41. The Grand Illusion by Styx

 41. The Grand Illusion by Styx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIuCdQtNBgg&list=OLAK5uy_lFI8Niz0KvEK_YdIo-ixA464L3jVaF2Go

I'm not sure why Renda bought the 8-track of The Grand Illusion while she was in high school and then didn't take it with her when she went to college. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was an 8-track. But I'm glad she left it, because I nearly wore parts of that tape out from hitting that ca-chunk button to try to get back to a place where I could hear my favorite songs again. Eventually, I came to like the entire album so much that I didn't really hit the ca-chunk button as much. 

For some reason, during my freshman or sophomore year (I can't remember which one), Santa thought I'd like a weight set for Christmas. In my vain attempt to get jacked up for football, track, and basketball, I would put this album on and go through my workout routine at least three or four times a week. I'd also lift weights and listen to it whenever I felt in an especially pissed off mood. (Why must you be such an angry young man?) That's why this album got a lot of airplay during the last three months of 1983 and the first 8 months of 1984. After that, I went to college and couldn't take the album with me. Why? Because it was an 8-track, and I was going to college. And although I had never been to college, I was pretty sure that (a) I couldn't take the stereo with the 8-track player with me and (b) if I played 8-tracks in college, I'd be made fun of by everyone else in the dorm.

The album was a huge success for Styx when it was first released on 7/7/77. (Nice date. THANKS!) And songs from the album still get regular airplay on the classic rock stations--mostly "Come Sail Away" and "Fooling Yourself." But the song that got me ca-chunking the hell out of that 8-track was, of course, "Miss America." In my teenage mind, it was the best song on the album. 

You were the apple of the public's eye
As you cut the ribbon at the local mall.
A mirage of both you and us.
How can it be real?

We love your body in that photograph.
Your home state sure must be proud.
The queen of the United States!
Have you lost your crown?

Well, are you really who we think you are?
Or does your smile seem to wear you down?
Is the girl who you once were
Screaming to jump out?

And the dream that you must live,
A disease for which there is no cure,
This roller coaster ride you're on
Won't stop to let you off.

Well, it's true. Just take a look.
The cover sometimes makes the book.
And the judges, did they ever ask
To read between your lines?

In your cage at the human zoo,
They all stop to look at you.
Next year, what will you do
When you have been forgotten?

Well, aren't you? (Miss America)
Don't you? (Miss America)
Won't you? (Miss America, our love)

James Young's lyrics and Tommy Shaw's driving rock guitar in this song encapsulated the feelings of my 17-year-old jilted heart so magnificently that there were times I was sorely tempted to go buy the vinyl record so that I wouldn't have to ca-chunk that 8-track anymore, and I could just easily move the needle back to listen to the song over and over as many times as I wanted. However, it would have been impossible to justify to Dad why I had spent money on buying an album that we already had in the family's collection, so I just had to keep on ca-chunking my rage away in between all those sets of arm curls and bench presses.

Now that my youthful rage (and muscles) has been replaced by aged hopelessness (and fat), my 55-year-old mind says that "Man in the Wilderness" is the best song on the album, hands down.

Another year has passed me by.
Still I look at myself and cry
What kind of man have I become?
All of the years I've spent in search of myself,
And I'm still in the dark,
'Cause I can't seem to find the light alone.

Sometimes I feel like a man in the wilderness.
I'm a lonely soldier off to war.
Sent away to die, never quite knowing why.
Sometimes it makes no sense at all.

Yep. That pretty much sums it up for me.

Of course, when I'm on my deathbed, I'll probably wish that I could see a gathering of angels appear above my head and sing to me a song of hope. At that point, I might decide "Come Sail Away" is really the best song. However, if much to my surprise, the angels turn out to be aliens that just want to add me to their collection of human oddities, I'll become super-pissed again, and my teenage rage will emerge yet again, and I will battle these space invaders to the death by shooting at them from behind small green buildings. 

Unless the ship looks like one of those that I've seen on ELO album covers. In that case, I'll be happy to climb aboard their starship and head for the skies. 

Nardo

42. Ten Summoner's Tales by Sting

 42. Ten Summoner's Tales by Sting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7km4EHgkQiw&list=OLAK5uy_nueW7o0h9BVWfu4DQAA5RFAJOGWxMADzg

Of all the cars purchased by Earl Olson for his progeny, the orange Chevy Citation was one of them.

It was Ruth's car from the time she went to Ricks College to her graduation from the ISU cosmetology program. But when she got her first job cutting hair, one of her first acts of independence was to buy her own car, at which point the Citation returned to the Olson inventory, and it eventually made its way to me when I made the decision that I couldn't afford the gas it took to run the step-side Chevy pickup. The Citation served me faithfully into May of 1993 when Julie graduated from the ISU nursing program. But before she could become a registered nurse, she had to take the professional nursing exam in Boise. 

In the early morning of the day before the test, Julie had just finished her night shift, so I put down the back seat in the Citation and set everything up for her to lay down in the back with Erik and sleep while I drove to Boise. As we left Pocatello, we had to drive through that thick stinky morning fog that often collects by the Simplot plant. Visibility was really low on the freeway, but the traffic seemed to be flowing okay, so I kept up a speed of about 50 just to avoid having someone rear-end me in the fog. Unfortunately, 50 was still too fast to react to a multiple-car wreck that suddenly appeared ahead of me. A jack-knifed semi truck that was at the front end of the pile up, which about five other cars that had all piled into each other. I slammed on the brakes and tried to steer past some of the cars ahead of me, but I ended up hitting one and it spun me into another car. I remember how it felt like the driver's side window broke in slow motion as we came to an abrupt stop. Then my brain suddenly snapped into normal speed, and I heard a woman screaming. When I saw that it was a pregnant woman trying to get out of her Jeep with her husband's help, I yelled at Julie to take Erik and get as far away from the freeway as she could. Julie gathered up Erik and got out of the back door. When I saw them reach the edge of the road, I then ran back into the fog to try to stop the oncoming traffic. 

In order to be seen by the drivers, I basically had to be right on the edge of the road only about four or five feet away from the cars driving by. I stopped two cars, then an RV, then a few more cars, and then a fully loaded semi truck--all of which would have definitely plowed into the pile up of cars if I hadn't stopped. I kept running down the freeway, waving my arms and screaming for people to stop, even stopping a state trooper that had been dispatched to check out the wreckage. I didn't stop running until the fog broke and I could see that all of the cars on the freeway had come to a stop.

I ran back to the wreck and found that Julie and Erik had been taken in by the couple in the RV. They thanked me for stopping them, because they said they would have hit everyone if I hadn't given them those few extra seconds to stop the RV. Other people thanked me for stopping them too. Julie said the pregnant woman had broken a leg or something and couldn't move very quickly, so she would have been hit and killed by the RV if I hadn't run back into traffic. 

The state trooper talked with me about the accident and took some pictures. I ended up being the last driver to hit anything, so the Citation was the last in a pile-up. When the tow-trucks arrived, ours was the first to be taken away. We rode with the driver back into town, paid our respects to the orange Citation that was hauled into the junkyard, and arranged for rides to get back home. We ended up taking somebody else's vehicle to Twin Falls, where we left Erik to be babysat by Mom. Dad gave us another big car to drive to Boise so that Julie could take her test. When we got to the hotel, I flipped on the TV to the music channel, and "Fields of Gold" was playing. And I remember thinking how I had nearly lost my wife and son in that crash, and I felt really grateful that I still had time left to "walk in fields of gold" with Julie and Erik. 

After that trip to Boise, I purchased a tape of "Ten Summoner's Tales"--a literary reference to "The Canterbury Tales," as well as a reference to his own last name of Sumner. I listened to "Fields of Gold," as well as all the other songs, a lot while I was driving around town and doing after-hours work at Irving Jr. High. There are other hit songs on the album that got airplay, including "Shape of My Heart," "It's Probably Me," and "If I Ever Loose My Faith in You," which has one of the best lyrics on the album with the lines, "You could say I lost my belief in our politicians. They all seemed like game show hosts to me." There is one song on the YouTube playlist that wasn't on the album sold in the U.S.--"Everybody Laughed But You." It's not a bad song, but I don't feel robbed that I missed hearing it all those years.

The album was Grammy nominated for Album of the Year, but it lost to the Whitney Houston soundtrack from "The Bodyguard." But it won three other Grammys for things that people really don't care about. It was also the last album by Sting that I paid any attention to. He's put out ten more since this one, and he's had some songs chart off of them and won more Grammys from them. But this is my favorite Sting album, because every time I hear it I'm reminded of the wife of my youth, my young son, and the orange Citation that gave its life so that we might walk together in fields of gold another day.

43. The Man from Snowy River Soundtrack by Bruce Rowland

 43. The Man from Snowy River Soundtrack by Bruce Rowland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq8bufY8xRk&list=OLAK5uy_ksHxdUV5tiC996oSxidRH0D7BjgYpDbjw

After suffering through two psychologically excruciating months with my first companion in Sweden, Elder Boehm came to my much-needed rescue. And one of the most important things that he brought with him to Östersund was The Man from Snowy River Soundtrack. 

It was officially off-the-program listening, but Elder Boehm said it was okay to listen to it because it was really close to classical music and didn't have distracting lyrics. So we listened to this album pretty much two or three times every night for the three months we were together.  After we finished up a long day of rejection-filled door-to-door tracting, we would put on the tape and enjoy a late-evening snack of hard bread (or regular bread), jam, and cheese. I never tired of the tape for two reasons. First, it reminded me of the movie, which I liked very much--so much so that I had seen it probably a dozen or more times before my mission. Second, because it was an Australian western, it reminded me of my Dad, which served his mission in Australia, and watching The Paul Hogan Show on Sunday nights with Dad, which was always fun to think about when the boredom of mission life began to weigh me down. 

When my time with Elder Boehm came to a close, he went with me to the airport for my flight to Stockholm, where I was going to catch a train to Katrineholm. As a parting gift, he gave me a copy of his tape of The Man from Snowy River Soundtrack, which I appreciated so much it made me cry. 

Okay. I didn't cry because of the tape. I cried because I loved Elder Boehm for everything he had done for me and for the way he had restored at least a little bit of my sanity after those first two months. But I did really like that tape. And I listened to it many nights for the rest of my mission and even after. In fact, I may have listened to it more than any of my other albums--besides my Billy Joel albums that is. And because I loved listening to it so much on my mission, when my brother and my nephews and my niece went to serve missions, I made sure that they all got a Man from Snowy River CD to play at night. And I like to think that they all ate bread and jam and cheese while they listened.

44. Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits

44. Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kha75ibIArk&list=OLAK5uy_lWk-tS8mZDN4M-sQceNwATCNSplMMAjOw

During my first month in Östersund, Sweden, my missionary gig included weekly discussions with Birgitta Sjölund, who was one of the nicest ladies I ever met in Sweden. She was a pretty woman in her 40s. She was so friendly and kind to me--a much welcome change from how many Swedes treated me on the street--and her home was a much-needed haven from the psychological storm that was raging around my culture-shocked head. Her teenage son, on the other hand, did not like us missionaries very much at all. And to show his distain for us during our visits, he would retreat into his room and play Brothers in Arms as loud as he could, thinking that playing rock music at high volume would drive us away. In fact, it made us stay longer. Instead of ending our session and leaving our apartment, we'd keep the conversation going just so we could stick around for as long as the album was playing. That's because listening to the album in our apartment would have been considered a serious violation of mission rules. But hearing it playing in an investigator's home was a totally guilt-free indulgence that could be enjoyed even more, because forbidden fruit always tastes much sweeter. Such are the conversational tactics of entertainment-starved missionaries.

In the last six months of my mission, I had a work-over in Östersund and decided to knock on Birgitta's door just to say high and say thanks. I couldn't speak much Swedish when she knew me, so I wanted to have an actual conversation with her in which I could understand what she was saying back to me. When she opened the door and saw me, she screamed in delight and gave me a big hug--again, something that was forbidden for missionaries to do, but felt REALLY good when pretty Swedish women gave them anyway. We had a great talk, and I was able to tell her how much I appreciated her kindness towards me. I also told her that I actually liked hearing her son's Dire Straits album, which made her laugh. Anyway, this album is tied to that especially fond memory of my mission.

"Money for Nothing" was, of course, the monster hit off this album. I think that's mostly because of the cowbell at the very end of the song. (Why they didn't use more cowbell throughout the entire song is a complete mystery to me.) But the success of the single may also be due in part to its video, which got super heavy rotation on the MTV. The MTV programming folks treated the song like it was a commercial for the channel, when in fact the song is highly critical of the type of videos played on MTV at the time--you know, back when it actually played videos instead of inane reality shows. "Money for Nothing" was one of the first videos to feature computer animation, which seemed like an incredible technological feat at the time, but it now looks like something created by a five-year-old playing Minecraft. The video was played so much on MTV that it was impossible to not see it during that summer of 1985 even though we were forbidden to watch TV in our apartment and we usually avoided watching TV in investigator's homes. I think I saw the video for the first time on the television inside a burger joint in downtown Östersund, which would explain why I get a strong urge to eat fries whenever I hear Sting sing "I want my MTV." 

The single version of "Money for Nothing" won a 1985 Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. (Nice convoluted category title. THANKS!) Dire Straits also won another Grammy off the album in 1986 for Best Music Video, Short Form. But it wasn't for the groundbreaking "Money for Nothing" computer animated video. It was the video for "Brothers in Arms," which I think had to have been made by the same people that did the "Take On Me" video for A-ha.

https://youtu.be/jhdFe3evXpk

The version of "Money for Nothing" heard on the radio back in the '80s was about 4 and 1/2 minutes long. But the version we hear now on some classic rock radio stations is significantly shorter because they've cut out the verse about the "little faggot with the earring and the makeup." Being the father of a gay son, I certainly understand the reasons why this verse is now excised from the song. Also, Mark Knopfler doesn't sing that verse anymore during live performances of the song, so it's an edit that is approved by the artist that wrote the song. However, I will say that in my mind, what "faggot" means today is not what "faggot" meant in the '80s, and I don't think that the intended meaning of the word in the '85 song would be as hurtful as the meaning that would be given to that word in a song released today. 

Anyway, there are two different versions of "Money for Nothing" that have been played on the radio, but my favorite version is the full-length album version which stretches to almost 8 and 1/2 minutes with an extended ending that features over 3 minutes of glorious cowbell bonks!

https://youtu.be/qmRzbKNbTsY

"So Far Away" and "Walk of Life" also charted as singles, but they didn't sell nearly as many as "Money for Nothing." I think that's because so many people bought the entire album that they didn't bother buying anymore singles from it. Even though the other songs on the album didn't get much air-play, I think they are all very good. I especially like "Why Worry" and the songs that feature the trumpet. You'd think that Dire Straits would avoid the trumpet, what with that line from "Sultans of Swing" about that crowd of young boys that don't "give a damn about any trumpet-playin' band" because "it ain't what they call Rock and Roll." I believe a big reason why the other songs didn't get airplay is their length. Three of them top 6 minutes and another tops 8 minutes. As Billy Joel says, they were beautiful songs but they ran too long. Still, they all feature top-notch guitar work, and the album is engineered so well that if you listen to the songs in surround sound, your ears will melt.

By the way, Mark Knopfler not only has one of the most fun last names to say in all of rock and roll, he's also one of the most talented guitarists in all of rock and roll. His guitar solo on "Sultans of Swing" is iconic. (Of course, John's replacement lyrics for "Sultans of Swat" are always fun to sing.)

https://youtu.be/h0ffIJ7ZO4U

But apart from the "Sultans of Swing" solo, I think Mark is at his pinnacle of his guitar-playing prowess in Brothers in Arms. Unfortunately for Dire Straits fans, the band broke up in 1988, got back together in 1991, but then broke up again for good in 1995. Mark just didn't like the toll it took on the band members and their families to keep touring and putting out the albums. Nevertheless, Mark has made lots of other beautiful music outside of the band, including the soundtrack to one of the most beloved movies of all time--The Princess Bride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEN1CxYdQGE&list=OLAK5uy_kfoj7Ns80Xfep4l9kXPes7FNOFrepaWTM

When I returned from Sweden in 1987, my brother-in-law had the Brothers in Arms album in his record collection, so I made a copy on tape and played it a lot over the next year whenever I drove the black step-side Chevy pickup during the summer of '87. It is also part of the soundtrack in my head whenever I remember dating Julie during the summer of '88. That means it's also part of the soundtrack to the few months I lived with HondoJoe (before I left him for a younger woman). Finally, it was a regularly played album when I was fiddling around before and after class at Irving Jr. High during the six years I taught there. 

While memories of this album extend well over a decade, I would say for the purposes of this list that Brothers in Arms stands out as the best rock album that I heard come out in 1985. Yes, I have other 1985 albums that will rank higher on this list. But the fact is that thanks to Birgitta's son, it is the ONLY new rock album I heard played in its entirety from beginning to end that year.

45. 1984 by Van Halen

 45. 1984 by Van Halen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM68ZL42hp0&list=OLAK5uy_k-Wp747MeVPu1IxzedbjSKI4X1Jiteh7w

I should probably use the title MCMLXXXIV for this entry, as that's the title on the album cover. But let's be real. People don't use Roman numerals to refer to years anymore, unless your job is writing movie and TV end credits, or if you're creating commercial graphics for the next Superbowl. I remember once being as a churchball game in which John and Vince were keeping track of the score in Roman numerals on a rolling blackboard, but I also remember there was some discussion as to what to do after the score went above 39. 

This album was released on January 9, 1984, so it is a big part of the soundtrack to that last miserable semester of high school. Since Randy had introduced me to Van Halen years before, I considered myself a big fan of the band, but not so big of one that I tried to go to the concert when they came to Pocatello in early May of 1984. I'd barely been able to get the okay from Mom and Dad to go to the Billy Joel concert, so I didn't want to push my luck with a request to blow more money on tickets to see Van Halen. Also, I never purchased this album while I was in high school because I didn't wan to have to explain to Mom why it was funny for angel babies to smoke cigarettes. Still, I heard the album plenty between it being played at school, track practice, and everywhere else. In the summer after graduation, Bill Johns asked me to go on a campout with the ward scouts as part of the "adult" leadership, and I said I would, even though I was so much older than the other boys and none of the other Arimo Mafia was going. One of the boys had a Sony Walkman and the 1984 tape. I asked if it was okay for me to listen to the album while they were off doing some merit badge stuff that I didn't need to be there for, and I must have listened to it about 10 times in a row. I felt kind of bad when the boys came back and the boy went to listen to his tape, and the batteries ran out of power. That was totally my fault, but I didn't have extra batteries for him, so he had to enjoy the sounds of nature for the rest of the campout. (Remember how Jimmy Gunter wouldn't let us bring electronic entertainment devices on campouts?)

I also remember when 1984 first came out that some of the guys at school were shocked that Eddie Van Halen was playing the synthesizer on "Jump." But Eddie learned to play the piano long before he learned to play guitar. In fact, when the Van Halen brothers were practicing instruments to form a band, Eddie was on the drums, and his brother Alex was on the guitar. But then Eddie complained about Alex's playing, and so Alex made him swap instruments. And the the rest is history. Now, having played the piano a bit myself, I was less impressed by Eddie's keyboard solo on "Jump" than my classmates. Yes, his fingers are moving pretty fast during those solos, but not nearly as fast as Billy Joel's on "Angry Young Man" or "Root Beer Rag" or "I Go to Extremes" or "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" or...but I digress. Still, I liked Eddie's synth work on "Jump" enough to figure out the opening chord progression on the piano at home.

While "Jump" was the early hit from the album--having been released as a single in December of '83--it's not actually my favorite song. That honor goes to "Panama," with "Hot for Teacher," running a close second. After that comes "Jump and "I'll Wait." I like the rest of the songs at an equal level, as they all feature Eddie's guitar pyrotechnics, which is what I like most about any Van Halen song. 

In my opinion, Dave's singing and lyrics were never at the same level of Eddie's musicianship. The only thing Dave did better than the rest of the band was wear spandex and strut/jump/dance on stage and mug for the camera and engage in hilariously goofy antics. But in the MTV '80s, that was kind of visual stage presence became super important, a fact that became painfully clear when Dave left the band and Sammy Hagar took over as the lead singer. Yes, Sammy can sing, but he just isn't as much fun to watch on stage as Diamond Dave. 

This album was the last full album for the band's original line-up, as Sammy took bass player Michael Anthony with him when he left Van Halen, and the two eventually formed Chickenfoot with Joe Satriani and Chad Smith of The Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. Dave reunited with the band for like two songs in the late '90s, and didn't rejoin for good again until 2007. Of course, when Eddie died in late 2020, that was the end of Van Halen. Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's son and the bass player for the group after Michael Anthony left, confirmed as much on Howard Stern's radio show, saying that Van Halen wouldn't be Van Halen without Eddie. He's right.

While I hadn't purchased the album when I was in high school, when I returned home from Sweden, I raided my brother-in-law's record collection and made a dozen or so tapes from the vinyl originals, and that's when 1984 went into the rotation of tapes I jammed out to in the black step-side Chevy pickup. And while I didn't dislike all the songs that Van Halen released after Dave left the band, I was never tempted to buy a Hagar-sung album. So for me, the sound of Van Halen is the sound of this album, with Dave singing/shouting lustful lyrics and Eddie delivering a heaping helping of infectious hooks and face-melting guitar solos, as well as a few keyboard solos just so that he can--you know--rest his fingers a little bit.

46. 90125 by Yes

 46. 90125 by Yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVOuYquXuuc&list=OLAK5uy_nZL3S4dYY2pab61tWxvAou9ZTY2edmGb0

If you're a fan of the brand of progressive rock produced by Yes in the 70s, then you probably don't like 90125--an album named after its catalog number with the record company, which is either a really creative idea or really uncreative idea (I can't decide which). It's much more pop oriented than their previous prog-rock albums. According to the Wikipedia, that's because this album was nearly put out as a Cinema album instead of a Yes album. See, after the band broke up in 1981, Cinema was formed as another band with a different sound that was made up some former members of Yes--including musicians that toured with the group. So Cinema was its own thing, and not really Yes. But when they got to mixing all of the music, they decided to offer Yes's former lead singer, Jon Anderson, the job of being lead singer on this new Cinema album. He took them up on the offer, and shortly thereafter they got together with the marketing folks and began thinking about how they could sell more copies of the album, and that's when the former members of Yes in Cinema decided to stop being Cinema and become Yes again.

Even though I liked their 1972 hit song "Roundabout" well enough, I really wasn't a Yes fan until "Owner of a Lonely Heart" started to chart. I played this song during school dances right after I experienced a major heart-breaking rejection by the red-haired beauty of my dreams. That's when the lyric that being an owner of a lonely heart is much better than being an owner of a broken heart really hit home with me. And that lesson got reinforced a few months later when, after I thought I had recovered from the red-head's rejection, I experienced another major rejection by the black-haired beauty of my dreams, after which I did not recover and stopped dating entirely and renewed my vows to the He-Men-Women-Hater's Club. I may have also thought about trying to get a renewed membership in the Virgin Lips club, but my backstage kiss with Kim Hawes during my junior year had been too mind-blowing to ever want my lips' virginity to be restored. (I did get forced into going on one date during my freshman year of college, but as I explained in my last album write-up, I regretted every second of it.)

There were several other songs on this album that I rate as top-notch, including "Hold On," "It Can Happen," "Leave It," and "Our Song." However, the other songs are quite good and not the usual crappy filler songs found on so many '80s albums. So I really like the entire album, including the instrumental song "Cinema," which won the 1985 Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, which turned out to be the band's only Grammy, which is just plain stupid because they are a very influential prog-rock band. And don't get me started with how a song released on a 1983 album qualifies for a Grammy in 1985. (It has to do with the Grammy rules being formulated by ego-maniacal thickheads too high on cocaine to realize their awesome rule-change or new category idea is a steaming pile of horseshit, not apple butter.)

The band came out with a 2004 CD Deluxe Edition of 90125 with five extra tracks, including two new songs "Make It Easy" and "It's Over"--two hold-overs from Cinema recordings that were sung by Trevor Rabin, not John Anderson, so they don't really have the same sound as the other songs on 90125. While they're okay songs, I don't consider them to really be worth listening to more than once. The 7-minute extended remix of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" sounds like it's just the intro to the song being played over and over by the David S. Pumpkin's band, but David S. Pumpkin isn't singing the actual lyrics along to the music because he's too busy stuffing your ears with overcooked Brussels sprouts. The Cinema version of "It Could Happen" should have never happened. And the A Capella version of "Leave It" sounds just like the original, only without all of that good music that makes it a song worth listening to. This is one of those times I wish I had been exposed to massive amounts of gamma radiation in my youth so that I could have grown three enormous angry thumbs and then turned them all down on these extra tracks. 

However, the original album is definitely worth listening to many times over and over, preferably without miniature cabbages lodged in your ear canals. When I returned home from Sweden in 1987, that's exactly what I did. I got a 90125 tape, and I played it over and over until I felt I had recovered from my previous high-school era rejections and went back to college, where I soon got rejected by the blonde-haired beauty of my dreams. Then I consoled myself by repeatedly playing "Owner of a Lonely Heart" while driving around in that black step-side Chevy pickup, convinced that I was not going to date any more in college until I graduated. 

But then my old mission companion forced me to ask someone out so that we could haul his motorcycles on my pickup out to the St. Anthony sand dunes where we would all enjoy a double date in which everyone could inexplicably get sand in every crevice of their bodies. That's when I started dating the brown-haired beauty of my dreams and stopped being an owner of a lonely heart because, as the last line of the album goes, "two hearts are better than one." Fortunately, when I said to Julie that we were going to have to either get married or break up, she said, "Yes." At least, I took it as a positive response to my kind-of-proposal. It didn't occur to me until now that she may have just been asking me to pop 90125 into the tape deck so that I could hear "Owner of a Lonely Heart" as her answer. Now THAT would have been a rejection that would have been much more difficult to recover from, because that would have left a white-haired woman as my only remaining option for finding true love, and while two hearts may be better than one, that can't really be the case if the second heart has a pace-maker.

47. Chicago 17 by Chicago

 47. Chicago 17 by Chicago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eTnCIy6Rtc&list=OLAK5uy_meQE5iP9DTYhSVEC6S_uhOqesgrLH7v1I

This album came out in May of 1984, so it is connected mainly to a few post-high school memories during the summer and my freshman year at Ricks. One of my fondest memories related to this album is driving with HondoJoe and his brother John in Arimo and listening to John sing made-up-on-the-spot lyrics to "You're the Inspiration." Since that night, I now sing "You're the Perspiration" anytime I hear that song.

If you ordered this album in the mail, how would you ever know that you'd already unwrapped it?

I'm sure that I danced to "You're the Perspiration" at the one date I went on at Ricks, but I'm also sure I was too busy regretting that I'd gone on the date to really enjoy either the song or the dance. "Stay the Night" was definitely not a dance song they would have played at Ricks, and neither was "Hard Habit to Break." "Along Comes a Woman" wasn't all that danceable, so "You're the Perspiration" is probably the second Chicago slow song that I ever danced to--the first being a slow dance with Mary Barlow to "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" from Chicago 16, which is #162 on my Top 200 list, which is also the top ranked Chicago song on that list. The only other Chicago song on that list was "25 or 6 to 4," and that's because it was a favorite pep band song. None of the songs from this album were included on my Top 200 list, but this album altogether is one of my Top 60 albums because of how much I listened to it in 1987 and 1988.

You see, after spending 25 months on a mission to Sweden, I came home to America on a flight from Copenhagen to Chicago. I was supposed to have been on a flight from Copenhagen to Salt Lake City,  but because my group missed our original flight out of Copenhagen, we ended up getting rerouted and put in first class seats on another flight to the states--with the only people on the flight sitting in front of me being the pilot and co-pilot. One of the things I enjoyed the most about that first class flight was that I was finally able to listen on the headphones to whatever rock music I wanted and be 100% guilt free. And as we descended out of the clouds into the Chicago airport, I thought it would be a good idea to listen to the Chicago channel. That's right, they had an entire music channel on that flight devoted to Chicago music. I loved that feeling of being back home in America so much, that I decided that I was going to buy some Chicago albums and listen to them during the summer. But I never did buy any Chicago albums. Instead, I raided my sister's music collection and made a bunch of pirated music tapes of Chicago albums. And it turned out that during that summer and during my sophomore year at Ricks that I gravitated to listening to Chicago 17 more and more. And when I met Julie at the end of my last semester at Ricks, it was one of the tapes that got played a LOT in the black step-side Chevy pickup on our dates from April 1988, when we started dating, until we got married in August 1988. So this album now is forever associated in my mind as a "make-out" album from 1988. (Yes, there are a few other make-out albums on this top 60 list. What can I say. I liked to kiss my future wife.) So that is why even though this album came out in 1984, it wasn't until four years later that I REALLY began to like it. 

Besides the four aforementioned singles, this album has some other solid tunes with "We Can Stop the Hurtin'," "Only You," "Please Hold On," and "Once In a Lifetime." I don't dislike "Remember the Feeling," "Prima Donna," or "Here Is Where We Begin," but they've got such stiff competition from the other 8 songs on this album that they don't really stand out that much.

Fun fact: This was the last Chicago album with Peter Cetera. And based on a documentary I saw about the band, I think that fact is particularly fun for both Peter and the other members of Chicago.

Other fun fact: Chicago 17 was the band's best selling album. They had several other hits after Cetera left the group, which shows that it wasn't the one-man band Peter probably thought it was. Their most recent studio album, Chicago XXXVI: Now, was released in 2014, which continues to sound like Chicago. They just keep on doing what they do.

Wait. I lied. But only kind of. Chicago also put out a Christmas album in 2019. But do Christmas albums really count? I suppose they do for the purposes of counting Chicago album numbers-- which this one clocks in at number 37. Will they make it to 40? If it were any other group, I'd say probably not. But with the way the band works--always bringing in new members to replace old ones that left, retired, or died--there's a chance that Chicago will be around long enough to hit album number 40. They've got 11 current members and 14 previous members, but only 3 of the founding members are still around, and only two still play with the band at concerts. So it's definitely different from the band we grew up with in the 70s and 80s, but they still somehow manage to make songs that have that distinctive Chicago sound. But I highly doubt they'll ever see the success of Chicago 17 ever again. Also, I highly doubt I'll get Julie to make out with me to a Chicago album ever again. Clearly, both Chicago and me peaked in the '80s.