step into my time machine week 73

Today is September 16, 1976.  As finswimming (yeah, I didn't know what that was either) star, Armenia's Shavarsh Karapetiyan and his equally talented brother jog around Lake Yerevan in training, a bus plunges off the dam road and into 33 feet of water.  Shavarsh spends the next hour diving to the bus, and after kicking in the back window, bringing people one by one up to the surface.  He cannot save them all; far from it.  But he does save 20, and at a terrible cost.  Between the exertion and sepsis contracted from the polluted water, he spends the next 45 days unconscious and is never again able to participate in the sport he loves.    For his trouble he is awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor- 2 years later.  He becomes a household name for his sacrifice- when Pravda does an article on him 6 years later.  And he gets an asteroid named after him- 10 years later.  God bless the Soviet Union!

Welcome to odd news stories Time Machine for another week.  Today, we have the dreaded song-stuck-at-49 problem again, a glancing blow at the epic motion picture Resurrected, a tour of some British nobility, and speaking of Britain, the UK's #1 album this week!  Away we go!

Topping the hot 100 debuts for the week (out of 7) are two of the best ever ballads about love gone wrong.  The high debut at 72 is Barry Manilow's title track from the lp This One's For You (newbies- this is NOT a Bud commercial); and at 79, the Bee Gees with Love So Right.  Also debuting this week, another of those songs I have vivid recollections of watching done on the old Midnight Special- Jeans On by David Dundas. Or should I say, Lord David Dundas.  You see, David was the son of the 3rd Marquess of Zetland, Lawrence Dundas.  In trying to find out what a Marquess of Zetland was, I learned that the 3rd Marquess was a good tennis player from the 40's, and that his niece was once married to (and not at the same time) both the manager for the Grateful Dead and to Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.  And Zetland is an archaic spelling of Shetland, which (in addition to being where Shetland ponies come from) is a group of islands freezing their tushies off in the cold waters north of Scotland.  So I figure Marquess of Zetland is probably a step or two above mayor of Zulu, Indiana.  Anyway, happy 35th to those songs!  and here come the rest of our birthday children for today:

Gypsies, Tramps, And Thieves turns 40 today, as does I'd Love To Change The World by Ten Years After.
Johnny Rivers' Poor Side Of Town and the Byrds' Mr. Spaceman turn 45 today.
Turning 50 are the Dovells' Bristol Stomp and the Marvellettes Please Mr. Postman.
And finally, the 5 Satins' version of In The Still Of The Night turns 55.  Blow out the candles...

Our big dropper for today is Another Rainy Day In NYC, tumbling 18 to #87.  The big climbers are 3, and two of them are in the top forty!  I can tell you, though, that the third is the Commodores' Just To Be Close To You, climbing 17 to #74.

This week we are in the 2s of our look at #1s of other years, and in 1992 we hit a top dog that at least I know- End Of The Road by Boyz II Men.  In 1982 this week the #1 was Steve Miller's Abracadabra; in 1972, the Hollies' Long Cool Woman.  In 1962 the greatest song of all time was #1- the Four Seasons and Sherry.  When Bob Gaudio first wrote this (he says it took him 15 minutes- sure glad Geico wasn't around back then to distract him!), it was Jackie Baby in honor of first lady Jackie Kennedy; after a few other permutations, Gaudio finally changed it to Sherry after his BFF's daughter.  Finally in 1952 we have another repeat featuree- Vera Lynn's Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart.

Now yet again our Where Are They Now feature becomes problematic.  2 weeks ago we featured the song Hard Work; last week it was sweet Baby James with Shower The People- Hard Work moving up to 48.  (Rookies- 49 is the spot from which I do the WATN segment)  This week, Shower stalls at 49- with Hard Work still at 48!  So rather than look all over for a rationale for another candidate (or spend another week of making fun of Taylor's connection to the various liberal zombie groups) I'm going to dip into the Valley Of The Dolls Post from earlier this week and bring you the man singing Live With Me- Tony Scotti.

Tony was actually an actor by trade when he did that song on Valley, though he didn't do a whole lot- just that movie and some TV episodes.  He also had his hand in pop music, though not very successfully- he had 2 songs that grazed the charts solo and one with his band, Heaven Bound.  HB included Eddie Medora who played guitar for the Sunrays.  Who are the Sunrays? A 60s surf band who did a song I never should have burned called Andrea.  If you want to experience the genius of Brian Wilson, just see what happens when people who don't know how to put background harmonies together try it!  Anyway, that kinda went belly up as well for Tony, so he went into music production at MGM.  Then he and his brother Ben went into the music distribution business, and a few years after that they tried their hands at producing films.  The last of these was a low budget flick called Resurrected in the early 90s featuring Chris Sarandon.  This seems to be where our trail of Mr. Scotti ends; but his Heaven Bound work is on youtube, including this number that I sampled last night, featuring the vocals of one Ann Marshall, who apparently played Angela Brown on My Favorite Martian:



We only had 2 entrants into the top 40 this week.  At 40, up five, is Eric Carmen and Sunrise.  At 38, one of our trio of big movers at 17 notches up, is the other debut- Beth/Detroit Rock City by Kiss.  and the third of the 17 notch movers debuted last week, I Only Wanna Be With You by the Bay City Rollers, up this week to 23.  While we're in this area, I'll mention a few odds and ends.  First, an almost but not quite for Say That You Love Me by Fleetwood Mac, peaking this week at #12.  Second, we have co-rulers from the grandpa chair this week- both Moonlight Feels Right (#58) and Love Is Alive (#60) are in their 23rd week on the chart.  And third, our #1 album, in the midst of its last- and longest- run at the top is Frampton Comes Alive!  I was just curious to see what topped the UK album chart this week, and the answer is a UK-only greatest hits collection from the Beach Boys called 20 Golden Greats.  Pretty standard fare, with the odd pieces being a cover of Then He Kissed Me (obviously re-titled Then I Kissed Her) and a song called Break Away, written by Brian and his father Murray, which did much better in Jolly Ol' (#6) than here in the USA (#63).  It was their last single of the seventies and people over here were too into listening to the critics' mealy-mouthed panning of the Boys to give it a chance.  Here, let's see what we think:




Score another one for the British!

Three songs enter the top ten this week, three fall out.  Dropping out are:  You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine, 8 to 21; Don't Go Breaking My Heart, from 7 to 17; and Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel, from 10 to 20.

So, since our six degrees victim is our #1 song this week, let's do things a little different:  we'll go backwards rather than forwards, and intersperse it into the top ten!  Step Number one are the groups Survivor (Eye Of the Tiger) and the Ides Of March (Vehicle).  These groups had one thing in common- leader and vocalist (for the Ides) Jim Peterik.
Climbing one spot to 10 this week is Dr. Hook with the less-than-subtle A Little Bit More.  At #9, up 5 spots, is Chicago with If You Leave Me Now.  At 8, flapping up from #18 last week, is Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots with Disco Duck.

Step 2- Jim Peterik was the writer of .38 Special's first big national hit, Hold On Loosely.

Climbing 2 spots to #7 is Cliff Richard's Devil Woman (hi, Lorraine!).  The Bee Gees drop from 2 to 6 with You Should Be Dancing.

Step 3- It was .38 Special that gave southern rockers Molly Hatchet their first break by pimping them to their agent, who set them on the path to stardom.

Walter Murphy climbs one notch to #5 with A Fifth Of Beethoven; England Dan and John Ford Coley stall at 4 with I'd Really Love To See You Tonight.

Step 2- among the later members of Molly Hatchet was a guitarist named Bryan Bassett.

Number three this week, up two spots, is Boz Skaggs and Lowdown.  Edging one step closer at #2 is KC and The Sunshine Band with Shake Your Booty.  And that means that our number one song this week, for a second week, is...

Wild Cherry, featuring guitarist Bryan Bassett, and Play That Funky Music!

Well, I thought that went well.  What do you think?  Let me know, because I might try it again....