Time Machine week 80

Well, I have two pretty big specials for you today- July 1st, 1976- so thankfully the lead in won't hold us up.  After 13 pages of google results for "what happened on...", the best thing I found was the title to a post on a page called "answers.travelchinaguide.com"...

i am borned in july 1, 1976, will i'll be lucky this year?

So, uh, the answer was rather a mixed bag... but at least it was more intelligible than Ton from the Philippines, who was borned today.

And we are off on another Time Machine excursion, where we'll see how America's Elvis and "England's Elvis" stack up; A special commemorating one of the great moments in history (depending on the side of the knife you're on), and find out if we have a five-week #1 on the M10!  Don't wait for the Year of the Dragon to see if you're lucky, hop in and get lucky- wait, that didn't come out right...

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So this week we had a truly savage battle for the top of the Panel list, with the winner taking the lead on the second-to-last station I surveyed, and hanging on for a 35-33 win!  But before we go into that, what imbeciles picked these two sucky so- oh, wait, not 1979, had the last number upside down.  So, here's the Panel for this week's adventure:

CHUM Toronto, KHJ Los Angeles, KTLK Denver, WRKO Boston, WHB Kansas City, WTRY Troy NY, WCOL Columbus (yes, the Ohio one), WAKY Louisville, WFIL Philadelphia, WYSL Buffalo, WDRC Hartford, and KTKT Tucson.  They collected a mere 20 different tunes this time around, including #1 vote getters Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry (Columbus), the Beatles' posthumous Got To Get You Into My Life (Louisville), and Hall and Oates' Sara Smile (Hartford).  In addition to the #1 from Ohio, Wild Cherry also was the lowest national charter this week, on its way up at #70.  It was a strong group, with 17 of 20 inside the national top 40 this week.  And the Panel's picks:

At #4 with the #1s of Philly and Denver and 13 points, the national runner-up, Wings and Silly Love Songs.

At #3 with 14 points and a #1 vote from CHUM, the national #5, Dorothy Moore and Misty Blue.

And the battle at the top- finishing second, with 33 points and #1s from KC, Troy, and Buffalo, the national #1 song- Starland Vocal Band and Afternoon Delight.

And number one, with the other 3 #1s and 35 points, the national #3- stay tuned.

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The first debut of two on the M10 this week (yes, that'll make a turnover of six in 2 weeks) comes to us from an English band that has a sore spot.  Their problem? the dying out of the neighborhood pub.  English pubs these days are dying off at an amazing rate.  "The UK has lost 21,000 pubs since 1980, with half of these closures taking place since 2006," the band in question says on their FB page, and they did their album to spotlight the pub and its former place in British social life.  Named after one of those fallen pubs, here is Plume Of Feathers:

First Date debuts at #10 this week.  BTW, they list their genre as "your round".
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Now I did try to do my 6D on the song that got no Panel Love this week- John Travolta's Let Her In- but it led me to the "English Elvis", Cliff Richard, and I wondered just how the two stacked up.  Now, Cliff didn't really make a big dent relatively here, rolling up only 19 top 100's, 8 top 40s, and 3 top tens, never hitting the top- while the King had 149 hot 100s, 114 top 40s, 40 top tens, and 18 #1s.  In the UK, though, it was a LOT closer.  And depending on how you score it, Cliff may have won on a technicality.

Cliff, both solo and with the Shadows, rang up 134 UK hot 100s, a whopping 117 top 40s, 65 top tens, and he hit the top 14 times.  Which means 87 % of his hot 100s went top 40, 48% went top ten, and about 10.4 % hit #1.  Elvis, however, is a bit controversial.  All told, he whopped Cliff with 193 hot 100s, 160 top 40s (83%), 87 top tens (45%), and 24 #1's (12.4%).  But here's where the controversy comes in- Britain is big on re-releases, and Elvis' catalogue was no exception.  From his death in 1977 to recent days, 76 of his songs hit the UK charts a second time- including a 24-song streak of top ten charters- and 13 of those either hit #1 or #2!  So, if you remove them and just count first releases, Elvis in the UK had 117 top 100s, and an incredible 111- 95%- went top 40; 63 (54%) went top ten, and 20 (17.1%) went to the top!

Which got me to ask the next question- if he had 20 #1s there, and 18 here, what were the couple of songs that didn't hit here that hit there?  Well, it's not that easy.  You see there wasn't a lot of overlap between his #1s here and his #1s there.  In fact out of all those #1s, only SIX songs hit #1 on both charts.  So that means between the two nations, he hit #1 with 28 different songs!  The only ones that hit #1 on both sides of the Pond were:

All Shook Up
Jailhouse Rock
Surrender
It's Now Or Never
Are You Lonesome Tonight
and Good Luck Charm.


That is Billboard stats- Cashbox tends to add to that.  We'll look at the Cashbox list in a little bit.  (AKA as soon as I come back from researching it!)

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In the meantime, listen to debut #2, coming in at #9.  This is a band from Northern Ireland called The Drink, with lead singer Dearbhla Minogue:




(BTW the name's pronounced duh-r-v-la, I am told.)
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And how did we do on Cashbox?  Well Cashbox had Elvis at the top 18 times as well, but...  They had at number one all six of the "both" category, as well as 9 of the US only toppers, one of the UK-only #1s (Return To Sender), and incredibly had two more that NEITHER one had!  They were In The Ghetto (US#3, UK#2) and Burning Love (US#2, UK#7).  So that puts us to 30 different songs of his that SOMEBODY had at #1.


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So Bobby G. took me to task last week for something about 'no famous British classical composers'.  He gave me a list of "what about"s to try; and while the first guy was relatively silent (apparently), I did get a good quote from one  Benjamin Britten...

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

If so, than being an A&R man must be like driving down a foggy road into a tree!  Anyway, it's time for...

10- The Panel's #4 song, and the national number 2, is tenth here- Wings and Silly Love Songs.

9- The Wurzels, a novelty band whose "genre" was "scrumpy and western", sat here with a parody of Melanie's brand New Key called Combine Harvester.  If you have the time and need a mild chuckle, go check it out.

8- This song, one of my faves, is at #16 back home- Thin Lizzy and The Boys Are Back In Town.

7- Remember me saying something about re-releases?  This song hit #11 originally in '64, got to #3 in '72, and right here in 1976- the US #1 in it's original release, the Shangri-Las with Leader Of The Pack.

6- Gallagher and Lyle, who were refugees from McGuinness Flint, had their own hit here with Heart On My Sleeve.  It would skirt the top 70 US in December.

5- Rod Stewart was getting an early start here with Tonight's The Night, which would play Occupy #1 here in November.

4- Bryan Ferry, who east coasters remember better than us Hoosiers from Roxy Music, was here with Let's Stick Together.

3- Candi Staton with an always-underrated song here, Young Hearts Run Free.  It was at #44 this week stateside.

2- An early attempt at the boy-band concept gave them (not us, a no-charter here) the one-hit-wonders called Our Kid, who sat here with You Just Might See Me Cry.

And Tops of the Pops?

 
A big Brit soul act (that never hit here), the Real Thing with You To Me Are Everything!!!  It was okay, but it kinda sounds like they borrowed Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra for the music..



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Last weekend as I lay in bed, I heard it was the anniversary of Lorena Bobbitt playing "hide the weiner" with her less-than-pleased husband.  So naturally, I thought that I'd do a special in honor of the moment- How many #1s have had a body part in the title?  Since this was going to be an easy dig, I ran the length of the CB charts- 1946-1996- to come up with our answer.

There were single #1 songs with the following body parts:  Toe (Lisa Lisa's Head to Toe, which also was a 'head' count), arms, booty, shoulders, back, face, hair, and fingertips.

Head and hands each got 2 songs.

The mind got 3 songs, including our other double-dipper, Connie Francis' My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own in 1960.

Not surprisingly, the top two ran away with it.  Eyes were second with 10 songs.

And the top body part in #1 titles was of course, the heart.  From 1947's Peg O' My Heart by the Harmonicats to 1991's Rhythm Of My Heart by Rod Stewart, 13 heart songs topped the CB chart.

Also not surprisingly, there was no mention of the part that John Bobbitt loved and lost- the closest attempt may have been Dave "Baby" Cortez's 1959 chart topper, The Happy Organ.  Ba-Dum-DUM!

Lorena Bobbitt- good with sharp objects.

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And now, the M10!


You've heard #s 10 and 9- and the Jayhawks move up to #8 with Pretty Roses In Your Hair.

At #7, and giving ground grudgingly, Dami Im's Sound Of Silence drops two spots.

The Monkees' first of two, You Bring The Summer, fights ahead one notch to #6.

The Scott Brothers party higher, moving into the top 5 with Let The Night Shine In.

Also moving up 4  are the Pom Poms with Betty.

That means the top three have all been up there in one order or another for three weeks now.  And this week, the Monkees' other hit holds at 3, She Makes Me Laugh.

After four weeks at the top- and no guarantee they won't be back next week- Tangerine yields the throne with You'll Always Be Lonely.

And the Numero Unos (Uni?)

M10 says...

...case/lang/veirs with Honey and Smoke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And, the Panel Pick...

 ...the Andrea True Connection with More More More!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


You want more?  Come back next week for 1975!