I started working there at 16, and quite the time it was! Sometimes I would sneak back to the Muzak machine and switch the station from generic crap (Sugar Ray!)to Modern Rock Alternative. Sometimes it would stay for days until the right manager came in and noticed. Eventually it would become a big enough of a problem to warrant a sticky note over the screen that said "Don't Touch." I played it cool for awhile, but eventually they made my friend Karl the Canadian manager and we messed with it all the time...again...these were the days.
So once I worked my way up to management you could only imagine I would never comply with the lame Muzak requirements. I always promised myself that, I would do the best job I could do, but I wouldn't compromise on the music. But there were too many "customer complaints." Whatever. With the building of the new store in Cordova, we inherited a new station; the 80's station. This great station introduced me to a lot of the music I was too young to remember (Rock Lobster anyone?). Of all the songs that came on...most were crap and very annoying. And the crafty Music Engineers, that is the title of the people assigned to each station (I looked it up), only seem to have a limited library -- meaning the same songs on the same days of the week at the same times of day, or so it seemed to me. After a year or so some songs I was confident I had never heard anywhere else other than Party City began sticking out in my head.
I would be at the "Inflation Station" filling an order for a customer when that certain song that I really enjoyed would come on. So I'd stop, rush to the back before it ended and catch the name of the song and the singer on the display screen. Then I kept a log of them. Then with the help of the internet and "illegal" downloads I put together a compilation of those songs. The whole thing took about two years because in the even my song came on, often I was too late to get to the screen and get the name. The last song I got was Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire." I never could get the name of the song or the singer. The song was so soft I couldn't make out the words being sung, but I would google whatever lyrics I could make out...something about a train? I was way off I believe. But hell, I eventually found out it was Bruce Springsteen somehow, I must have asked like twenty people.
Anyways, so I finished Big 80's Volume One like in 2005 or 2006. I remember how much I anticipated putting the cd into my car stereo and driving around with my new soundtrack. How would the songs sound not coming out of crappy retail ceiling speakers. If I liked the songs when I could barely hear them, how much will I like them now?
Or...would they all suck on their own? Maybe the songs were only good because they came as some relief into the pounding mix of garbage 80's crap that was on the player?
I'm still not sure about the answer. I'd say its safe to say I've made an eclectic mix that only I can really appreciate, after all, each of these songs has a story along with it. Some are popular, some I had never heard of, some are in movies, some are in video games, some are hilarious, some are emotional. The one thing they all have in common (to me) is the fact that they are still good to listen to. Their nostalgia hasn't worn off and they haven't been overplayed...yet (The The's this is the day just landed on an M&M commercial last year, The Promise is in the closing scene of Napoleon Dynamite, and Mad World is in Donnie Darko, although that might be just the remake).
Big 80's Volume One - presented in its original form
I can't seem to get the html code exact, the scrollbar on the side won't appear so you have to skip track by track.
