Category: Music

Monday Night Countdown

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date April 13, 2009

For over 23 years now (since the end of 1985) I’ve been compiling my favourite hit songs of the week. At this hobby’s peak I was compiling two TOP 40 music charts every week. At one point it even became a TOP 50 music chart. For nearly a dozen years (1995 to 2007) these weekly hit music charts appeared on the web at MASSIVESMASH.COM (my former popular web site). Nowadays I simply compile a TOP 15 music chart every week (offline). The TOP 5 out of the TOP 15 is posted here on the blog at this location.

Here are my TOP 5 current favourite songs:

5. The Unavoidable Battle Of Feeling On The Outside – FM Static

4. Control – Clemency (former # 1)

3. Back To The Five – Ruth (former # 1)

2. The Difference – Philmont (former # 1)

1. Set The Dial – Run Kid Run

I’m a big fan of Run Kid Run out of SE Illinois / NW Kentucky. I like their style. Every single song that they’ve released to the radio since I’ve been on this journey with them has been a great song – “I’ll Forever Sing”, “Sing To Me”, “Captives Come Home”, “Sure Shot”, and “Set The Dial”. This is a band that I would love to see LIVE in concert. I’m a fan. Oh yeah – this is the most important part of it all: They love and follow Jesus Christ. That makes them rebels. I dig that.

Saturday Night Retro

In 1979 I was an 11-year-old that became a 12-year-old in June. I graduated from Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland (right in my own neighbourhood):

Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland

That was my school for Kindergarten from 1972 to 1973, and then again for 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, and 6TH grades from 1975 to 1979. The street that I lived on (Red Wing Lane) was located directly in front of the school by a couple hundred yards, but that was not the proper way to walk to and from school because you had to climb the fence and walk in other people’s yards to do so. The proper way to walk to and from school was up / down the hill and over to the left-side main entrance.

Incidentally the more things change the more things stay the same. That school looks exactly the way it used to look 30 to 35 years ago – right up to the facade of the building, the spray paint residue on the left-hand side, the breezeway out front, and the lightposts. A lot has changed since the mid-1970s. The outside of that school is not one of those changes.

If you walk through the front entrance, take an immediate right at the first hallway, and take that hallway down all the way to the very end you should come across a big painted map of the U.S.A. directly on the surface of the wall (if it’s still there). My class painted that as a special project way back then. I specifically painted Hawaii. It was a masterpiece !

It’s amazing the things that I remember from back in the day.

And now for your ultimate ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this # 1 gold pop smash that everyone was singing and dancing to in their living rooms and in their cars just before 1979 morphed into 1980. This my friends is English musician Robin Scott – better known at the time as simply ‘M’. Here’s the official music video for “Pop Muzik” – one of the first videos ever made for television – more than two years before MTV even went on-the-air. This video was sleek, stylish, solid, and state-of-the-art for its time. Check it out:

Until next Saturday night my friends – keep on makin’ history !

Tags 1979, Lanham Maryland

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Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date April 9, 2009

It’s the fastest-growing weekly series in the entire history of this blog:

– You know how we do this.
– So let’s get this party started.
– Complete sentences not required here.
– It was another interesting and exciting day at work.
– I even got into heated discussions with one of my closest coworkers.
– It’s all good.
– My worst day on this journey – far greater than my best day beforehand.
– I love going to work in the morning.
– I’ve been able to state that for only the past 20½ months.
– My career renaissance began at the end of July 2007.
– That’s when I moved from my previous job to my current job.
– I physically moved one-tenth of one mile south to my current job.
– The difference is that of night and day – dark and light – evil and good.
– Dear Lord I pray to you that I don’t spend any money at all next Monday.
– I currently have one of the largest VI$A bills in modern recorded history.
– The cold air outside is almost gone, and my A.C. is back on again.
– We hit 52°F early this morning with an identical wind chill.
– It was 53°F early on Wednesday morning with a wind chill in the 40s.
– Get ready for the mid-80s to return this weekend and stay indefinitely.
– We’re gearing up for a busy Easter Sunday at Life Pointe Church.
– This is the Sunday that you need to wake up early and get to the theatre.
– Gather up the crew, stuff them into the soccer-mom minivan, and get there.
– I can’t wait to see Ela before the first service.
– Ela is one of God’s many miracles.
– Here’s a video for a song that I discovered quite early on during this journey.
– It’s from Watashi Wa.
– They were from Southern California.
– They were together as a band from 2000 to 2004.
– They were rather dysfunctional as a band.
– They loved Jesus.
– They managed to release this gem during the Summer Of 2003.
– I was far from God during that Summer.
– Watch this video and listen intently to what the’re singing.
– I’m not a lot, but you can have “All Of Me”.

Career Driving History Life Music Travel

Saturday Night Retro

22 years ago in 1987 I was a 20-year-old living in Gloucestershire in the southwest of England. Cirencester (to the west) and Swindon (to the south) were the nearest cities, and I visited both of them fairly often. Swindon was the place to go shopping and hook up with British Rail on my trips over to London. Swindon was also the home to this highway monstrosity:

The Magic Roundabout - Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom

I never drove a car while over in the U.K., as I rode with friends or took public transportation. I lived perhaps a mile from the village of Fairford. I walked to and from the village at least once a week or so.

11TH Strategic Group, RAF Fairford, United Kingdom

That’s my military unit from November 1985 to November 1987.

NO edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ is complete without a big hit song from the times, so here we go with this week’s retro classic flashback from the past. It’s the 1987 European dance remix of the 1975 disco smash “You Sexy Thing” from Hot Chocolate. Get up and dance my friends !