Night Owl Cards

(I am in that in-between period where I've just come home from vacationing and the return to work is still a day away. It always feels weird and out of sorts. So, I have an appropriately weird, out-of-sorts post for you. I don't blame you if you don't comment/read. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 354th in a series):   As if I'm not a big enough nerd for clinging to a sports-card collecting hobby from childhood all the way into middle age, here's something that will surely earn my nerd badge.   I have been compiling my own music charts -- as in the kind that Casey Kasem counted down -- off and on for more than 45 years.   I first became aware of music countdown shows during the fall of 1979. The first one I listened to was not Casey Kasem's Billboard Top 40 countdown, it was some other version (it wasn't the Rick Dees either, though I was aware of that one at some point). I looked forward to the weekend when it would broadcast the top songs of th...

Everyone has a "coming of age" year. For me, that year was 1979. I've mentioned the year several times in previous posts. It was a year that formed some of my views on life and a year that produced some meaningful moments and lessons that I follow to this day. It was also the year that I began to appreciate music for more than what was played on the radio. I made my first store purchases of music in 1979, most of them coming in the form of 45s, because I couldn't afford an album. One of those 45s was " Pop Muzik " by M. I adored this song. It was unlike anything playing on the radio at the time (we were still on the disco down slope), and its quirky, robotic nature appealed to me. I bought the record at a guitar shop on the same street where I bought baseball cards. I proceeded to play the hell out of the Robin Scott masterpiece ("New York, London, Paris, Munich") and its B-side, "M Factor". "Pop Muzik" is one of the ...