American Top 40 9-26-81 (Recorded from XM)

[RMarino]

For those who may be interested, here is AT 40 from September 26, 1981, recorded from XM (who for some reason very rarely airs 1981 shows.)

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gp8u9u

 

[Oldbones]

XM (who for some reason very rarely airs 1981 shows.)

I thought 1981 was a pretty weak year for music. AOR was king, Top 40 was reeling from the disco backlash and was very AC-ish. I suppose the music was out there (as witnessed by the explosive growth of "Hot Hits" FMs late '81 and thru '82), but it wasn't getting played much. How long did "Physical" stay #1?

 

[RMarino]

I thought 1981 was a pretty weak year for music. AOR was king, Top 40 was reeling from the disco backlash and was very AC-ish.

You need to look at the glass half-full. 1981 was a year of variety. Because there was no dominating style, you had the best of everything including pop (Hall & Oates, REO Speedwagon), rock (Rolling Stones, AC/DC), soul (Rick James, Kool & The Gang), country (Eddie Rabbit, Juice Newton), even classical! (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) as opposed to say 1991 when CHR was nothing but dance. Maybe your local CHR was AC-ish in 1981, but not everybody's and certainly not mine.

 

[WPPCProductions]

Wow Thats A classic, They should have a AT40 channel to rerun all of Caseys shows.awesome tunes that year.

 

[Jody-Thornton]

Does any one have a lot of the vinyl transcriptions from AT 40 from this period? Man I would love to get my hands on those. What would be really good is getting my hands on shows that Charlie Van Dyke did. When Casey did Casey's Top 40 in the late 80s and early 90s, Charlie filled in several times. Plus he hosted a countdown show in 1982 called "Weekly Music Magazine". A great voice.

Cheers,
Jody Thornton
(Hamilton, Ontario)

 

[FightingIrish]

I thought 1981 was a pretty weak year for music. AOR was king, Top 40 was reeling from the disco backlash and was very AC-ish.

You need to look at the glass half-full. 1981 was a year of variety. Because there was no dominating style, you had the best of everything including pop (Hall & Oates, REO Speedwagon), rock (Rolling Stones, AC/DC), soul (Rick James, Kool & The Gang), country (Eddie Rabbit, Juice Newton), even classical! (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) as opposed to say 1991 when CHR was nothing but dance. Maybe your local CHR was AC-ish in 1981, but not everybody's and certainly not mine.

I thought it was a pretty good era for Top 40 music. Granted, it was a transition time of sorts, as the old AM top 40 stations were figuring out what they wanted to do, and many AT40 affiliates weren't even top 40 (like KCBS in San Francisco, which was more classic hits). Lots of CHR stations sounded ACish, but I guess that's what the music mostly was at the time. I recently listened to some KDWB airchecks from the era, and they sounded very AC in both music and laid-back presentation.

The format itself was in serious transition. By 1983, it came roaring back with help from Z100 and the "Hot Hits" stations.