In my very first post on this blog I talked about how as a kid in junior and senior high I filled boring study class time with a paper and pen version of a more or less daily (or whenever) log. Much like this and virtually any casual amateur blog out there, it was simply the brain oozes of a fleeting moment. Thoughts and feelings taken as a snapshot at a particular time in one's life. Sometimes trivial and insignificant, other times monumental...at least to the author.Well, one of the regular features of my so-called "Time Reports" was an awards competition, kinda like the Grammys, but run only by me and for me. The songs in contention were only selected by me, listened to by me and winners chosen only by, you guessed it, me.
The rules were simple, but I forced myself to adhere to them as much as possible:
1. Only songs that were heard between the months of June and September could be considered.
2. The source of the songs could be any media; radio, record, TV, live performance, etc. It didn't matter.
3. The winner need not specifically be chosen because it was my favorite. Frequency (that is number of playings) had to be considered. Media under my direct control (like records or cassettes) should not be purposely overplayed so as to skew the competition. If a song got a lot of repeat playings it should be simply because I chose to listen to it for the merits of the song and my truly honest desire to listen to it at that time.
4. Even a rarely played song could be chosen if there was a significant life event of that summer connected to it somehow.
The song chosen, usually sometime in late September, would be named "Summer Song" for that year.
I first came up with this idea in 1979 and though I had a hard time choosing since there were so many important and much-listened to, as well as influential songs of that summer, I chose "Rise" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
Oddly, the song, to this day, doesn't evoke images and memories of fun summertime activities like the beach or pool or amusement park or anything like that. I hear it and I remember listening to it playing on the dining room speakers at Bijou's Bar and Grill, a bistro I worked at in the summer of '79 as a dishwasher when I was 15 years old. It's early on a Sunday morning, well before the restaurant opens for brunch and I'm vacuuming the pale green shag carpeting, weaving the heavy commercial-grade vacuum cleaner under and around the bistro-style tables.
The charting of the Summer Song winners continued for over ten years. I also retroactively named Summer Songs for years past, back to 1969, the year I figured, at the age of five, I might have become aware of pop music.
When the '90s dawned though, much of pop music had started to change and veer away from my personal tastes and I stated to listen to less and less pop music radio. Never having been a big advocate of purchasing albums, cassettes or, by then, cds, I started to enter a self-imposed cone of silence. By 1993, I'd abandoned the Summer Song list.
I resurrected it briefly after moving to Florida, the land of eternal summer and expanded the ruling regarding the months the song could be heard to encompass March to October...more reflective of summer-like weather here in the Sunshine State. But allowing more of a sampling window didn't in and of itself improve the selection, variety or quality of the music out there, so after I begrudging picked Sisqo's "Thong Song" in 2000, not for my enjoyment or appreciation of it, but more for it's inescapable ubiquity that summer, I again abandoned the hobby.
Pop music still hasn't improved over this decade, in my opinion. The solid reign of hip-hop and rap on the music scene is unassailable still and without disparaging the artists or fans of that genre, it just isn't my cup of tea.
But I feel it's time to bring the Summer Song competition back. Though the so-called pop format radio stations have long ago been omitted from my pre-set selection buttons on any of my car stereo controls, I'll continue to listen to the music I like and we'll see where the chips fall.
So look for an announcement sometime in October for the winner of the 40th Anniversary Summer Song. I may update this blog with a regularly recurring feature showing the Top 5 or so as the competition trods along throughout the summer. I think I'll try to also do something special, again as a recurring feature to honor the past winners, which I have included in the timeline below:
1969 Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by The 5th Dimension
1970 ABC by Jackson 5
1971 Joy to the World by Three Dog Night
1972 American Pie by Don McLean
1973 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce
1974 Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks
1975 Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille
1976 Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band
1977 Car Wash by Rose Royce
1978 Last Dance by Donna Summer
1979 Rise by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
1980 Funkytown by Lipps Inc
1981 Planet Claire by B-52's
1982 Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force
1983 Rockit by Herbie Hancock
1984 What's Love Got to Do with It by Tina Turner
1985 19 by Paul Hardcastle
1986 Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston
1987 Bad by Michael Jackson
1988 Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin
1989 Batdance by Prince
1990 Vogue by Madonna
1991 Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) by C+C Music Factory
1992 Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers
1993 - 1996 no selection
1997 Walkin' on the Sun by Smash Mouth
1998 It Began in Afrika by The Chemical Brothers
1999 Livin' la Vida Loca byRicky Martin
2000 Thong Song by Sisqo
2001 - 2008 no selection
2009 to be determined