By: Chuck Miller
K-Chuck Radio

K-Chuck Radio: Don’t blame me for these…

I’m not going to lie. Returning to college radio has been an emotional godsend for me. I enjoy going back in time, playing fantastic music, and recounting great stories about some of the best music that ever came out.

You know, in the early 1980’s, with fun tracks and whatnot…

But I will admit that the early 1980’s had some serious clunker songs. And I was reminded of one when all-around good guy Jon Campbell, who covers New York State politics for the local newspapers, made a bit of a gaffe in a tweet yesterday.

And instantly, I remembered this track from the 1980’s, which got some limited play on WHCL – probably because it was a goofy song and had a decent beat, despite its – shall we say – lyrical weirdness.

Trust me, if you thought Toto Coelo’s “I Eat Cannibals” was cheezy, oh man wait until you hear two-hit wonder Hayzi Fantayzee. Yeah, the first song wasn’t bad enough, they had to come up with a second track that was just as awful.

Yeah, that’s the name of the song. John Wayne is Big Leggy. Yeesh. But yeah, they had a second song, which got some reasonable amount of play on WHCL, mostly by people who possessed no taste.

Oh, boy, forgot about this one. Somehow we received this track called “The Curly Shuffle,” and it got a few spins on the station. Of course, when someone decided to goof on the WHCL management and label three of us as Moe, Larry and Curly … really? You guys designated me as Larry? Do I look like a violin-toting porkypine to you?

Oh, and this groaner of a track as well. We had to transfer this song to a tape, and then bleep out two “shits,” one “fuck” and a “masturbate,” because RCA didn’t send us a radio-friendly version. Hey, RCA, you’re sending records like this to a radio station, and you’re setting us up for getting fined into oblivion by the FCC if we play them???

Now here’s a true story. During the time periods when the college had “finals week,” the radio station would switch its format to an all-classical music station. They called it the “Classical Orgy,” or something like that. I had just nabbed a copy of this song, and played it to fill up a few minutes of air time. One of the classical music DJ’s at the time suggested that my playing this record was akin to revisiting the Holocaust. Bro, if you don’t like the song, just say so, okay?

I get it. Hamilton College was listed in the “Preppy Handbook,” a satirical tome of the time. But I don’t think that qualified the DJ’s to play this piece of twee. But some did. To all of you listeners who heard this more than once … I’m so sorry. 😀

Trust me, I could dive deeper into this morass. I really could.

But I’m already getting a headache from these songs. That, and I can’t believe they got as much airtime as they did.

But hey, it’s college radio, right? Experimental? Trying new material? Break through to the mainstream?

Yeah, I guess.

If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I need to mainline some Human League and OMD to get the tracks from this column out of my eardrums. Just bear with me a second and a half. 😀