4/26/09 Blog/Playlist: Don't Hate Me--It's the 80s!

Segment 1: Theme – Don't Hate Me – It's the 80s

I'm going to feature a set of 80s music today. Now, before you go wondering if I've sold out, look at it this way. Next year, the 80s are going to be 30 years old! I think a lot of you were still young enough to perhaps like a lot of the music from that decade, and were probably excited about the debut of MTV as I was. If nothing else, it's a hat tip to the younger end of the demographic of the listeners today.

I'll start with a song that I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. I was at work and I had the radio on at my desk. I heard this voice that sounded like honey. Afterward, the DJ went on and on about how you just had to see the lead singer of the group. I was thinking, well, love the voice, who cares what he looks like. When I finally saw Boy George, I still didn't care what he looked like. In fact, I thought he was pretty!

Culture Club – Do You Really Want To Hurt Me (At the beginning of this version, a voice, presumably Boy George, says "popularity breeds comtempt." Well sometimes it does, doesn't it?)
Greg Kihn – Jeopardy
Steve Perry – Foolish Heart (from his solo LP "Street Talk")
Dionne Warwick – Heartbreaker (written by Barry Gibb)

Now, how many of you back in the 80s had big hair? I did for a while. I had one of those big curly perms. Back then, my hair was thick and stubborn and I used to scare the hair stylists because my hair would wait until the last minute to take a curl. I'd see the look of concern in the stylist's face when it was time to check it midway and they'd breathe a sigh of relief when it would finally take.

Segment 2: Picking Through the Record Box
I picked an obscure song to play in this set. This is one of my favorite Three Dog Night songs, though probably not one of their best known..it was in fact their last charting single, written by Dave Loggins of "Please Come To Boston" fame.

Three Dog Night – Till The World Ends
Survivor – The Search Is Over
Bobby Vinton – Blue on Blue
Styx – Too Much Time On My Hands

Here's another 80s memory I have...my first trip away from my home state of CT was in the 80s. A bunch of us who were fans of Styx and Tommy Shaw met up in Niles, MI to meet Tommy and each other at a horse show where Tommy had a farm at the time and showed some horses. This was a time where Tommy had taken a break from Styx for a bit and was doing some solo things and I had a little correspondence with him around then, back in the days before e-mail. It was then I realized there was more than where I was living and ended up moving to the Midwest before I got here and I've also seen about 21 states since then. So just one way that music can profoundly affect your life!

Show plug: TJ and Company with TJ Kirby, which started a couple of weeks ago in my old time slot of Saturday at 3 p.m. – part music, part talk show, he's a real radio professional and a baseball fan too; you'll hear all kinds of good stuff.

Segment 3: Soul Stew
This first song was a hit in the 80s by Mark Almond and Soft Cell, but here is the original.

Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
Major Harris – Love Won't Let Me Wait
Jimmy Ruffin - What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

That last song is always good to hear, but not part of the plan today. I really wanted to play "Don't Disturb This Groove" by the System, but the wrong track started to come up. I don't know why there is a difference between the tracking on my backup disks and the station CD players, but I seem to be running into that again. Then, when I tried to get the right track I couldn't get anything to go for about a minute. Thus, the technical glitch of the day. I blamed it on things getting too steamy in the studio from "Love Won't Let Me Wait". Then again, if I played "Don't Disturb This Groove", I think the steam factor would have been greater, and I would have run overtime anyhow.

Segment 4: Non-oldie/Current/New (Outside the Box..yes, new title for this part of the show too!)
I am going to have a couple of in-studio guests coming up in May. One of those is Les Kerr, who is a popular singer/songwriter in town here who does a lot of New Orleans/Cajun type music. He'll be with me on May 24. Coming up on May 17 is a guy who I'm going to play a track from... Mark Elliott .

Mark Elliott – Baseball and Beatles
George Adams – Turn The Knife

Frequency To The Heart:

We all have our different "styles" of who we are. What's on the surface, though, can fool us sometimes. At first glance we might think, well, I don't know that I like this person very much or say, hmm...might be too much baggage here, I think I'll pass this one by. I know there have been times in my life when I've been so grateful that I didn't stick with my first impressions about people because they went on to be very dear to me in my life. So before you write someone off, take that deeper look beyond the surface. There may be more of value to you that what you first see.

Closer – Soul Serenade – King Curtis

Speaking of technical glitches, I just played my archive file of the show and it sounds fuzzy and distorted. I wonder if it sounded that way on the air or it's an internal thing?