DJ

This song has been going through my head a lot lately. It’s one of those songs I associate with being a kid and riding with the rest of the family in Dad’s ’71 Chevrolet Heavy Chevy, usually headed north on Interstate 81 on a summer evening. He always listened to 62 WHEN.

From 1973, here’s Albert Hammond with his only top 20 hit, “It Never Rains In Southern California”. Interestingly, while Albert Hammond had only one hit on the Billboard charts, he wrote plenty of songs for lots of well known acts.

I’m digging his sideburns.

I don’t want “Stranger Things”, but apparently this song was featured in the show and is climbing the charts again, nearly 40 years later from its original release.

From 1985 here’s Kate Bush with “Running Up That Hill”.

In the late 1980s Donna Summer teamed up with producers Stock, Aiken, and Waterman to record her album “Another Place, Another Time”. SAW was responsible for many hits of the era, including bringing Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue to the masses. One of the leading singles from Donna’s album was “This Time I Know It’s For Real”.

Here’s a live performance of the track from over a decade later, from the “VH1 Presents Live & More Encore! with Donna Summer”. Ms. Summer’s voice was always top notch and she sounded fantastic when performing live.

Even though I spent more than decade spinning club music in various bars and worked in Top 40 radio for a good share of my life, I’ve found myself drifting toward Yacht Rock Radio during what I hope area my “middle aged years”. One of my favorite songs from the 1970s played a LOT during most of 1976. Here’s a 2013 live performance from Starbuck with their top five hit, “Moonlight Feels Right”.

The marimba solo sounds almost identical to the original back in the mid 1970s. The backing “whoo ooos” during the second half of each verse, which isn’t in the original track (that I can tell), is identical to what I would sing when jamming to this track in the car on a wonderful summer day.

This performance is quite impressive for a band performing the track nearly 40 years after the original release.

I first heard this song on the “93Q Clubbeat”, which played Saturday nights on WNTQ when I was teenager. I was thinking of this specific version of this song the other day and realized that when it was released in 1985, we were closer in time to an Elvis track than today in 2022 is to this song in 1985.

Someone around here is getting old.

From 1985, here’s “Point of No Return” by Exposé, when the group had its original lineup (before the ladies we know as Exposé today). There’s something about this version that sounds quite nostalgic to me.

It’s been over four decades since its heyday but I still enjoy disco music very much. There’s a lot of bad disco out there, but there’s also some great disco that never saw the light of day back in the day.

Originally recorded in 1979 but shelved until the late 1990s, here’s an extended remix of Karen Carpenter’s solo disco track, “My Body Keeps Changing My Mind”.

I honestly don’t remember if I’ve posted this video before. I can’t get this cover version of Michael Gray’s “The Weekend” out of my head, so I’m sharing again today.

We first hear “The Weekend” when in Ireland back in 2008. I loved the track then and this cover version is hot! I love these collaborations over video where everyone does their part and then it’s putting together in post production.

Enjoy!

I can’t believe it’s been 39 years. I can easily remember my sister playing this song on the GE Wildcat record player that had made its way to her bedroom from the family room. I’d dance to this song in my room and then end up dancing with my sister in her room.

When I was a club DJ, late in the night I’d start playing “lost” tracks when the crowd was half drunk. They’d love hearing songs they hadn’t heard in years.

But in 2021 it’s been a LOT of years. From 1982, here’s Grammy award winning Melissa Manchester with “You Should Hear How She Talks About You”. (I still think music from the 80s is much better than what we have in commercial pop music today).

Prior to the return of ABBA earlier this month, the closest we could get to new ABBA song was from Agnetha Faltskog’s 2013 album “A”. Though it wasn’t really promoted in the states, a few of the tracks did fairly well in Europe.

From 2013, here’s “Dance Your Pain Away” by Agnetha Faltskog.

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