad being unable to pay child support because he was unemployed, that job wasn’t enough. We always had food, even if sometimes it was purchased at the cheapest grocery stores she could find. We lived in a decent neighborhood, although in a duplex. I was able to play three sports a year. I always had clothes, even if they were knockoffs of the cool brands. Still I knew providing all of this was a struggle for her.

Late in 1981 she added a second job, working five hours a night, five nights a week, for a telemarketing company. At some point she started selling Mary Kay cosmetics, too. She spent about a year trying to move makeup on the weekends to bring in some more cash before she realized the revenues didn’t match what it was costing her. The lady had to sleep at some point, right?

Through that nighttime job she made friends with a small group of coworkers. Eventually we were often spending weekend nights with this group of three or four people. They were all single, all struggling in one way or another. And they were all the kind of super cool adults who weren’t bothered by me being around. They included me in their conversations, solicited my opinions, asked about my interests.

I remember one particular night late in 1983 when the group was hanging out at our house. We were playing board games, talking, eating, and music was on in the background. This song came on and one of the guys said, “Oh! This is a great song!” as he walked over to turn the volume up a couple notches. There were nods from around the table.

Every time I’ve heard the song since then – over 34 freaking years ago! – I’ve thought of that comment in that moment. Every time.

I wish I could remember the conversation that came after, because I know this group of 30-somethings talked about the meaning of the lyrics. I probably can’t recall that conversation because it was all waaaaay beyond comprehension at 12. I’m sure I just sat there, pretending to focus on the game while secretly attempting to file away their comments for when they would have value for me.

For years that was a warm memory; a memory of a night where I was hanging out with my mom and her friends, when there was fun and laughter and companionship punctuated by a good song that brought everyone together.

My feelings about that moment changed when I got older. I realized that wasn’t a happy moment. My mom and her friends were all living less than their best lives. They were working second jobs. None of them were in relationships. They had come together to stave off frustration and loneliness. That was good, yes. But they all yearned for something more fulfilling. This song spoke to their disappointment.

After that revelation, I began thinking less about the warmth of that night and more about the pain in my mom’s life during that period. A time of darkness that would get much worse over the next year as she battled serious health issues throughout 1984.

But I also think about my mom’s resilience and strength. How she didn’t drop out of college because she got pregnant at 19. How she worked her ass off, at the expense of her physical and emotional health, to give me a decent childhood. And of 100 other things she did over the course of her life.

In that moment in late 1983, she had a long list of grievances with life. But, as she did so often, she chose to forge friendships, to seek and offer support, to set a good example for me, and to look ahead and believe that the blues would pass and better times would come.

I take a certain pride in knowing tons of meaningless facts about old music. So I was super upset on Sunday when I learned that Stevie Wonder played the harmonica on this song.

Now it is entirely possible I knew this back in the day and just forgot it. But it seems like that is something I would not have forgotten; come on, Stevie Fucking Wonder playing on an Elton John song? I was utterly shocked when I heard Casey Kasem talk about Stevie’s contribution here. What’s the point of taking up space in my head with all this garbage if I didn’t know/couldn’t recall something as big as that?

Seriously, it almost ruined my entire day.

1984 was a big year for Stevie Wonder harmonica cameos. Late in the year he joined Chaka Khan on her cover of Prince’s “I Feel For You.” Throw in the regrettable, but massive, “I Just Called To Say I Love You” and 1984 was the last monster year of Stevie’s career.

There were a lot of Elton and Stevie albums in my mom’s record collection. I hope she knew of Stevie’s presence on this song and it pleased her.

Chart Week: Feb. 7, 1981
Songs/Chart Positions: “Killin’ Time” – Fred Knoblock and Susan Anton, #28
“Smoky Mountain Rain” – Ronnie Millsap, #27
“I Made It Through the Rain” – Barry Manilow, #26

My normal Sunday routine is to get up sometime between 8:00 and 8:30, watch the local news long enough to check the weather, and then move into the kitchen to have breakfast. While eating I flip on the radio to check the week’s American Top 40. I always have a little contest with myself to see how quickly I can determine what year the show is from based on the song that is playing. From there I decide if that week’s countdown is worth listening to. My sweet spot is normally 1982 through mid–1986. Earlier or later than that and I often lose interest fairly quickly.

Last week’s countdown was from 1981, and full of mediocre songs, so I only listened long enough to eat.

Why write about this week, then? Because three songs that were just off the chart hinted at a new era that was fast approaching.

But, first, the three songs I listened to.

The only way Fred Knoblock was cracking the Top 40 was by singing about having a fling with Anton, a former Miss America finalist who was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world in 1981.[1] It’s a cheesy, saccharine, weightless song perfect for the era when every family had a fondue pot tucked into their pantries and “Afternoon Delight” was still part of the cultural memories of most Americans.[2] Although actors hitting the charts with bad songs has happened in all musical eras, the touch of country in this song makes it easy to peg as something from the transitional phase that was the late ‘70s through the rise of the New Wave era.

“Smoky Mountain Rain” is a good damn song. There, I said it. But, again, its AM radio blend of country and adult contemporary identifies its time of origin quickly. Despite its date of release, this is not 80s music.

I know I have some friends who are down with Barry Manilow. That’s cool. My mom listened to a lot of Barry in the late 70s, so his tunes are certainly a part of my musical education. But if you forced me to listen to Barry, this is not a song I would pick.

I may not like these songs, but they cut to the heart of why I enjoy listening to these old countdowns. I can listen to any 80s song any time I want to thanks to the magic of streaming music services. In that on-demand world, I can jump across years and tie together just my favorite songs. When I listen to old AT 40s, I’m forced to hear the songs in their original contexts, surrounded by other records of different genres. I love hearing a song that became a timeless classic just as it was creeping into the Top 40. I also love hearing Casey Kasem talk about artists who dominated the charts for a few years but are completely forgotten today. We had no idea that “Don’t You Want Me” would still get played dozens of times a week today, or that The Knack would never be heard from again.

Each week, as I listen to the old countdowns, I use the Weekly Top 40 website for more context. One of the great things about the site is it lists not only each week’s Top 40, but also songs that fell out of the countdown, songs that debuted in the Hot 100, and that week’s Power Plays; songs that, based on airplay and sales, were likely to move into the Top 40 soon.

The week of February 7, 1981 fascinates me. As I scrolled through that week’s chart, it did not feel very 80s to me. The three songs I heard Sunday seemed largely representative of that entire chart: mostly adult contemporary, mostly older artists, with a strong influence of the 1970s throughout. It seemed better suited to a small, transistor AM radio than an FM stereo receiver that was part of a big sound system.

But then you look at that week’s Power Plays and see something different. Number 43, “Kiss On My List” by Hall & Oates; #42, “Rapture” by Blondie; and #41, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar. Now these are 80s songs! Only “Rapture” has any New Wave ties, although it is far more famous for being the first significant charting song that incorporated rap. “Kiss On My List” is pure 80s pop. And Benatar was combining stadium rock and melodic pop into one of the iconic sounds of the new decade.

Finding these transition points in old charts makes listening to a bunch of crappy songs worth it. Music didn’t suddenly become all New Wave synth pop in March of 1982, or all hair metal ballads in the summer of ’89. The shifts come slowly, over several months, with one song breaking the trail for a few more, until finally dozens have moved pop music in a different direction.

1982 feels like the first year that “80s music” dominated the charts. The first hints of that shift were making themselves visible in the winter of 1981.

I’ve been kicking around an idea for awhile about using the 1980s American Top 40s[1] I listen to most weekends as a jumping off point for writing about old songs. Every weekend, whether I listen to an entire countdown or just catch a few minutes here and there, I’m bombarded with memories from 30+ years ago when all those songs were new. Might as well put those memories to use and use them to create some Blog Content, right?

So this is entry #1. I imagine some will be personal stories, as this week’s entry is. Others might be histories of a particular song, or just something funny that Casey Kasem said back in the day. I don’t know if I’ll be posting these every week, and they may not always correspond to the countdown that played the previous Sunday. It’ll depend on how the ghosts present themselves to me.

Chart Week: Feb 7, 1987
Song: “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” – Beastie Boys
Chart Position: 24, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the week of March 7, 1987.

I don’t often make bold choices. I tend to be cautious, considering angles, and then settling on the choice that offers the fewest chances for embarrassment. This was especially true in my teenage years. But in December 1986, I made a rare bold choice that had big ramifications for a huge change that was about to take place in my life.

That month we were packing up our house in Kansas City and preparing to move to San Leandro, CA, just south of Oakland. My step-dad had taken a job the previous summer with Wang Labs and had spent the last four months commuting to San Francisco every Sunday through Thursday. My parents decided to let me finish out the semester in Kansas City, figuring that would be the easiest time to move me academically.

A week or two before we left, I had dinner with my dad and he gave me my Christmas presents early. One of them was a gift card to Musicland.[2] Amidst all the packing and organizing, I managed to talk my mom into taking me to the mall our final week in KC so I could use that card to buy some music for our flight west.

Now in the fall of 1986 I was still, more or less, a Top 40 listener. My two favorite radio stations were Q104 and ZZ99, both of which were Top 40 stations. The music I listened to the most that fall was Van Halen and Boston. Sundays I did homework listening to Casey Kasem.

But I sensed rumblings of change beneath the surface. The previous summer I was entranced by RUN-DMC’s remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” In December my fellow knuckleheads and I were quoting their “You Be Illin’” constantly.[3] I had a tape someone at school made me with a few Fat Boys songs on it. And although New Edition and the Force MDs were primarily singing acts, they were also pushing the culture of rap forward into the mainstream. I had always listened to “black music,” mostly thanks to my mom’s affinity for classic Motown and the poppy R&B of the 80s, but this was a whole new kind of urban music directed at my generation.

Sometime that December I heard the Beastie Boy’s “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” for the first time. Like, say, 40% of white boys my age, I was immediately hooked.[4] It was loud, obnoxious, raunchy, and, most importantly, brand new and genre defining. This was going to be my music!

So, anyway, back at Musicland…I remember spending a tremendous amount of time trying to decide what to buy. I really wanted to get RUN-DMC’s Raising Hell and the Beasties’ Licensed to Ill. But I had concerns. What if the three total songs I heard off the two albums were the only three good songs? I had bought plenty of shitty albums over the years, and would continue to do so for many years to come, because of one good song. Why so reluctant to do so now? For some reason I was worried about ruining the three-hour flight to San Francisco if I bought the wrong cassette tapes. Like I didn’t have 50 others I could listen to if they sucked.[5]

More, though, I worried about my new school in California. I knew nothing about it. When we had visited the area in the summer, we had focused on a different East Bay suburb and toured the high school there. I had impressions of one school, but would be going to a different one, and I had no idea what to expect.

I was worried about buying the wrong kind of music. What if everyone was metal heads? If I listened to rap, would I get my ass kicked every day? Or what if my new school was simply like my school in Kansas City, where listening to rap wouldn’t necessarily make me an outcast, but would raise some eyebrows? The last thing I needed to do, as the new kid, was call attention to myself for being out of the norm. Being from the Midwest was going to be enough baggage to deal with.[6]

I know I debated for far too long. I imagine my mom getting annoyed as I picked up Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and Huey Lewis & The News’ Fore! only to put them back and pick up the rap cassettes again.[7]

Finally, I made a decision. I chose to be bold. I grabbed Raising Hell and Licensed to Ill, confidently marched to the front of the store and placed them on the counter. Then I refused to look the 20-something dude running the register in the eye, lest I see disappointment in his face when he saw my purchases.

Fast forward three weeks. We’ve moved, gotten through the holidays, and I’m in my first few days at my new school. SLHS had an open lunch period where kids could eat in the cafeteria, leave campus to get food, or just wander around for 45 minutes. This was my daily chance to try to figure out the culture of this strange new world. I came from a school that was something like 95% white. San Leandro high school was still by far majority white, but the kids who weren’t white weren’t just black. There was a small black student population, but bigger Asian and Hispanic populations. And, I quickly learned, the Asians were from all over Asia and the Pacific, and the Hispanics were from all over Central America. Or at least their parents/grandparents were. You know what I mean.

At lunch I’d sit around and observe, trying to learn the fashions, lingo, and social groups of SLHS. One day, had to have been my first week, I was at my locker preparing for classes to begin again when I heard some familiar lyrics being shouted:

I did it like this,
I did it like that,
I did it with a whiffle ball bat!

Followed by shrieking laughter. I turned to look and here came a group of five or six white girls, all singing the lyrics to “Paul Revere” together for all to hear.

Wacky, wild stuff, man.

I quickly learned I had nothing to fear by listening to the Beastie Boys. In fact, that seemed to be the one thing that crossed all racial/ethnic/socio-economic lines because every-freaking-body was listening to the Beasties.

In fact, the Beasties helped me start meeting people after that initial glow of “So, you’re the new kid, right?” wore off. SLHS didn’t have busses, so kids who could not yet drive had to take public transportation to and from school. One day while waiting at the BART station for my transfer, someone tapped me on my shoulder. I removed my headphones and looked to see a guy from my gym class.

“Hey, Kansas, what are you listening to?”

I wore a KU 1986 Final Four shirt in gym and this dude slapped me with the nickname “Kansas” when we had played volleyball on the same team that week.

“Uh, the Beastie Boys,” I mumbled.

“No shit?!? They have the Beastie Boys in Kansas?”

“Sure.”

Sure.

With one simple, powerful word, a blossoming friendship was born.

Actually that’s not true. This kid, let’s call him Tim, and I became cool with each other, but we were never really friends.

Tim did, though, open social doors for me. The next day in gym, as we were milling about waiting to get started in our volleyball games, I heard him talking to some other guys. “Hey, Kansas listens to the Beastie Boys!” as I walked by. I got a few nods of respect. One dude, Charles, our school’s best basketball player who lived in Oakland, loved this.

“Yo! You listen to the Beasties! Seriously?”

He was utterly delighted that a white kid from Kansas was down with the Beasties. Charles became one of my best friends in my short time in California, and famously “borrowed” my Eric B and Rakim tape for about six weeks the next fall.

Where were we?

Oh, right. Not being the most outgoing person in the world, it was a struggle for me to forge friendships at my new school. But a simple thing like listening to the Beastie Boys and RUN-DMC broke some of the ice. Soon I had a few friends in every class, had people to walk to Taco Bell with at lunch, and kids to sit by on the very interesting county bus.[8]

Fast forward to 1998. Some buddies and I were going to see the Beasties and A Tribe Called Quest. In anticipation of the show, we wasted time at work sending emails to each other about our favorite Beasties songs. I believe I shared a (shorter) version of this story, how the Beasties helped me get settled at a new school. My literary cherry on top came by suggesting that the Beastie Boys had saved my life. If I had been unable to make friends, who knows what kind of trouble I would have gotten into? I certainly wouldn’t be working in an entry-level position in the finance department of a Fortune 400 company!

All because of the “rowdy, rockin’ rappers from New York” as Casey called them back in 1987.

One note about last weekend’s countdowns: both the AT40 and VJ Big 40 countdowns were from 1987. But they were from different weeks. AT40 took the first week of February while Sirius used the list from the last week of January. The chart geek in me loves listening to the two and comparing how songs are in different spots. I know, fascinating, right? “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” jumped eight big notches in that one week. America was learning what I already knew.