I'm sort of stuck in the 80's for the moment, but I'll work my way out of it; I promise. I remember hearing about Robin Lane & The Chartbusters on WCOZ in about 1980 if memory serves. They used to broadcast entire records late at night and I used to use my tape deck to record them in my Emerson College dorm room. My memory isn't what it used to be, but I'm pretty sure I recorded Robin Lane & The Chartbusters debut album on one side of a cassette and Heart's Bebe Le Strange on the other. I'll bet if dug deep around here I could locate that exact TDK cassette complete with faint static in the background from the radio station signal. It probably has a recognizable DJ introducing what was new music at the time. I remember playing this particular cassette ad nauseum for months. I loved the Wilson sisters back then and The Chartbusters' first album was solid as well.In 1980 I lived on the 8th Floor at 100 Beacon Street in Boston in an area we dubbed "Centerville" because we had set up a living room in the hallway that served as community property. It was surrounded by five or six double occupancy dorm rooms that we all lived in. We'd order Domino's pizza and watch Saturday Night Live and make god awful drinks out of anything we could cobble together. I think we used to call them "Smashers" for obvious reasons. It was an innocent time and I don't remember doing all that much studying to be honest about it. We would all share our music with each other and, of course, we'd be in tune with what was being played on the radio. Robin Lane's single "When Thing Go Wrong" was a monster hit back then and we all just loved it.
I was probably the only one who just kept playing the record all the way through though. I'm sure there is a science to releasing singles as it relates to their placement on a full length LP, but if I was in a band I'd never want the first song on a record to be my lead single; particularly if you are in an unknown band. It's just too easy to play the first song and change the record at a party. Do that enough times and you never get to the rest of the album. Buy more records and that first track only record is now associated with being a one hit record in your mind and you wind up never playing it at all. I was never that kind of music listener, but I've seen it happen with friends of mine. I always played B sides of singles and the entire album if I bought it. Part of that was because I couldn't afford more than four new albums every two months or so in those days. I had to listen to everything to get my money's worth. If only that were true today...
That time in my life came and went faster than I could have ever imagined, but my love for Robin Lane's first record, and "When Things Go Wrong" in particular, has never waned. I had mentioned 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry" in an earlier post and these two songs are in the same league for my money. Both were female fronted bands and both of these songs should be on any Top 50 list of Boston's greatest local songs. I used to play it at parties decades later and invariably someone would bolt forward to ask me who the artist was. Here are some fun Wikipedia facts regarding Robin Lane I didn't even know. Did you know she was married to future Police lead guitarist Andy Summers for two years? Did you know Robin sang backup on the song "Round & Round" from Neil Young's epic 1969 release Everybody Knows This is Nowhere? And Apparently "When Things Go Wrong" was the eleventh video ever played on MTV's very first programming day back on August 1, 1981. Now that's pretty cool no? I'm sure Robin is so sick of this song by now that she might distance herself from it, but that'd be a shame if that were true. It has held up amazingly well and still sounds like a million bucks.
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