Songs lost to radio

Hear that one on SWR on the awesome 80 too :slight_smile:

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Midas Touch by Midnight Star.
World Shut Your Mouth by Julian Cope.
Hitler rap by Mel Brooks

Was on swr on the weekend.

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Stranger in Town by Toto on SWR great song! Also a good change from the normal songs(Africa / Rosanna etc)… I promise I have no commercial interest in the station (its not a commercial station anyway) :slight_smile:.

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All of the tracks (except for the popular B-side “Thank You For The Music”) on ABBA Gold hit the UK Top 5, but this disco number is shamefully excused (and for a good reason: Bjorn and Benny hate it). It was pretty successful here, reaching the Top 15 but it’s largely forgotten nowadays…

A local example: In 1980, RCA wanted this song to be issued instead of “Super Trouper”, and it resulted in a Top 10 hit. It’s widely seen as an “album track” nowadays…

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I confess I’m an ABBA fanatic. I love nearly all their songs. One of the later ones One Of Us was lost to radio for decades but I’ve heard it in the last year a couple of times on Smooth

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A song that should got more “old school” radio attention despite being a decade old:

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Always and ever Southern Sons (SWR FM).

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3GG used to play it all the time in the 90s, and they played it the other Monday morning while I was at work… I nearly had a heart attack as soon as I recognised it

I have this vague recollection that the last time I heard it was on 2CA don’t know when. There are a lot of songs that are “safe” that should be played by WS FM, Smooth even on 2CH this song would fit well in my view. I like the forever classic format, but I don’t think the stream quality is great.

Its also good SWR plays new music too. Not all new songs I like, but there are no other stations that will play Southern Sons followed by a new song. The other song they played this morning was Masterplan by Diesel. A song have not heard for ages. It would be great SWR played some 60s too in their normal mix.

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Love the awesome 80’s on SWR - listen to it nearly every Saturday but do get annoyed when it is off for soccer coverage!

At least he plays different music from the 80’s - not all the same 80’s music WS and 2Day FM play.

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Paging @matt86!

Inphase is also worth a listen if you’re into a wide variety of forgotten pop music. It airs at 10 AM each Saturday morning on SWR. And of course @Mechsta The Mechie Show on 2BBB every Saturday night from 1800.

Saturday is probably the best day for community radio in general; all the learned songsmiths who work 9-5 come out to play.

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Same can be said of WSFM on Saturday nights when they roll out some 12 inch mixes of 80s hits that they never play otherwise

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When I got into music in the early 80’s, 2SM was the only station I’d listen to even though the top 40 was on high rotation - like every 3 hours you’d hear the same songs. When they went “Lite’n’Easy” in April 88, there was no top 40 radio station at all, and until 2Day FM started trying to fill that gap while still playing old songs (not too different to what they are trying to do now), alot of new commercial music at the time just was not played on any radio except for the Top 40 which Triple M played on Sunday nights once 2SM dumped it. Triple J was always very selective with what they’d play leaning mostly to alternative and non-mainstream music.

April 88 was when I discovered community radio and never looked back! Found shows to listen to every afternoon after school/uni/work - including 2RDJ 88.1, RRR 88.5 (I won an album off them in 1989!), 88.7 Bankstown (now gone?), 88.9 Redfern, 89.3 Liverpool, 89.7 Eastern suburbs and the one around the corner from where I lived at the time 2NBC 90.1. Of course there are alot more now.

I still have multiple cassettes of what I recorded off community radio back then - some of my DJ friends did shows on some of these stations. I was on the waiting list for 2NBC to do a show but it never happened.

I could list 100’s of songs lost to radio - just heard on WS-FM here at work “One Night In Bankok” - which they play all the time - and thought of so many other songs in 1985 that you just don’t ever hear at all on any radio station except for the likes of SWR and community radio.

Songs like “Love and Pride” by King come to mind, “Icing on the Cake” by Steven Tintin Duffy (the follow up single to “Kiss Me” - slightly more popular but still hardly played anywhere). “Obsession by Animotion”. I could list heaps of songs lost to radio from 1985 alone!

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Im having a lot of fun using this website

Its Australian and you can play most of the songs.It lists all charts and single release dates.

Maybe some programmers need to be reminded of how many great chart songs not played.

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This is another great resource for charting songs in Australia in the 80s.

Has many copies of ARIA Top 50 charts,

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I’ve come across this site before- thanks for the reminder. It looks like they’ve tabulated every charting single that ever made the Top 100! Most of the songs have mp3 audio or YT video, too.

If they compiled all the songs into a master list and you could hit shuffle, you’d have the makings of a damn good radio station.

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Tune into hhh fm 100.1 now for the Its time show, it takes a look at the charts from the 60s to 80s. This week 1989.

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One lost song they played was Bat dance by Prince.

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Some People / James Reyne played tonight on 99.7 Bridge FM - haven’t heard that since the early 90s!

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@andrewb You’ll be happy to know it’s the full 4 hours this week

List away, you never know when they might become not so lost :wink:

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