The Number Ones
I've recently taken to reading a lot of posts from Stereogum and have gotten a bit addicted to a column called "The Number Ones" by Tom Breihan. For a couple of years now he has been posting daily reviews of the songs that hit number one on the Billboard Top 100 starting in 1958 (with Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool") and moving onward. As of this posting he has hit 1976 (today, Steve Miller Band's, "Rock'n Me"). The author isn't talking about these as the best of American music, but rather is writing a sort of cultural history with a lot of interesting side notes about musical influences and connections. This is also that rare internet thing where it is worthwhile scanning down the comments. He often posts some things about what was #2 at the time, or what was #1 on some of the other charts (especially Soul/R&B) and some of the commentators add nice details (as soon as you hit a "They just sucked" comment it is usually best to stop). I'd been seeing links to these pop up in my Facebook newsfeed for a while, but only recently really started paying attention and I think it is because of where he is in the timeline - 1976. In 1976 I turned 13 and my father bought me my first stereo set (combo turntable, 8-track, and AM/FM tuner from the fine folks at Sylvania) for my birthday.
This was a sort of culmination of a track of technological progression that had begun with small transistor AM radios when I was a kid in Michigan. Later I had one those old mono-speaker cassette player recorders. I never really had any music for so I used to make up my version of comedy skits and then played them for relatives. It isn't odd that none of them really thought I'd amount to much. I'd also record the audio for episodes of "Star Trek" and the "Six Million Dollar Man" and then listen to them, since common access to home video recording was about a decade away. (Side note: my good and very missed friend Dana Hatcher and I bonded over being the only two people we knew, here at work, anyway, who had done that.) I had mono-speaker record players over the years, but never a lot of things to play on them. I had some 45s when I was a kid (I can still sing about half of this song about JFK that was on one of those and I have vague memories of a Partridge Family thing but I don't think it was an LP).
Somewhere around 1973 or 1974 when I was about 10 my parents bought me a portable 8-track stereo player. Dad (had to be - Mom wouldn't have thought of this) got me a handful of cheapo 8-tracks to play, most notably a collection of "The Best of Andy Williams". Frankly, I had no really established tastes of my own, so why not? About that same time he had bought this multi-LP collection (from Reader's Digest, I think) of 50's rock songs and we had used his stereo to record a bunch of them on to 8-tracks so I could play them and I did. A lot. As a result I had an early exposure to people like The Big Bopper and Chuck Berry. Not a deep cuts sort of exposure, but i heard them (for any kids out there, in a pre-streaming and pre-internet world, if you didn't have physical access to recordings of music it was at best hypothetical). I did not have older siblings and didn't really hang with my older cousins so I didn't have many of those "listen to this cool music" moments with anyone less than 20 years older than me.
I remember us recording these things because Dad got a bit emotional (working-class white guy in the 1970s - showing emotion was a big deal). It had to be the idea of sharing the music of his teenage years with his son. If I'd had this happen even a year earlier I probably would have had a sort "Ewww, Dad!" moment when he reached out and put an arm around me to pull me closer while he sang. I was just old, or at least mature, enough though to get that this was important to him even if I wasn't feeling it, so I just sat there with him. One of my favorite memories of him, now.
Anyway, I'm 13 and I've got my own stereo. Perhaps more importantly, Dad hooked it up to the same large FM antenna he'd installed on the side of the house. In mid-70s Davidson County that was a game changer. You could get a decent signal from your choice of WTQR, WTQR, or WTQR (for any non-locals, WTQR is the local country-music powerhouse). A significant antenna, though, could access actual top-40 and AOR rock and pop. Suddenly pop music became available and suddenly I knew what was out there. Hence this column reaching the mid-70s means I know ALL of these songs, good, bad, or meh.
I'm looking forward to seeing at what point that stops for me. My guess is somewhere in the early 1990s, when I stopped watching MTV. We'll see.
This was a sort of culmination of a track of technological progression that had begun with small transistor AM radios when I was a kid in Michigan. Later I had one those old mono-speaker cassette player recorders. I never really had any music for so I used to make up my version of comedy skits and then played them for relatives. It isn't odd that none of them really thought I'd amount to much. I'd also record the audio for episodes of "Star Trek" and the "Six Million Dollar Man" and then listen to them, since common access to home video recording was about a decade away. (Side note: my good and very missed friend Dana Hatcher and I bonded over being the only two people we knew, here at work, anyway, who had done that.) I had mono-speaker record players over the years, but never a lot of things to play on them. I had some 45s when I was a kid (I can still sing about half of this song about JFK that was on one of those and I have vague memories of a Partridge Family thing but I don't think it was an LP).
Somewhere around 1973 or 1974 when I was about 10 my parents bought me a portable 8-track stereo player. Dad (had to be - Mom wouldn't have thought of this) got me a handful of cheapo 8-tracks to play, most notably a collection of "The Best of Andy Williams". Frankly, I had no really established tastes of my own, so why not? About that same time he had bought this multi-LP collection (from Reader's Digest, I think) of 50's rock songs and we had used his stereo to record a bunch of them on to 8-tracks so I could play them and I did. A lot. As a result I had an early exposure to people like The Big Bopper and Chuck Berry. Not a deep cuts sort of exposure, but i heard them (for any kids out there, in a pre-streaming and pre-internet world, if you didn't have physical access to recordings of music it was at best hypothetical). I did not have older siblings and didn't really hang with my older cousins so I didn't have many of those "listen to this cool music" moments with anyone less than 20 years older than me.
I remember us recording these things because Dad got a bit emotional (working-class white guy in the 1970s - showing emotion was a big deal). It had to be the idea of sharing the music of his teenage years with his son. If I'd had this happen even a year earlier I probably would have had a sort "Ewww, Dad!" moment when he reached out and put an arm around me to pull me closer while he sang. I was just old, or at least mature, enough though to get that this was important to him even if I wasn't feeling it, so I just sat there with him. One of my favorite memories of him, now.
Anyway, I'm 13 and I've got my own stereo. Perhaps more importantly, Dad hooked it up to the same large FM antenna he'd installed on the side of the house. In mid-70s Davidson County that was a game changer. You could get a decent signal from your choice of WTQR, WTQR, or WTQR (for any non-locals, WTQR is the local country-music powerhouse). A significant antenna, though, could access actual top-40 and AOR rock and pop. Suddenly pop music became available and suddenly I knew what was out there. Hence this column reaching the mid-70s means I know ALL of these songs, good, bad, or meh.
I'm looking forward to seeing at what point that stops for me. My guess is somewhere in the early 1990s, when I stopped watching MTV. We'll see.
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