Another Friday, another Top 5. This one features a chart from the legendary WABC, New York, dated February 7, 1977. The survey’s a bit odd, numbering only the top 14 on the original survey, although the people at ARSA have assigned chart positions to some of the other songs that are shown without positions. Beats me why, but we’re not going to worry about the numbers anyhow. Here are five memorable records from that chart:
“Car Wash”/Rose Royce. It’s a long way from inner-city Los Angeles to the rural community I grew up in. And so, life as portrayed in the movie Car Wash seemed pretty exotic to me. What was absolutely familiar about it, however, was the way the radio provided the continuous soundtrack for every moment of its character’s lives. That was how we rolled in my ‘hood, too.
“You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”/Leo Sayer. You knew what you were getting with Sayer as soon as you knew he performed in clown makeup during his early days, and it wasn’t going to be Dylanesque seriousness—it would be lightweight, infectious pop that is, in this case, positively bubbling with delight. There’s no doubt that he does indeed feel like dancing, and if you were that happy, you’d dance, too.
“Dancing Queen”/Abba. The further removed in time we get from this record, the more I believe it’s one of the true monuments of the 1970s, a record people will play when they want to know, 100 or 500 years hence, what the decade sounded like. And it’s one case where Abba’s fabled overproduction is completely appropriate—this is, after all, 70s cheese, and overproduction was often integral to 70s cheese. Exhibit A: the enormous piano glissando that opens the record. It’s ridiculous. And perfect.
“Weekend in New England”/Barry Manilow. I am not a reflexive Manilow basher anyhow, and you’ll never catch me bashing this, which might be the single best record he ever made. The tune is lovely, as is the lyric—about one perfect weekend and the unspoken fear that it might never happen again.
“Year of the Cat”/Al Stewart. Ultimately, the reason we keep listening to our old records is because they remind us of who we were, where we were, what we were doing, and who were were doing it with when those songs were on the radio every couple of hours. We’ve all got a few songs in our collections that are indelible that way. This is one of mine.
“Year of the Cat”/Al Stewart (buy it here)
Filed under: Record Charts, Tracks
Yes, “Year of the Cat” is one of mine, too — the last couple months of college, changing career plans and adding a last-minute (almost) minor. And there are others, of course. Play even an instant of “Dark Side Of The Moon,” and I’m in the lounge of a youth hostel in Denmark during my college year abroad. I call them Time & Place songs. They’ll be — I think — a regular part of my blog under the title of “Taking Me Someplace Else For A Moment, if you care to stop by: http://echoesinthewind.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
All those songs are my favorites!
That was a great time in music.
This is a timeless tune to be sure! I always thought this would have been a much bigger hit than it was if it would have been dropped from a plane smack dab into the summer of 1980……it sounded very much like a lot of the top 40 stuff from that summer. (and that is only to say that this song was far ahead of its time…)