17. Album by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

 17. Album by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kZWlIgKyU&list=OLAK5uy_lfFkmAv1pOn5HklZTfRjqW8HxQTG9yxdA&index=1

In the July of 1983, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts released their third album titled...wait for it..., "Album." The song "Fake Friends" was the first single released from Album, which hardly broke the Top 40 list, followed by the cover of "Everyday People," which again, barely made it into the Top 40. It had to have been disappointing for Jett and the band, considering that their previous album had the number one song on the charts for seven weeks in a row with their cover of "I Love Rock and Roll," as well as a top-ten charting cover of "Crimson and Clover." While "The French Song" got a little airplay, and MTV showed the video a few times, since the song was about having a threesome, and since the chorus that sings about having the threesome is in French, it just wasn't the kind of song that could get onto the charts in 1983 America. As far as album sales go, Album reached only as high as #20 on the 1983 album charts. And frankly, I think it got that high in part due the excellent album cover. The '80s hair, the black leather outfit, the red Converse sneakers (Hondo had a pair of red sneakers in elementary school!), the sexy pout while playing the guitar and leaping into the air with a double knee bend, all against a bright yellow backdrop--I mean, damn! That cover really pops!

I don't recall ever playing "Fake Friends" during a school dance, nor do I have any memories of any songs on this album being related to my summer lifeguarding gig. Truth be told, I basically ignored this album when it came out. So why is it ranked so high on my list?

Fast forward from senior year high school to my second year of work at BYU-Idaho. The school had finished building it's new conference center / indoor gym that featured a large indoor elevated running track that wrapped around the upper story of the gym. (8 laps equaled one mile.) It was about that time that my boss called me into his office and said some things about my work that basically made me feel like all the hard work I had put in during the previous months of working 70-80 hour work weeks had been a waste and that I was not appreciated or valued by anyone at the university. This was also around the time when I was seeing a doctor about being pre-diabetic, and he wanted me to start working out every day, which was something I had avoided doing because of my long work hours. 

Anyway, I spent about a week being super-depressed about all of this. I had completely lost my mojo, and I didn't know if I'd even get it back again. But then one day I felt that spark of rebellion that I'd had back in my high school years--that I-don't-give-a-damn-anymore attitude--and I decided that it was time to get my mojo back. So I decided I was going back to a 40-hour work week, and I got some running shoes and a new iPod and earphones, and I scoured the Apple Music playlists for some running music. When I came across the "Fake Friends" song, I thought it was a perfect fit for my playlist, so I checked out some of the other songs on the album and realized that I'd hit pay dirt. For $9.99 I could get 16 songs that were not only runnable (except for "Why Can't We Be Happy") but also had enough go-to-hell attitude to keep me inspired to keep running as long as they were playing. So I committed to an everyday workout routine of weightlifting and running around that elevated track for every day Monday-Saturday for at least an hour. And Album was the album that I listened to the most as I did that. It is the album that helped me get my mojo back and get me into arguably the best physical shape of my life--even better than when I was training to run marathons. The 1980s sound of driving guitars, the triple-extra-naughty lyrics, the don't-give-a-damn-bout-my-bad-reputation attitude--they all combined to make it a supremely listenable workout album as I jogged lap after lap and did push-up after push-up between miles.

Speaking of extra-naughty lyrics, along with my previous warning about "The French Song," please don't listen to the cover of the Rolling Stones' "Star Star" while you're around the wife and kids, unless you think they'd like to hear the word "starfucker" 62 times. I'm guessing they wouldn't. Also, be aware that "Coney Island Whitefish" has some awesome lyrics--especially if you think about your dumbass boss while you sing along to them--but I don't think you'd want the little ones to incorporate "Scumbag" into their vocabulary just yet.

Oh, and one more warning. The song "Locked Groove" is a 3 minute and 47 second song that you can basically stop listening to after the first minute, because the rest of the song is the same loop played over and over and over. See, when Joan released "Fake Friends" as a single, she put "Nitetime" on the B-side with a locked groove at the end of the song. That meant that if a restaurant put "Fake Friends" into the jukebox, some kid who was in the know would play the B-side of "Nitetime," and at the end of the song, it would just keep playing that loop over and over until the record was "manually rejected." So the people listening to the song would have to listen to that annoying loop for a while before they'd get so upset that they'd complain to the manager, who would then have to figure out how to get into the jukebox and stop the record from playing. And all the time this was happening, the kids who had selected the song would sit there and laugh at how the song was driving everyone nuts. Now, if I'd been in the know back when that song came out, I would have played "Nitetime" on every damn jukebox I came across. Yep. I was that kind of kid. And pulling off that giant practical joke is one more reason why I love Joan Jett. 

Now, on a personal note, the song "Fake Friends" became especially meaningful to me as I reclaimed my mojo. It became even more meaningful about a year later when I ended up getting fired from BYU-Idaho. I do have about six people in Rexburg that I still consider to be genuine friends, but the rest of the campus, especially all of the administrators and faculty and local church leaders that repeatedly said how much they loved me and appreciated me and cared about me, were nothing more than fake friends. They were, in fact, whited sepulchres. So in the end, the one revelation I took from my time at BYU-Idaho--a truth I discovered in the hardest way possible--is that you've really got nothing to lose when you lose fake friends...except for your job. 

Nardo

18. Cosmic Thing by The B-52s

 18. Cosmic Thing by The B-52s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axyFMQUFASA&list=OLAK5uy_lCiIAxZkSeKCFtWxrukxbkgDk87CEUKss

Wanna party like it's 1989? Then you're gonna need this album, not only because the songs put you in a party mood, but also because the album cover looks like a party decoration.

The instrumental "Follow Your Bliss" is the only song you really couldn't dance to, unless you're keen to slow dance, in which case it might suffice. It's the last song on the album, so I look at it as the music that you play at the end of the party when everyone is exhausted and there's nothing left to do but clean up and go to sleep.

Obviously, the biggest hit off this album was "Love Shack," which was written in homage to the little cabin in Georgia in which the group wrote "Rock Lobster," which happened to be the biggest hit from their 1979 debut album, which also happened to be the song that got John Lennon wanting to write music again, which happened to lead to his final album, Double Fantasy. (Nice factoid. THANKS!)

Having already been a fan of The B-52s and owning their first two albums, it wasn't a hard sell to get me to buy this album when it came out during the summer of '89, even though money was tight during that summer. See, that was the summer that Julie spent getting pregnanter and pregnanter, and with no air conditioning in the Standrod House, she holed up for a number of weeks at her parent's house just trying to stay cool and keep food down. I was taking summer courses at ISU with Hondo and trying to work enough side jobs to pay the bills. Then Erik was born in September, and money got even tighter. The only way we survived was that we were living rent free in the Standrod House. Otherwise, I would have had to drop out of school and work full time just to keep the kid in diapers. Fortunately, we were able to scrape by, so I was able to stay in school long enough to graduate and get my first teaching gig at Irving Jr. High. And this album was one that I listened to a lot whenever I was working in my classroom. We even had the 7th grade kids dance in the hall to "Love Shack" once in a while. Also, during this time Julie went back to school and started her job as a nurse, which left me to do a lot of baby tending, which meant lots of trips to the zoo and walks with the stroller around downtown Pocatello. So this album is part of the soundtrack to those early years of marriage and family building in Pocatello--years that were really hard at the time, especially financially. But now I look back on them with much more fondness than they probably deserve. But then again, how can you not have positive memories when the ultimate '80s (and '90s) party album is playing?!

Nardo

19. Musical Bar-B-Que by Space Ghost, Zorak, and Brak

 19. Musical Bar-B-Que by Space Ghost, Zorak, and Brak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNSGRXF51dE&list=PLAC1DE8344E299852&index=1

Top-Notch Tracks: "It Smells Like Cartoon Planet," "I Love You Baby," "Don't Touch Me," "I Love Beans," "I Love Almost Everybody," "Oh Fun Key Bay Bee," "Hoodliehoo," "Put Your Socks On Mama," "Highway 40 Unplugged"

Album Depth: "Zingor," "Ordinary Guy," "Minkey Boodle," "Everybody Needs Lovin'," "What Day Is It?" "The River," "Crazy Lovesick Fool," "The Water Song," "It Stunk," "De Der Down," 

Weak Links: "The Cartoon Planet Story," "The Song That Never Ends," "Everybody Wants to Be Space Ghost," "Ramblin' and Wanderin'" "Don't Send in the Clowns," "Bye-Bye, Goodbye Everybody"

Stand-Out Lyrics: "It smells like--Asparagus and Cabbage! It smells like--Boxer Shorts! Is smells like--Ahhhhh! It smells like Cartoon Planet, Hoowee!" -- It Smells Like Cartoon Planet

"Somebody left the cake out in the rain. Oh, nooo! I was gonna eat that cake. But now it's all wet, and I don't think I want any!" -- I Love You Baby

"I've got ants in my pants as I do the mating dance for Zingor, Zingor, Zingor." -- Zingor

"Our ancient love will survive the scourge of mankind and evolution." -- Zingor

"Don't touch me!" -- Don't Touch Me

"Wake up in the mornin' and tinkleedoo. Take a hot shower. Watch the news! Then it's eggs over easy on the greasy side. Oh, yeah, I'm just an ordinary guy." -- Ordinary Guy

"Work day's over and I got me a date with a big fat piece of pie! I sit around thinking what a good boy am I. But hey, I'm just an ordinary guy. Just an average superhero kinda guy. I'm just an extra ordinary guy!" -- Ordinary Guy

"Nobody comes to visit me in my little cloud. I don't know why. Maybe it's cause I'm cuttin' muffins." -- I Love Beans

"I got my mojo risin'. There's a poodle in my stroodle! Minkey Boodle! Minkey Boodle!" -- Minkey Boodle

"So tell me that I'm smelly. Tell my I'm a dope. But say you'll be my sweetie. At least give me hope. Cause I could use a cuddle, and a smooch or three. Everyone needs lovin'. Even me." -- Everyone Needs Lovin'

"You know, love is a happy time all throughout the universe. It's when a male part of the species goes to the female part of the species and says, 'Hey you want to go on a date?' and then she would say, 'Why yes, I'd like to go on a date' if you're lucky! And then you go to a restaurant, and she gets something called 'a salad,' and then he gets a big piece of beef that he eats. And that, to me, ladies and gentlemen, is love. Kind of makes you cry, doesn't it?" -- I Love Almost Everybody

"You pick your left foot up until you touch your nose. Put your rear on your ear and wiggle your toes. Hop all around like a kangaroo. Your almost ready to Hoodliehoo. Grab some pickles and a pound of cheese. Get some burgers on mayoneese. Eat 'em all up and don't forget to chew. Now you're doin' the Hoodliehoo!" -- Hoodliehoo

"I'm goin' down Highway 40 in my big ol' pickup truck!" -- Highway 40 Unplugged

Album Cover: 9 of 10. One point deduction for leaving Moltar off the cover (and the album). The idea that Space Ghost lives in the suburbs and hosts backyard bar-b-ques with Zorak and Brak is simply delightful. What's even more delightful is that the scene takes a horrific turn for the worse on the back cover when the grill explodes, blowing a hole through the backyard fence. And that, kids, is why grownups should never add lighter fluid once the briquettes have started glowing.

Comments: I cherish the memories of watching Cartoon Planet's "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" with my young son--who very much loved his dad during the 90s--in the basement of our little brick home on Tanager street in Pocatello. However, my memories of this album are mostly of listening to it with Erik during my grad school years while we were driving from Smithfield to Logan. I also listened to it by myself on headphones while working at Utah State writing HTML code in a teeny, tiny office. My latest memory of the album is of listening to it with my son while driving from Disney World to his home in Stuart and laughing our fool heads off. (He is now as old as I was when I started grad school.) For a father and son to have an album that they both love to listen to and laugh at for over 20+ years is no small thing.

Besides the lyrics listed above, my favorite parts of the album include several songs in which Space Ghost, Zorak, and Brak engage in some comedic scatting. I actually did some comedic scatting during my teenage years, so I really appreciate the artistry involved. See, the seniors on the football team demanded that I scat for them Louis Armstrong style while they sang "This Little Light of Mine" on the bus rides home from the games. They even made me scat to the song in front of the home crowd during a school-wide rally on the football field before the Homecoming game. Was it a dumb thing to do? Yes. Was I embarrassed to do it in front of all those alpha females in the cheerleading squad and the pep club? Yes. But when you're a scrawny kid trapped on a bus with muscle-bound seniors that are more than willing to pound you into a pile of silly putty during football practice, it's a good policy to humor them by doing whatever they ask you to do. For football practice during my junior year, scatting meant surviving. Of course, during my senior year when I had put on a little muscle and didn't have to worry about other guys trying to take my head off in practice with a flying tackle, I stopped scatting.

There are 25 excellent songs on this album, but between some of them are little spoken tidbits that are lots of fun to listen to as well. Zorak's Nugget of Joy and Brak's School Daze story (I told you never trust a monkey!) always tickle my funny bone (which is located somewhere in my torso area above my belly button but below my ribs). I like to follow along with these spoken interludes by doing the Zorak parts in my Zorak voice. For some reason, when Space Ghost first came out, I put in enough effort to figure out how to do a Zorak impersonation, but I could never master the voices of Brak or Space Ghost. Maybe I found Zorak easier to do because he's evil just like me. Or maybe it's because I've always had a high regard for the praying mantis because it eats all of the nasty bugs in the garden. In fact, along with the ladybug, it's one of the few insects I refuse to kill even if they make it inside the house. Also, Zorak plays the keyboard, so we have that in common as well. 

Why is this album so high on my list? Because not only does it activate happy memories of those days when I was kind of a cool dad, it still makes me laugh harder than any other album on my top 60 album list, including Weird Al's "Poodle Hat." So for all the joy that it has provided in the past and still provides today, this Musical Bar-B-Que makes it into my top 20 favorite albums.

Up Next: It's as big as a whale, and it's about to set sail!

20. True Romance by Charli XCX

 20. True Romance by Charli XCX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGmM2l39LEs&list=PLrwB2tGkO7bKz-kWcRP7MSm2DYpoQfPUz

When I first heard Australian rapper Iggy Azalea's song "Fancy" on the radio in 2014, I didn't care much for Iggy's rapping. In fact, I found it more annoying that pretty much any rapping I had ever heard. But there was this ear-worm chorus sung by Charli XCX that got me to wondering what else this dark-haired girl had written. What Google told me was that while Charli had put out some music on MySpace and released a few mix tapes, she had only one bona fide album from 2013 called "True Romance." So I YouTubed the album and upon hearing the first song "Nuclear Seasons" I knew I'd found a type of music that was much different from anything that I was used to listening to. It sounded a bit like electronic dance music, but it had lyrics and layers to it that were much more interesting than the typical EDM club music I'd heard before (all of which I found to be really repetitive and boring). I wasn't sure what to call it. It wasn't quite pop music, and it wasn't quite dance music. It seemed to be more akin to art rock, but it really wasn't rock. It was its own thing.

I found out later that the term for this type of music is "Hyperpop," although it's also been called synth pop and gothic pop. However, Charli rejects all of those labels, even though she did refer to the music on her debut album as "Emotional Pop." At first, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. But I found myself going back to the album repeatedly over the next year as one of my get-ready-in-the-morning albums. And the more I found out about Charli XCX -- her real name is Charlotte Emma Aitchison -- the more intrigued I became with her music. It turns out that she has synesthesia--a condition in which the brain interprets sound by seeing colors--and she actually sees colors in the music that she writes. She said that the songs on True Romance are mostly shades of purple. She prefers music that she sees as black, pink, purple or red, and she gave away what turned out to be the first hit song that she ever wrote--"I Love It" by the Swedish group Icona Pop--because she thought the song was the wrong color for her. Anyway, I bring this all up to show that there is a reason that the album cover is predominately black, pink, purple, and red. How you see the colors on the cover are similar to how she sees colors in music.

2014 and 2015 turned out to be a banner years for Charli, as she had her first big solo hit with the song "Boom, Clap" from the movie "The Fault in Our Stars." Her record company wanted to capitalize on her new popularity, so they got her to release a more mainstream pop album titled "Sucker." Along with "Boom, Clap," the album had hits with "Break the Rules," "Doing It," and "Famous." The rest of the album songs are really good pop, but they are a different kind of sound than what we got on True Romance. The record company continued to try to pressure Charli to do more mainstream songs, but after 2016, she said she wasn't going to release any more songs that she didn't love. She took back control of her own artistic future, and she faded from the pop music scene. Well, not really. She kept writing really good pop songs that other artists charted with, all the while experimenting with new sounds and collaborating with other artists. Her influence on other pop artists is pretty big, which is one reason why Taylor Swift asked Charli to go on tour with her in 2018. Of course, when the pandemic hit in 2020, a lot of artists stopped performing and took time off from making music. But Charli recorded and released the album "How I'm Feeling Now" while on Covid lockdown in her home. But of all the songs, mix tapes, and albums she's released over the last decade, I still like True Romance the best. 

Warning! Charli does use the F-word in some of her songs, so they aren't the kind you can listen to while around the kids. But I discovered True Romance around the time I started hating my job at Boise State, and the F-word was uttered by me more than once every morning while I was in the shower and started thinking about how I was about to face another work day in which every single meeting with my so-called superiors would be a humiliating kick in the crotch. Fortunately, a mix of Charli XCX and AC/DC (who never curse in their lyrics) somehow got me by until I managed to find a better job that didn't make me feel like dropping F-bombs in the shower in the morning. Also, Charli will use "shit" quite freely on some songs. It's definitely not the kind of album I could have listened to as a teenager in my basement bedroom. And my wife doesn't understand why I listen to this album either. When she hears me playing it, she'll say something like, "Why are you listening to that?!" Fortunately, I'm an old man now, and I get to listen to whatever I want. At least, I get to whenever Julie has already gone to work and I'm getting ready in the morning by myself--or with my poodles that like Charli XCX just fine! Yes, I realize that hyperpop written by a 20-year-old English woman is not really the kind of music that most people would think and old 50+ year old man like me would be listening to. But what can I say--maybe my ears aren't always as old as the rest of me.

Nardo

21. Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack by The Bee Gees

21. Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack by The Bee Gees  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_izvAbhExY&list=OLAK5uy_k2P31OPRADjYdtzYiDjFmk5Q5wxGIYm_U

If you hate disco, you hate this album. But if you fondly remember 1977 and 1978 like I do--which is that sixth grade year just before I turned 12--then this is album is not only the soundtrack to the movie, but it's also the soundtrack to pretty much your entire school year from September of 1977 through May of 1978. 

While there are a variety of artists on the album, most of them were previously released songs that got included in the movie. But it was the new songs by the Bee Gees that really made this album a true disco juggernaut. Two of the Bee Gees songs on the album had been previously released--"Jive Talkin'" and "You Should Be Dancin'." But they wrote five new songs for the album, all of which became major hits, including:

• Stayin' Alive
• How Deep Is Your Love (one of my Top 200 songs) 
• Night Fever
• More Than a Woman
• If I Can't Have You -- performed by Yvonne Eliman 

Fun Fact: John Travolta wasn't dancing to the Bee Gees during the filming of the movie. He was dancing to...you guessed it...Boz Scaggs. But the record company wouldn't license the Boz Scaggs music because they wanted to hold on to it for another disco movie. Bad move. So the Bee Gees were brought in AFTER the film was shot, and they made sure that the music beats of their songs matched that of the Boz Scaggs songs that were being danced to in the movie.

This soundtrack won the Gramm for Album of the Year, and it's the second-best selling movie soundtrack album of all time. (The Bodyguard soundtrack overtook it.) But as good as the album was, it could have been better. The Bee Gees wrote other songs for it that didn't get included, so they gave them to others to record. "Emotion" got recorded by Samantha Sang with Barry Gibb singing backup vocals. And little brother Andy Gibb recorded "(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away." 

There are some other fun disco songs to listen to on this album, including "A 5th of Beethoven," "Disco Inferno," and "Boogie Shoes"--a B-side song for K.C. and the Sunshine Band that found new life when it got included on this album and got rereleased as a single. There are a handful of other instrumental disco songs that might work well as elevator music, but nothing so good that it deserves repeated listening. Nope. It's the Bee Gees songs that are the main attraction of this album, and it's because of the way that those songs trigger memories of that sixth grade year--playing fear-free at recess because all the bullies had moved on and we were at the top of the food chain, me and Sheldon getting in trouble for wearing bandanas and then stealing them back from the principal's office during the night of the school fair, riding the motorcycle on the farm for hours after school until it was time to watch "Wonder Woman" and "The Incredible Hulk." There just aren't too many albums that can conjure up the feelings and memories of that wonderful time for me anymore, but this one always delivers.

Nardo

22. Invisible Touch by Genesis

 22. Invisible Touch by Genesis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpmiZ7zsHXY&list=OLAK5uy_kSuRYdMa1N5VchHRcr5qSLo8AsFcXNwos

When this album came out in June of 1986, I had just returned from the heart of Sweden in Dalarna back to my beloved Sodermanland, where I was district leader in Esklistuna. Now, I have nothing against the city of Eskilstuna, but we called the area in which our apartment was located the "Concrete Jungle." It was a large section of multi-story apartment buildings with mostly immigrants and young, poor Swedes. I had both good companions and not-so-good companions during my time in Eskilstuna. And during one of the not-so-good companions, I looked for any opportunity to extract even a tiny little bit of joy from tracting for 10 hours a day and getting rejected by almost everyone we came in contact with. One steady source of joy was the local burger joint where we could get a burger and fries and sit down and eat them as slowly as possible while the MTV played on the television. One night, to my delight and horror, a Genesis video started to play. I was delighted because it was a new Genesis song that I had never heard before. I was horrified because it featured these freaky looking muppets that were satirizing Ronald Reagan and his vision of America as a nuclear superpower. 

Now, I wasn't a big fan of Ronald Reagan in 1986, but I had voted for him in '84 election because my other choice was Walter Mondale--who managed to only win his home state of Minnesota that election. (My father--a true-blue Democrat--would have been super upset if he had known how I'd voted.) However, when I went to Sweden, I started to really dislike Reagan, not necessarily because of how his policies had destroyed jobs for local truck drivers AND farmers, but because of all the angry Swedes that yelled at me at their front door because of bombs Reagan had dropped somewhere else on the planet. Swedes really dislike war, and they really disliked Reagan's policies when it came to building more and bigger nuclear weapons. 

Anyway, I knew that this new Genesis video was going to make my life more difficult. Yet, I couldn't help but enjoy watching it. I mean, it's got two things that I really love--Genesis music and freaky muppets! 

Over that summer, I got to hear many of the other songs on the album, and I instantly loved "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," "In Too Deep," and "Throwing It All Away" because they were perfect songs for The Great Depression soundtrack. So when I got home and found out that my brother-in-law's record collection included this album, I made a tape of it. Actually, I made a tape of all the songs except for "Anything She Does," "Domino," and "The Brazilian"--the three weakest songs of the album. But the other songs were so damn good that they became an important part of my post-mission Great Depression playlist. They have a quality about them that is very similar to the Phil Collins' songs on No Jacket Required. Some music critics have said that is a problem with the album because it signals a change from the kind of music Genesis had created in the past towards a more pop-oriented sound. But in my opinion,  I think that it is a good thing. See, the band had put out the Trick of the Tail album 10 years earlier, and although the critics liked it, the band didn't see a single hit song from it. Some said this meant that with Peter Gabriel leaving the band, the fact that the album had no hit songs meant the group was headed towards obscurity with Phil Collins as the lead singer. But 10 years later, that same band puts out an album with five charting songs from an album with only 9 songs on it. So, yeah, music critics, it's okay to like earlier stuff, but lets face the fact that a lot of bands want to make music that makes them money. That's how they get to keep making music instead of having to figure out a way to make a living doing something else--like making freaky muppets for bands that know how to write a hit song.

Nardo

23. Xanadu by ELO and Olivia Newton-John

 23. Xanadu by ELO and Olivia Newton-John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDmjEN-6ekE&list=OLAK5uy_mkHO_6VKXNhs5G5MnxG0cEprdLLB6uT_U&index=1

The summer of 1980 was a summer of "Magic." Literally. I heard that song played on the radio pretty much every day of that summer. It was released as a single at the end of May, about a week after school let out. And it spent four weeks at the Number #1 spot on the charts in August until it got knocked of by Christopher Cross (the artist) singing about how sailing takes him away. If, perchance, I didn't hear "Magic" on the truck or tractor radio while out helping Dad with all the farm work, there was a good chance that I'd hear it on the stereo when I got home, because Ruth added this album to her record collection right after it was released at the end of June. 

Now, normally, in the summer of 1980 I would have wielded the awesome power of the older brother song veto to keep any album off the turntable that would have taken up valuable listening time that could have been otherwise devoted rocking out to Billy Joel's "Glass Houses." However, this album also had ELO songs on it, and that changed everything. So as long as the album got played on both sides so that ELO got is fair share of listening time, I was okay with letting it play without objection.

Truth be told, I didn't mind hearing Olivia sing "Magic" and "Suddenly" at all. The other three songs on the front side were not my favorites. But listening to them was a reasonable price to pay for getting to listen to all five of the ELO songs on the flip side, including the hits "I'm Alive,""All Over the World," and "Xanadu." I thought "Don't Walk Away" and "The Fall" were also very good songs. Ruth didn't like the ELO songs as much as the Olivia songs, but she was willing to listen to the flip side all the way through because at the very end of Side 2 she got a little more Olivia and I got my beloved ELO with "Xanadu." And during a summer of "Magic" could there have been anything more magical than a song that had the power to bring about sibling harmony between brother and sister?

Nardo