Month: November 2018

The Major’s Top 5 Hits RETRO – 1985

~ Chris M. Day

Every Friday night I post the Top 5 of one of my classic hit music charts based on personal preference from either 10, 20, or 30 years ago (rotating each week).

This week I’m going back a little further, as I continue my multiple anniversary weekend. It was exactly 33 years ago (to the date) that I wrote down (via loose-leaf paper, pen and pencil) my very first personal hit music chart in my military dorm room at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire England.

Here’s what the first page of it looked like – chart songs # 20 to # 6:

IMG_3369

Nice variety there, and so here it is – the Top 5 – for the week ending Saturday November 30TH 1985:

  1. “We Built This City” – Starship
  2. “Separate Lives” – Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin
  3. “Part Time Lover” – Stevie Wonder
  4. “Say You, Say Me” – Lionel Richie
  5. “Never” – Heart

I was 18½ years old and a brand new resident in a foreign country when I penned that chart above. It was really the next step in a hobby that began about a dozen years earlier during the mid-1970s when I first discovered and fell in love with Top 40 radio and especially “American Top 40” on Sundays with my idol (at the time) Casey Kasem. I wanted to grow up and be just like him. The Billboard Hot 100 was my bible back then. I began reading and studying it at my local public library.

This paper edition of my personal hit music chart lasted nearly 7 years. Starship’s “We Built This City” was the first of 174 # 1 hits during that time-span. After a 3-year hiatus I began a second edition of this hobby, and it was all-electronic (via Excel spreadsheet) and eventually online and worldwide. That edition lasted for over 14 years. During the Summer of 2006 my chart flipped from Secular pop music to Christian pop music to coincide with the start of my salvation.

So Happy 33RD Anniversary to my very first personal hit music chart. What a hobby of a lifetime !

It’s halftime. I’ll be back on Sunday and Monday with my remaining two blog posts for this weekend. I’ll be celebrating another anniversary come Sunday. Enjoy your Saturday. Thank You for your time.

All rights reserved (c) 2018 Christopher M. Day, CountUp Ministries.

Happy Anniversary Weekend !

~ Chris M. Day

This is a huge anniversary weekend for me. I’ll observe one in this blog post, and then I’ll observe another one in tomorrow’s blog post, and then I’ll observe yet another one in Sunday’s blog post.

On November 30TH 1987 – the Monday after Thanksgiving that year – I boarded a plane in the Washington D.C. area (my original hometown) – for Miami Florida. I had never been there before, and I knew very little about it other than the fact that the weather would be much sunnier and warmer than the Washington D.C. area. I arrived in Miami that night, and I awaited my military transportation from Miami to Homestead AFB. It eventually arrived, and I arrived on the base during the wee early morning hours of December 01ST 1987. I was Active Duty in the USAF back then – an A1C / E3.

Hurricane Andrew destroyed Homestead AFB on August 24TH 1992, but then it was partially rebuilt. (Its geographic location ultimately saved it.) I returned to the base almost 19 months later upon its grand reopening as Homestead ARS (and then Homestead ARB). I still work on the base today. Nowadays (and for the past 11 years) I crunch numbers and count money.

So Happy 31ST Anniversary to me at the airbase near Homestead Florida. I arrived when I was 20½, and now I’m 51½. I wasn’t expecting to spend most of my life working there, but that’s what’s happened. I thought that I had seen the last of the airbase after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but here I am 26 years later. I think I have another 5 good years in me before it’ll be time to pack it up, retire, and move away from this Homestead.

All rights reserved (c) 2018 Christopher M. Day, CountUp Ministries