Music - Hitbusters

My god. I could tell you a story or two about the songs on Hitbusters. The two albums I first worshipped have singles featured on Hitbusters (Volume One): Purple Rain and Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. I also owned Rebel Yell, Private Dancer, various tapes by The Cars, and a stack of stuff by U2. Seeing the Pointer Sisters reminds me that there was one other show on television at that time featuring pop music and it featured the completely lame Solid Gold Dancers.

It is the songs that weren't hits that I really cherish now because this is the only evidence that they even existed. I too have been in bands and I too have craved the immortality of just one song on some crappy album like this. Who now would remember Jermaine Jackson's Dynamite or Bronski Beats' Smalltown Boy? And whatever happened to Ray "I ain't afraid of no ghost" Parker Jnr? Thanks to this album they will always have a place in my heart.

Notes

1. It was about 20 years after I bought this album that I found out that the original Song to the Siren was by Tim Buckley, Jeff's dad. Both the orginal and this cover are fantastic.
2. "One man comes on a barbed wire fence." If I had one question for Bono it would be: what the f**k does that mean? Is it some kind of S&M thing?
3. Drive was used in the original Band Aid so that must have all happened around this time. I bought my mother Bob Geldoff's autobiography when he was famous. I read it at my Gran's place and dropped it in the bath. So now it has that bulging, accordion look that all books that have been wet get.