rick dees circa 1989... you know... before montell jordan saved the world

this weeks edition of the tuesday tops starts like this...

depending upon your amount of social life, you may have recently come across the story about one of the homely white guys from the much underappreciated, early nineties pop sensation color me badd being arrested for creating what can best be called a public disturbance.(he hit his lady in public...not cool)

now if you are anything like me, you probably immediately asked yourself the questions you normally go through internaly when faced with a wonderous tidbit such as this, "do i care?" or my new personal favorite, "is this news?" and your immediate response was probably much as mine was, a resounding "no, not really." and you forgot about it and went about your day.

and that is actually kinda sad because i used to love the song i wanna sex you up as well as the follow up jam i adore(mi amore) but that sadness nowhere near compares to the amount of sadness that comes with the fact that when i wrote the above sentence i felt compelled to use the phrase "used to."

"well..." you ask, "why didn't you just say that you loved it?"

believe me... it's not because i don't love those songs. and it's not because i feel ashamed to admit it, because clearly i don't. i got over the fear of the cool music police along time ago and just started going with my gut. and my gut tells me that color me badd are good.

so why did i state that i used to love their songs?

color me badd came into existence in this odd nether world that has been nearly completely abandoned by today's retro radio. they came to the fore in a time that is almost looked upon as a musical wasteland, nestled somewhere between the eighties stardom troiga of madonna, prince, and michael and the grunge kids that killed the dance in rainy, crap music town seattle before montell jordan sprang up to save the world again for dancers by showing how we do it. this entire era of pop hits has been systematically swept under the rug by a crap system of radio formatting that over romaticizes crap new wave vomit like the human league while eshewing totally the pre grunge era.(and sadly the era that shaped my pre teen mind) seriously the only things you hear from that era are easy rock songs like bruce hornsby and walking in memphis, already established(fading)artists rare offbeat hits (river of dreams, call me al) and the awesome country songs like randy travis, alabama, and i got friends in low places.

every form of non danceable music has done a great job of never lettting the era completely slip into obscurity. other than the occasional bone thrown our way in the form of bobby brown's exquisite every little step, dance music fans from this era can't find any trace of it on the radio. and sadly i played my glen medieros tape until it popped so i can't roll with that either. i mean what zpl, you can rock rhythm is a dancer, but you can't hit me with salt and pepa's none of your business?

that's sad...
or at least it was until i decided to use the tuesday tops as a forum to try and bring that era back.

without further ado...the top 5 hits from when i was ten that need to be brought back

1. this is the coolest song ever


2. a novelty if ever there was one...with prophetic words form my girl downtown julie brown


3. as in, timbuk 3. a jam that in a fair world i would hear everyday. also featured prominently in one of my favorie episodes of head of the class in a video generated on computer by dennis blunden and arvid engin.


4. the aforementioned mr. medeiros


5. another all time fave



where for art thou rick dees...we need some friday night videos. stat.