Interesting post from Popdose that more or less precisely covers my high school years. I wouldn’t say that the majority of this stuff is good, per se (although some of it is) but it definitely has that “I haven’t heard that song in a long time, which may or may not be a good thing” quality about it.
This is someone who probably wasn’t listening to the top 40 station in town. You see, in those days, we had something called “AOR”, which stood for “album-oriented rock.” What that meant was dinosaur rock, surrounded by newer bands who sounded like dinosaur rock, with a sprinkling of just enough new and offbeat stuff to make it seem kind of cool, in a plaid shirt and Levi’s corduroys sort of way. The term stemmed from the fact that these stations “dug deep” and played songs off the album other than the hit single, although that usually meant they were just playing what would be released as the next single.
Maybe I’ll put together my own version one of these days. I have strong opinions on the subject of 1979, but my version might have some of the same stuff. Probably minus the Rainbow.
That playlist brought back memories of two bands I hadn’t thought of in forever – though not the songs on the list… The Sherbs “No Turning Back” and Shooting Star “You Got What I Need”. This would reference my WKNC days.
WPLJ was more of the AOR station of NYC. Every July 4th they did a “Top 500” songs list and number one was always Stairway to Heaven (except the one year The Wall Pt. 2 made it to the top, much to the dismay of many).
Us little snotpunks were listening to WPIX (“The new 102”) which played a lot of obscure stuff, and then we all switched to WLIR.