The Great Indiana earthquake of '10

HUGE DISASTER IN INDIANA AS...

....oops, that ain't what happened. But since I saw some of our Facebook friends talking about it, I thought I'd tell our version.

About 7:45 this a.m., a deer came a-grazing into our back yard. Naturally, Scrappy wakes me up, and after a half-dozen aborted attempts, I got my eyes to open enough to see it, munching along in the tall weeds at the edge of the fence row. Acting swiftly, I went to the bathroom and then returned to bed. I knew that where one went, the other two had to be around, so I sat up and watched. Scrappy, tired of trying to watch a deer standing still in the gloaming, went back under the covers. Soon, the remaining 2 came out, slowly working their way along the exposed lawn where the snow melted overnight. They were just beginning to make their move to the cherry tree at the edge of the parking lot (and my view) when the quake hit. Now one of our neighbors occasionally shakes the building with what I can only assume is their washer or dryer. The slight tremor shakes my windows. Last time, when we were listening to Midnight Mass on Christmas ( and booooo to they what made the decision to boot Midnight Mass from TV this year), it shook so that I actually checked the IRIS seismic monitor FOR an earthquake. This was much lighter and much shorter- 5 seconds tops. The deer looked at the building, aiding in my assumption of a mechanical source. Scrappy leapt out from under the covers like Santa Claus was knocking at the window, but swiftly saw that the deer population had tripled and forgot all about it. It was only once I looked at the news 2 hours later that I realized what a harrowing experience we'd survived.

(Evon Wainscott sent this pic of the real quake to Indianasnewscenter from near the epicenter.)

Not quite Santiago or Haiti, is it?

Step into my time machine week thirty-six

Hey, we reach the new year a few days early here at Time Machine- it's already January 3rd, 1976. And you're test for today is: What was originally written by a Beach Boy, first recorded by the Captain and Tennille, first released as a single by David Cassidy? Answer coming up later. In the meantime, we'll stop off and see the Beatles, Lady Diana, and Dick Clark.



First up, we have 7 hot hundred debuts, and 4 of them we know. Coming in at 89 is Dr. Hook's cover of the Sam Cooke classic Only Sixteen; at 88 is Larry Groce with a song we can all commiserate with, Junk Food Junkie. Aerosmith takes its second shot at hit land with Dream On- it had already stalled once after an 11 week tour of the lower reaches of the chart, peaking at 43, and returns after a 25 month absence starting at #86. Finally, we say hello to Jay Huguely, an ad exec ambushed by the developing CB crazy to become Cledus Maggard and the Citizen's Band, hitting with The White Knight at 85.



Remember last week when I made the joke about the Pointer Sisters song Going Down Slowly? Well this week it becomes the double-butt of my puns as it is now going down quickly, 31 notches to 85 to be the week's big dropper. The less than impressive big mover had to clear 4 songs that went up 14 spots- and did, just barely. Or Barry-ly, as the singer is our good friend Barry White with a song in which he's actually doing something besides popping the cork on the Ripple in the boudoir, Let The Music Play. He climbs 16 (wooooo...) to #54.



Around the tops of the other chart years, skipping the 7's to avoid featuring the same songs two weeks in a row, we find that in 1998, the top dog was the second-highest selling single worldwide of all time- Elton John's Lady Di tribute, Candle In The Wind 1997. It was in the last week of its 14-week run. Still on the far side of the aisle, we have former Whammer George Michael on top in 1988 with Faith. 1978 opened with the song that opened the disco siege, the Bee Gees' How Deep Is Your Love. The Beatles top the chart this week in 1968 with Hello Goodbye. And in 1958, Danny And The Juniors were at the top with At The Hop, a song Dick Clark talked them into changing the name to from "Do The Bop". Good idea, Dick.



I was going to announce that we would celebrate the new year by having the first Feelings-less chart since June 14th. But NOOOO... Morris Albert slams into forward yet again, climbing two notches to 45 with the song that will not die, in its 30th week.



Only two songs join airplay alley this week- that's got to be a TM record so far. The Dynamic Duo are: Eric Carmen climbing 6 notches to 36 with All By Myself; and the Eagles' classic Take It To The Limit, rising 11 spots to 35. In the meantime, Fleetwood Mac's first salvo into the top 40 reaches its peak . Over My Head, written by Christine McVie, stops at 18 the next two weeks to capture the far from coveted almost but not quite salute this week.



Our tour of the #1 albums of the 70s takes us this week to May of 1973, where we find Led Zeppelin on top with Houses Of The Holy. Houses, whose title is a reference to the stadia and venues in which the band plays, is probably unique in the rock world in that its title track got bumped off the album in the final cut and wouldn't show up until the next one, Physical Graffiti. The cover, featuring a couple of naked kids in various shots of climbing a hill, was the second idea submitted by a designer from the art company Hipgnosis for the album. The first artist from the outfit submitted a design that featured a tennis racket. Understandably cheesed at the insinuation that their music was racket, that dude was fired on the spot and the next guy came up with the Blind Faith-ish second effort. Making it actually onto the album were the singles D'yer Mak'r (which is supposedly a phonetic spelling of the way Englishmen say "Jamaica", and hit #20) and Over The Hills And Far Away (which might have made it higher than 51 if they'd have chosen a title that one could identify with the song, a constant Led Zep problem IMHO), along with the popular AOR hit Dancing Days and the title track from their film The Song Remains The Same. Houses held the top slot for two weeks before yielding to the Beatles. Their second greatest hits compilation, 1967-1970 (also called "the Blue Album") spent Memorial weekend at the top. As it says, this double album was their greatest hits in that 4-year period, including the #1's Penny Lane, All You Need Is Love, the aforementioned Hello Goodbye, Hey Jude, Get Back, Somthing In The Way, Come Together, Let It Be, and The Long And Winding Road. It was knocked out, ironically enough, by Paul and Wings with Red Rose Speedway, which came to the top on the strength of the #1 single My Love. Recorded live, Hugh McCullough changed the McCartney-written guitar solo to the one we know and love at the last minute, to Paul's enthusiastic approval. Speedway held the top spot the weeks of June 2-16, 1973.



Two songs enter the top ten, two fall out- both former top dogs. That's The Way I Like It tumbles from 7 to 11; Let's Do It Again from 5 to 13.



Former Temptation David Ruffin moves up 2 to take this week's #10 slot with Walk Away From Love. After 3 weeks of sitting at 10, the O'Jays move up 1 spot to 9 with I Love Music. Hot Chocolate, who I learned did the original to the Stories' Brother Louie (and hit #7 in Jolly Ol' with it), jump 3 to #8 with You Sexy Thing. John Denver climbs from 9 to 7 with Fly Away. Sweet roars up from 8 to 6 with Fox On The Run, while the Ohio Players climb just one to 5 with Love Rollercoaster. Last week's top dog, the Bay City Rollers' Saturday Night, slides down to #4. Up one to #3 is CW McCall's Convoy; also up one is Diana Ross' Theme From Mahogany. And now we answer our test question: It was written by Beach Boy Bruce Johnston; the first recording of it was on the Captain and Tennille's Love Will Keep Us Together lp; David Cassidy released it from his album The Higher They Climb in Jolly Ol', where it climbed to #11 in August of 1975. It was shown to our subject singer, who almost declined it because if you misinterpreted the lyrics (as so many idiots did) the singer comes off as a huge egotist. Finally talked into it by Clive Davis of Arista Records, Barry Manilow recorded it on his Trying To Get The Feeling lp, and this week it hits the top. It is, of course... I Write The Songs.

That's it for this time... we'll all be in a different year when we meet again next time!

news and notes

Item #1: The Gold division wins the 2010 NHFFL All-Pro game. The Gold had 3 rbs and three wrs each get a touchdown to rack up 56 points. 3 T-Cubs (Mendenhall, Bowe, and Wallace), and one each from the division's other tenants; but the star goes to the Clock BBQs Sebastian Janikowski with 4 fgs, 2 of 50+ yds, for 15 points. The Purple come in second with 43, 23 coming from the Arizona D's 23 point Christmas present against Dallas. Jahvid Best, who hadn't scored since his incredible first 2 games of the season, tacked on a 9-pointer as KCAs players scored 37 of the 43. The new Scarlet division limps home with 30, 22 tallied by Aaron Rodgers and his Green Bay D. Thus ends an exciting 2010 season. If you think I was excited to win the Super bowl, how about this: I blew up a copy of my post that day with the headline and picture, and put it on our front door Thursday so when my son and his lady-love came over for Christmas, it was the first thing they saw. It's still out there.

Item #2: Brett Favre pays $50K for impeding the investigation of his improper use of his cell phone. He should have read the fine print: "data and Pee-Pee rates may apply". In the meantime, Jann Sterger's lawyer is whining about the wrist-slapping. I find his opening statement a bit curious.

"My client and I are extremely disappointed, but not surprised, at today’s NFL
announcement that Brett Favre did not violate the NFL “workplace conduct”
policy. While I am not privy to how Mr. Goodell reached such a finding, we
strongly disagree with his conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to
support a violation of the policy. To the contrary, our evidence and the personal
testimony of Ms. Sterger clearly showed a pattern of lewd and offensive behavior
by Mr. Favre that lasted all of the 2008 season. As noted in the NFL’s release,
“there was no evidence to suggest that Sterger engaged in any inappropriate
conduct.” In addition to the offensive messages, there was ample evidence to show
that the sexually explicit photographs were part of Favre’s inappropriate behavior.
Our evidence clearly showed that the photos were sent by Favre."

If this is true, then explain why 1) It took 2 years for the story to come out; 2) at least at the beginning, Sterger was almost as obstructive to the investigation as Favre; and 3) why this is going on in the NFL office and not a courtroom. Personally, I'm a bit skeptical that whatever happened was not encouraged in some way. And not just by Sterger; the whole Rex Ryan's wife's video and Ines Saenz episodes kinda make ya think there's a whole lot of nod-nod-wink-wink things going on in the Jets organization. Kinda ironic in that light that Favre moved from the brothel-like atmosphere of the Jets to the organization that brought us a whole new meaning to the "Love Boat" a few years back.

Item #3: Tucker Carlson, filling in for the apparently temporarily insane Sean Hannity, gives the world his opinion on President Obama's call to the Eagles about Mike Vick:

"I'm a Christian," Carlson quipped mere days after the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace. "I've made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances, but Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should've been executed for that. He wasn't, but the idea that the president of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale."

Thank you, Tucker, for your attempt to make the name Christian synonymous with idiot. By the way, we have more than enough nutbags out there doing that. This is like a "who's dumber" except the competition was eliminated beforehand. I grant you, Vick's crime, whether you believe he's paid his debt or not (which I do), was quite heinous. I'm sure many of us suggested that his punishment be meted out by some of the dogs his circle tortured. But in a world where we can barely get people executed for deserving crimes like murder, rape, child molesting, and treason, I tend to think that trying to assign the death penalty to a charge of dogfighting is JUST PLAIN STUPID!

Item#4: Finally, the threatened working our traditional New year's paid holiday has been averted, at least for Laurie and I, along with the sewers who'd had three 12-hr days trying to catch up. Maybe Scrappy will get his New Years wish of a long morning walk.

Step into my time machine week thirty-five

Hello Hooray!! We've reached the Merry Christmas edition of Time machine, and this is a week for believing, a big week for the King (at least in our story), and the week I tell the soon to be famous Fly Away story. Let's ho-ho-go!!!



8 debuts in the hot 100 this week, and I knew 1/2 of them! Coming in at 85 is the classic by Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody. With their timing just a hair off, we find the ubiquitous Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with December 1963 (Oh What A Night) at 84. Oh well, I guess the song does say, LATE December. If you are a fan of Art Garfunkel at all, you should check out his album Breakaway. The Title track, my favorite of his solo efforts, debuts at 79 this week. And at 77 Rufus featuring the lovely ...er, voice of Chaka Khan, hits with Sweet Thing. One thing I was going to note is at #88 is a song I noticed coming in a month ago, called For A Dancer by Prelude. Now if you remember Prelude at all, you remember their a capella version of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush. This, however, was so Peter Paul and Mary-like in the clip I listened to that I had to check and see if it was the same act. I'll have to fit this in with a handful of early 70's soft folk acts like Batdorf and Rodney to put on my Pandora station, Scrappy Radio.



Another thing that I wasn't going to note but will anyway, is that Feelings has yet again arrested its fall. In its 29th week on the charts, it slips only 2 to 49. By contrast the big dropper, falling 34 notches to 67, is Venus And Mars/Rock Show by Wings. As per usual, we'll see the big gainer in the top 40 debuts. Also, I see no good candidate for the almost but not quite this week; although I saw that the Pointer Sisters peaked last week at 51 and go down slowly to 54 with a song called, appropriately enough, Going Down Slowly. I can't make this stuff up.



Our looks at the tops on other years' charts takes us into the 6's this week. 1996 had already seen the crash and burn of the old Cashbox chart by this week, but on Billboard the top dog was Toni Braxton's Un-Break My Heart, which was in week 3 of an 11 week run. In 1986 Wang Chung was on top with Everybody Have Fun Tonight. This song always reminds me of the night on Letterman's monologue when he announced that Connie Chung and Maury Povich were going to try artificial insemination, leading him to observe, "This gives new meaning to the phrase, 'Everybody wang Chung tonight.' " One year from our current position in the timestream, we find Leo Sayer at #1 with You Make Me Feel Like Dancing- a song that never did the same for me. The top dog this week in 1966 was the Monkees I'm A Believer, which was in the second of an 8-week run. In 1956 the top song this week was Singing the Blues by Guy Mitchell. Mitchell, a pop vocalist who had 9 top tens including 2 #1s (Heartaches By The Number in '59 was the other), was born Albert George Cernik. He was given his stage name by Mitch Miller, who allegedly said, " My name is Mitchell, and you seem like a nice guy, so..." Singing The Blues spent 5 weeks on top in 1956/7, and two in the UK. Only thing is, in Jolly Ol', the 2 weeks were separated by Tommy Steele's version of the very same song. In the meantime, Marty Robbins was charting a country version that held the top country spot for 13 weeks.



4 new top fortys. Up 2 to 40 is a song I believe I mentioned at its debut a few weeks back, BTO's Down To The Line. Up 14 to #39 is the George Baker Selection's Paloma Blanca, a song later made infamous on commercials by Slim Whitman. From 56 to 38 comes the moaning groanings of Donna Summer and Love To Love You Baby. And our big jumper, from 48 to 22, is Paul Simon and 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.



Our album countdown features 3 one-and-dones, in the weeks of April 21- May 5th, 1973. First up was the Alice Cooper band with Billion Dollar Babies. The name was a reference to their sudden unexpected success, and the singles included Elected (26), Hello Hooray (35), No More Mr. Nice Guy (25), and the title track (57). Then Came one of the great albums of all time- Pink Floyds Dark Side Of The Moon. This monster album is claimed to be the 3rd largest-selling album of all time, behind Michael Jackson's Thriller and AC/DC's Back In Black. It remained on the Billboard top 200 albums list till 1988- a total of 741 weeks ( a little humility for YOU, Morris Albert). Never a big singles band, it did include their first American chart hit, Money (13), along with the dreamy Us And Them (101). In fact, the only two top 100 hits in the USA for this legendary band were Money and the #1 Another Brick In The Wall; however, they were much more successful on the mainstream rock chart established thereafter, with 8 top tens there including the #1's Learning To Fly (my favorite), On The Turning Away, and Keep Talking.

Dark Side then yielded to Elvis Presley. He taped a live special from Hawaii on Jan. 14th, 1973, called Aloha From Hawaii which was beamed into 40 countries and seen by 1.5 billion viewers. Of course that was the week of Super Bowl VII in the USA, so American audiences didn't get to see it until April 4th on NBC. The show pulled 50% of the US audience, and is still the biggest ratings pulled by a solo performer. It was also the only film produced by the King himself; and the album resulting, Aloha From Hawaii:Via Satellite, was his last #1. All proceeds from the concert, including Elvis buying his own $1,000 ticket, went to the Kui Lee Cancer center. The album yielded one single, a cover of James Taylor's Steamroller Blues (17).



Two songs enter the top ten, 2 fall out. the droppers are Fly Robin Fly, from 4 to 13; and Sky High, from 5 to 15. Kinda ironic, considering the titles, eh?



Rather than interrupt the countdown in medias res, I'll go next to the Fly Away Story. This was the late fall of our 8th grade year at dear old St. Louis Besancon Catholic School, and we had just went through a traumatic teacher change. 7th and 8th were now in the hands of one Herman Paul Stork, a nice guy for a bearded, warmed over hippie type. He had a lot of patience with the jokesters from our classes (and there were many), as befits a man with such a... er, unusual name. One night, he got permission (I'll never understand how) from Nuns and parents to take us to see the movie All The President's Men, a flick that began my lifelong disgust with Woodward and Bernstein. You that have seen this, all I can say is that the nuns OBVIOUSLY didn't screen it first. In any event, he took us to Pizza Hut afterwards- a Pizza Hut which had, of all things, a jukebox.

Descending upon it, we saw it had our subject song; and yours truly devised an excellent plan. About 4 or 5 songs in, we heard the opening guitar chords and in the midst of conversation, our eyes all met. When John Denver hit the chorus, the 20-some of us as one looked straight at Mr. Stork and as loud as we could, sang, "FLY AWAY". We laughed, he turned his usual shade of red, the restaurant looked at us all confused, and a good time was had by all.



Holding at #10 for a third week are the O'Jays with I Love Music. Fly Away joins us at #9, up 4. Moving from 11 to 8 this week is Sweet with Fox On The Run; KC and the Sunshine Band drop from 3 to 7 with That's The way I Like It. The Ohio Players wake from their week's slumber and resume climbing , up 3 to #6 with Love Rollercoaster. Last week's top dog, Let's Do It Again by the Staple Singers, drops all the way to 5. It is followed by three straight songs that move up 4 big notches- Convoy by CW McCall, from 8 to 4; Diana Ross' Theme From Mahogany, from 7 to 3; and Barry Manilow's I Write The Songs, from 6 to 2. Which Means that this week's #1 song- and the last for 1975, as this is the chart dated 12-27-75- is....

The Bay City Rollers with S-A-TUR-DAY- NIGHT!!
That's it from sunny Honolulu (yeah, right). See you next week in a brand new show!

A snowy walk.

Warmer weather makes snow doable, so out we went the last two days. Today my plan was to go into the woods at the big tree and follow the deer trail across from it into the woods. We had seen yesterday that it had been well travelled since the last snow. Going down it today it was like a four-lane highway, packed with deer, squirrel, raccoon, bunny, and fox tracks. After about thirty yards it explodes into a maze of branches reminiscent of the Wayne Trace-Pontiac intersection (affectionately known as the idiot loop). Two main paths became apparent: One goes north along the ravine and seemingly into the back yard of the people at the west terminus of the street. The other went foreward along the west side of the ravine at the edge of Stony run, turning south until finally veering into the ravine. I chose the easier and less travelled fork that descended into the bottom of the ravine and eventually met up with the south main. This doesn't mean that Scrappy chose it; you'd think that, with such an obvious set of trails to follow, he would follow one. But no, he followed his nose- which never knows- ignoring not only trails, but large patches of deer urine and holes left by squirrels digging up their stash.

We followed the trail down to the path (we thought) to The Spot. Due to snow and lack of familiar vegetation, we crossed into the heavy brush along Stony Run a bit early- quite a bit early, as it turns out. Now, Scrappy is a great companion on a walk. Not such a great companion in heavy brush. Eventually we fought our way down to The Spot, where Scrappy went wading and encouraged me to do the same. (I declined.) Figuring ice cold water on little feet in the snow might not be the best of ideas, I turned us back in the general direction of the main trail. Scrappy knew he was still close to the creek and did everything he could to convince me to go back down so he could get in the water again. This included trying to rush me through stuff that I had to split apart, break off, brush aside, duck under, and/or climb over. As I said, not such a good companion in heavy brush. I fought my way through all this, asking Scrappy to slow down/don't go that way/watch out/turn around. Which he generally ignored until finally a branch snaps me in the face and I respond with a loud snarl. That gets Scrappy to sit down with an "Oh, $#it" look on his face and wait for me.

Soon, though, as we finally reached clearing, he picked up the scent of something long gone and began rushing us again. He was reacting as he usually does for deer, but I saw no tracks on the hardpack of the main trail. I assumed he probably had a whiff of the fox, who we'd seen in the distance yesterday. At the south side-entrance, I heard a chirping and commotion in the tree that towered above us. Two squirrels were in the middle of a serious altercation. One would chase the other up and down the branches until the chased would spin-jump, smack the chaser around, and then take off again. This went on up the tree, to a skinny branchlet about 4/5ths of the way up. Al;l the way out to the end they went, and at the end, the chased turned again at her/his antagonist and smacked him/her. I was sure we were going to watch one or both take a nice dive downward and assume trail temperature. However, the antagonist backed up about twenty feet to the nearest crook, and sat down. The other, still at the tip of the branchlet, did the same; and there they remained for the two minutes that it took me to get bored waiting for them to continue the battle.

Scrappy was not only oblivious, but still full of energy to go. He never slowed down until we were just about home.

The Time Machine Christmas Special

'Tis the season for a countdown of the fifty biggest hits since we started time machine (IOW the time period from late May to Christmas 1975). This is a warped just for fun hybridization of the year-end Cashbox and Billboard charts, with just a hint of author's discretion. But I will tell you this much- whatever else was disagreed on, #'s 1 & 2 were the consensus picks. Here we GO!



Suprising me to come in at #40 is Sammy Johns and Chevy Van. Though he was a one-hit wonder, he wrote the great country song Common Man that John Conley made famous. At thirty-nine is the first of the "mythical top ten" to make it, Orleans' Dance With Me. For what I mean by the "MTT", you'll have to go back to an earlier TM and look it up. England's Ace featuring Paul Carrack gets #38 with How Long. Melissa Manchester, Barry Manilow's "Sweet Melissa", is at 37 with Midnight Blue. Did you know that Toni Tennille joined the Beach Boys' Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston as the backup vocals on Elton John's Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me? Toni and Daryl Dragon aka the Captain are at 36 with The Way That I Want To Touch You, a song that they had released twice before on 2 different labels in 1974 before it finally became a big hit in 1975. Linda Ronstadt has the 35th hit on our countdown with You're No Good. The Eagles hit twice on this countdown; the first is Lyin' Eyes at 34.



The next 2 spots belong to KC And The Sunshine Band; Get Down Tonight at 33, That's The Way I Like It at 32. Another of the "MTT", America's Sister Golden Hair, is in the 31st spot. Michael Martin Murphey, whose 5 top 40 hits pale beside his 12 top ten country hits, is at 30 with Wildfire, which he wrote based on a dream he had involving the stories of a ghost horse his grandfather told him about when he was a child. Silver Convention takes #29 with current top ten Fly Robin Fly; besides That's The Way I Like It, the only song with that distinction. Linda Ronstadt gets her second mention with When Will I Be Loved at 28. Tom Scott, who was a member of the studio version of the Blues Brothers, blows the soprano sax on Wings' Listen To What The Man Said, our third member of the "MTT" and holder of the #27 slot.



Major Harris makes our list at 26 with Love Won't Let Me Wait. The second half of our countdown begins with Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds and Falling In Love at 25. Taking a look at the year 1975 in music, some of the acts getting their start this year were Aussie giants Air Supply and the Little River Band; funk ensemble Heatwave; the Boomtown Rats, who gave us the hit "I Don't Like Mondays"; and Ritchie Blackmore (from Deep Purple) formed Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio, breaking into the music scene with the roar of The Man On The Silver Mountain. Passing at least temporarily from the scene were the Faces, with Rod Stewart concentrating on his solo career and Ronnie Wood joining the Rolling Stones; the Guess Who, as Burton Cummings found himself just as popular in Canada solo; the Raspberries, as Eric Carmen hit with the album whose title was a double entendre- All By Myself; and one hit wonders Stealers Wheel, whose frontman Gerry Rafferty would soon become much bigger with the release of City To City. Acts like 50 Cent, Lil' Kim, Michael Buble, and American Idol's Bo Bice were born in 1975; Peter Ham of Badfinger committed suicide this year, and country music lost pioneer Lefty Frizzell.



Olivia Newton-John takes the #24 spot with Please Mister Please; BJ Thomas was at 23 with (here we go one more time) (Hey, Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song. Barry Manilow salutes Melissa Manchester and cribs from Chopin with Could It Be Magic at 22; and Tony Orlando And Dawn are at 21 with He Don't Love You. Brazillian Morris Albert, originally Mauricio Alberto Kaisermann, is at 20 with the oft-mentioned Feelings. 10cc, who tried awfully hard to make the chart twice with the same song (but I caught my boo boo), settle for one time at 19 with I'm Not In Love. Wikipedia tells us about the Ozark Mountain Daredevils," It is mentioned in the book about the band "It Shined," by Michael Granda, that the band name was derived from "Cosmic Corn Cob & His Amazing Ozark Mountain Daredevils," a name that John Dillon came up with at a Kansas City "naming party" after the band was told that the name they had previously been using, "Family Tree," was already taken. The band shortened the name because none of the band members at the time wanted to be called "Cosmic Corn Cob," and they did not want the name to sound similar to The Amazing Rhythm Aces." The former corn cobs hit at #18 with Jackie Blue.



The Bee Gees have the 17th song in our list with Jive Talkin'. Ballroom Blitz by Sweet, which was released and hit#2 in the UK and #1 in Australia, Denmark, Germany, and Ireland in 1973, was finally released in North America in 1975, where it hit the top in Canada and lands at 16 in our countdown. The Spinners come in at 15 with Games People Play; the female vocal was the late Barbara Imgram, whose Spinners connection included her husband Sherman Marshall writing their hit Then Came You. The next 2 spots belong to Freddy Fender; he puts Before The Next Teardrop Falls at 14 and Wasted Days And Wasted Nights at 13. Another gone but not forgotten figure is Van McCoy, who lands The Hustle at 12. War captures the #11 slot with Why Can't We Be Friends.



Along the way, I've mentioned several songs that I knew but never made it into the top forty. Here's the top ten of the below-top-40s, arranged by their peak on the Billboard charts.

10. I'll Go To My Grave Loving You- the Statler Brothers(93)

9. Never Been Any Reason- Head East(68)

8. Nice Nice Very Nice- Ambrosia (63)

7. Long Haired Country Boy- Charlie Daniels Band (56)

6. Mexico- James Taylor (49)

5. Por Amor Viveremos (the Spanish version of Love Will Keep Us Together)-Captain and Tennille (49)

4. Sail On Sailor- the Beach Boys (49)

3. Welcome To My Nightmare- Alice Cooper (45)

2. Make The World Go Away- Donnie and Marie (44)

1. Katmandu- Bob Seger (43)



The top ten leads off with Janis Ian, who said she was At Seventeen but actually ended up 10th. #9 is Pick Up The Pieces by the Average White Band. #8 is the Eagle's second song on the list, One Of These Nights. Sir Elton John, joining Sir Paul McCartney as nobility on the list, is 7th with Island Girl. John Denver comes in at 6 live from the Universal Ampitheatre in L.A. with Thank God I'm A Country Boy. The 5th-biggest song on our list comes from (and what would our countdown be without) Frankie Valli and the uncredited Four Seasons with My Eyes Adored You.



Earth Wind And Fire are the #4 act with Shining Star; David Bowie, accompanied by the screaming John Lennon at #3 with Fame. And now, the top 2, agreed by both charts. the #2 song of 1975 belongs to...

Glen Campbell, with Rhinestone Cowboy!

And the #1 song- surprise, surprise- issssss.........

The Captain And Tennille, with Love Will Keep Us Together!!!

Well, I hope you enjoyed our special journey. See you later this weekend on our regular trip.

This is my Christmas card to all of you who know me from my blog. To all of you who have read, commented, followed either publicly or anonymously, or just stumbled past on your way to what you were REALLY looking for, I hope you have a happy and blessed day, full of the real reason we celebrate the day. Now, I like to check my stat page, and I know that people from many different countries have passed this way. I hope you will excuse online translators if I mess this up, but...
Lystig jul!
Frohliches Weihnachten!
Vrolijke Kerstmis!
Natal feliz!
Munter jul!
Vesel Bozic!
С Рождеством Христовым !

And to all a good night.