Time Machine week 57

Forgive me if the ride is a little bumpy today.  The Tardis is a bit balky today.  Part of it is a sporadic reluctance of my keyboard to get it's message across to the computer screen.  The rest is that the last things I put together are the six degrees and the opening bit here.  Well, let me tell you I had to stretch mightily to even get four degrees this week, and the best I could do for what happened on target day January 22, 1978?  Johan Christian Lankes, Ambassador of West Germany to Ethiopia, was declared persona non grata  (Latin, plural: personae non gratae, literally meaning "an unwelcome person," refers to a foreign person whose entering or remaining in a particular country is prohibited by that country's government.) by the Ethiopian government.  Why?  I really couldn't figure it out (other than a google-translated page that seemed to blame it on the East Germans), other than to learn that he had also been thrown out of Portuguese Guinea in 1972.

Couldn't even find a picture of the guy... so here's a nice picture of Scrappy from 2013.

And so, here we are on what I hope will be an exponentially improving Time Machine, seeing the sights and hearing the tunes of this week in 1978!  Before we get too started, check Wednesday's post for the two songs that debuted on the M10 last week and I didn't get to then (Note to Shady- Molly Rankin!).  Anyway, you'll get two NEW debuts this week, plus an English Ten that actually has 6 songs (or 7, depending) that actually charted here, and a Panel battle that was actually close most of the way through!  What the heck, if you made it this far, whaddaya got to lose?


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The panel this week includes CKLW Detroit, WHB Kansas City, WRKO Boston, KTKT Tucson, KEBQ also from Kansas City, WDRC Hartford, WLS Chicago, Chum Toronto, WYSL Buffalo, and one of my old favorites (late at night if the clouds were right), WLAC Nashville, and the Springfield twins- WCVS (Illinois) and WHYN (Massachusetts).  They only managed 18 different songs, and stayed towards the top- their lowest nationally charting choice was Con-Funk-Shun's Ffun, which WLAC had at #5 and Cashbox at #32.  They also managed to have three songs that got #1 votes but didn't make the final four this week- Hartford had Billy Joel's Just The Way You Are at the top; Player's Baby Come Back was tops in Nashville; and the Bee Gees ruled the Illinois Springfield with How Deep Is Your Love.

And the Panel's top four?

With 19 points and the #1s of WHB's side of Kansas City and Boston, the nation's #2, Randy Newman's Short People.  I remember actually having to explain this song to a short girl who was offended by it, no lie.

With 22 points and the #1 from Toronto, the national #4, Rod Stewart and You're In My Heart.

With 26 points and number ones from Tucson and Buffalo, the Bee Gees- yes, them again- with the national #14 with a bullet, Stayin' Alive.

And the top song of the Panel, with 4 #1s and 32 points, the national #1.... or #1s... (that's a clue) stay tuned.

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Well, you can't say I didn't tell you that I was going to give you the lamest six degrees ever, so let's get it out of the way fast:  Cue up Barbra Streisand...

Wait... are you saying I'm LAME?

Well, not precisely.  After all, in just ten months you will torture treat us to your biggest hit, You Don't Bring Me Flowers with Neil Diamond.  And before that, you'll hit with the theme from The Eyes Of Laura Mars (which was a better song to me, but y'know...).  But we have a Time Machine, so we can go back to your very first record, which your record company wanted to title Sweet And Saucy Streisand, but you vetoed in favor of The Barbra Streisand Album.  Both really catchy, no doubt.  You had gotten that far singing nights in gay bars like Bon Soir and the Lion, courtesy of the booking help of your boyfriend (who would eventually come out himself), Barry Dennan.  Avoiding the cheap "look what dating HER does to a guy" joke- oh, wait- Barry comes into the equation having been the voice of Pontius Pilate on the original Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack.  And who do we find playing that part in a 1993 touring revival of JCS but the lead singer of the band in question, and the writer of the song in question, Dennis DeYoung and Styx, who was at #9 this week- but got no panel love- with Come Sail Away.

Maybe if your Wiki entry had a little more beef in the bio...

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The first of the debuts I want to share with you is from a band that showed up in my Spotify suggestions this week called the Quiet Hollers.  While looking up the song sent to me, I read that they had another, supposedly better song- and it was true.  And it is that "chilling" song that I debut at #9 on the M10 this week.




...and I used to worry what clothes I had on 
the school recitals and the manicured lawns 
and I had a laundry-list of people 
I could count on if it all went wrong... 
and then the bomb.

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And now, a word or two from Winston Churchill:

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.

And now, our new tradition:

So let's take a look at the top ten this week in the UK:

10- Scott Fitzgerald, whose biggest claim to fame was coming in second ten years later in the 1988 Eurovision contest, combines with Dutch songstress Yvonne Keeley for a tune called If I Had Words.

9- I promised you 6 (maybe more) songs that were also on the American charts.  The first of those was at #12 on the Cashbox charts this week- and would end up peaking at 6 in both nations- Chic with Dance Dance Dance (Yowzah Yowzah Yowzah).

8- The second was one of my special favorites that OUR stations wouldn't play but I could hear on CKLW, Bill Withers and Lovely Day.  Over here, thanks to idiot stations like the ones in Fort Wayne, it peaked at 30; there it hit #7- and then it hit #8  as a remix in 1988.

7- This song topped out at 5 in the UK and #2 here, but was on its way down in both countries (it had fallen to #37 here)- Crystal Gayle's Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.

6- The next song wouldn't make it to our shores for another few weeks, debuting near the end of March, but soared to #3 once it did!  It makes it to #4 eventually in the UK- Bonnie Tyler and It's A Heartache.

5- A song that went #6 on the R&B chart here, and was just short of its peak of 21 in the US of A this week- Odyssey and Native New Yorker.

4- The Brotherhood Of Man, a choir who hit big in the US with United We Stand some years back, would end up hitting the top with the song Figaro, which was not released hereabouts.

3- Donna Summer released this one in Europe only, called Love's Unkind.

2- Another future #1 in the UK was the song at #2 by the teenage Jamaican girls Althea (Rose Forrest) and Donna (Marie Reid), Uptown Top Ranking.  It was a cover of a song by an act called Trinity to which the girls added some DJ style ad-libbing, as a joke at first- until it made them famous.

And the song at #1, the song that gives us six-or seven- US charting songs, was the first single to sell 2 million in the UK, one of their biggest hits of all time.  In the US, Wiki says that the flip side was the hit here, and was the one that was at #57 this week, on the way to a chart topping at #33.  BUT, I remember that it was the UK #1 that played here, and it was the one that Casey Kasem played on AT 40, so I don't know where exactly the b-side was the hit.  The song(s) in question?

....Wings with Mull Of Kintyre/Girls School!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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And now, the Martin 10...


The Great American Canyon Band (which you may have listened to Wednesday) holds at #10 with their hit Crash.

You already heard the Quiet Hollers with Mount Blanc at #9 in their debut week.

And at #8 a band led by a guy with a name that sounds like a woman.  The band is called Diane Coffee, and the hit debuting at # 8 is this:




Gotta love that lp title- Everybody's A Good Dog.  BTW, the lead singer of Diane Coffee, Shaun Fleming, is a former Disney child voice actor, who played Goofy's son Max in a Christmas direct to video.

The song at # 7 was almost going to be Dent May, but at the last second I changed my mind- Born Too Late falls off the M10, and Little Green Cars hang on, dropping from 4 to 7 with Harper Lee.

Moving up a pair to #6, Alvvays and Next Of Kin, which was also on the Wednesday post.

Whenever I play the M10 for Laurie and the #1 from the week before drops, I always introduce it with, "the king is dead."

The king is dead.  Boz Scaggs drops to #5 with Small Town Talk.

Beach House slips another couple with Beyond Love, dropping to #4.

And why is everybody falling, because of the next two yahoos.  At #3, up 3, is jack Wood with Born To Wander.

And the #2 song blasts its way up from a debut of #7- Nothing But Thieves with Trip Switch.

And that gets us to our number ones.  For the first time, the M10 has its third different number one in as many weeks...

...Matt Mondanile and Ducktails with Headbanging In The Mirror!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  For the second time ever, and the second time in three weeks, a song I could NOT have told you right from the start would hit number one HAS hit number one!

And, the panel sayeth...

...Queen with We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That is a wrap, and tune in for a hopefully less rocky journey next week, as we hit 1966!!!!!!!!!