Excuse me, biotches, but you've got this "Chart Critique" thing all wrong, and I am here to straighten you all out! First of all, none of you are critiquing Casey's show, you are just presenting a list of songs from any given week, saying if you like the song or not, and then adding whatever scintilla of trivia you've been able to retain.
This is the AMERICAN TOP 40 pro board, for goodness' sake! We should be critiquing the shows, not the lists you all have found online, and are copy/pasting here. So sit back, and watch how it is supposed to be done!
American Top 40, for the week of August 1, 1970, as presented on SiriusXM.
All the shows start with a recently-recorded Casey saying, "I'm Casey Kasem! Now join us as we go back to this week, 1970!" He sounds real good to me. I wonder if he could still do it?
A very tough-sounding Casey delivers a much-longer intro than we are used to, teasing several aspects of the upcoming show, including the number of new songs, the songs that have moved into the top 10, songs by major acts and "an oldie by one of the greats of the business, ALL TIME GREATS!" lol
40. Casey intros the Impressions "Check Out Your Mind" by calling it "their hit sound", which he will do several times in the show. At some point in the show's history he stopped doing this, for sure, but it makes me want to hear him say, "And it's a BOSS TUNE, too!" I'm also mad at him because he laughed at the Impressions at the outro of this song on the very first AT40 show, maybe the only time I can recall him disrespecting a record. Bad Casey.
39. A very routine intro for Junior Walker's "Do You See My Love", and he no time to say "(For You Growing)". So I said it for him. But he makes up for it by intoning with much brio at the outro, "Do you see my love growing BABY"! By the by, I am sure that Junior says "Do you FEEL my love for you growing" for most of the song.
Now, don't you already agree that
this is so much more interesting
than:
Good song.
Should have been a bigger hit.
Junior's given name is Autry DeWalt Mixon, Jr.
Told ya!
38. For Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4", Casey breaks out his AM ROCK DJ VOICE, and also gets tripped up by the numbers in the title, which he repeats in the outro. How long was it till someone told him it was just the hour of the day the song was written?
37. It's the Supremes making a debut with "Everybody's Got the Right to Love", affording Casey the opportunity to be quite blase about this song. Rightfully so.
36. But it is positively ebullient compared to his throwaway intro to John Phillips "Mississippi", which sounds like a Paul McCartney song, without the melody, talent or charm. No love at the outro, either!
35. First, Casey explains how Billboard compiles the Hot 100, slowing down noticably for the words "data processing computer", attempting to make it sound so scientific and hi-tech. I am sure that a data processing computer in 1970 was a hand-held calculator. Casey gives a nice intro to the Three Degrees' "Maybe", telling us that it is a remake of a 1957 tune by the Chantels.
34. Casey allows a cold open for the Lost Generations' "The Sly, The Slick and The Wicked", and we here a few seconds of the strings at the intro before he starts his comments. Nice!
33. As Casey is making the intro, that weird synthesizer music is playing in the background. It always bothers me! It sounds like a musical interpretation of butterflies attacking the last flower in the field. I am so glad they stopped doing that! Let Casey talk! It's The Who's "Summertime Blues", and Casey again backtracks to mention earlier hit versions of the song. When the song starts, it is the rockingest thing to hit SiriusXM 70s + 7 in the past 12 hours! During the outro Casey mentions for the third time this show that he is in Hollywood. I guess that is important to... no one ever.
32. Casey is actually charming and funny for his intro to "Loveland", saying that Charles Wright is not alone there, as he has the entire Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band there with him! Casey was the original lolcat!
31. Sadly, Casey burns all of that goodwill by making a "fat" joke at the expense of Mountain's lead guitarist Leslie West. Bad Casey! And I guess there are not many calories in crow, as Casey was forced to eat a raft of it for predicting on air that "Mississippi Queen" would be A BIGGIE! Crunch-crunch-crunch...
30. This is the second time this show Casey mentions that a song jumped into the Top 40 after being at a specific number outside the 40 (in this case, #57.) I think it is helpful to know this, as a song that debuts on the Hot 100 at 35 would likely be a much bigger hit that a song that debuts at 85, then moves up to 75, then 50, and then into the 40 at #30. The listener would only know that one was debuting higher than the other, and assume it would be the bigger hit. But knowing a song was in its first week on the Hot 100 at #35, instead of crawling up there, would be helpful in predicting its success. Another practice of these early shows that would not last. The song in question is "Sex Machine" by James Brown, and a bashful Casey can't even bring himself to say the name of the song!
29. "Patches" by Clarence Carter is described as "the fastest climbing record on the charts", up 31 positions from #60! Hearing this song out of nowhere on Sirius XM's 70's n 7 is a joy. Hearing it right after "Sex Machine" reveals it as the melancholy manipulative maudlin marauder that it is at heart. That weepy harmonica! But Casey seems to like it!
28. Here comes "Overture from Tommy" by Assembled Multitude, and Casey thoughtfully explains (to those in the Midwest, I guess) that it is from the Rock Opera "Tommy". Knowing that the Multitude is mostly MFSB doesn't help me enjoy the recording, however, as it doesn't rock enough to be worthy of comparison to The Who's original, and it doesn't have much of that Philly Soul feel that would dominate the charts only a couple of years later. Casey again reveals his latent hipster doofus DJ side by saying, "the name of the
sound is "Overture from Tommy".
27. "Tell it All Brother" - Kenny Rogers. I'm not following the pope on Twitter, but listening to this song must surely take years off the time I will spend in purgatory. Casey's spartan intro and outro consists of him saying the name of the song and the artist. And nothing else.
"Can anyone tell me how many times Casey introduced a song
by only saying the artist and title, and then
did the same thing for the outro?" 26. A pumped up Casey tells us that the Flaming Ember's "Westbound #9" is on the HOT WAX record label! Does anyone know if he said that "Howzat!" was on MCA in 1976?
25. From Hollywoood. And Casey drops science, again, about Mark Lindsay's car, before playing "Silver Bird". Maybe Don Bustany was home sick that day.
24. Elvis' "The Wonder of You" finds Casey (hot) waxing enthusiastically about The K I N G of the pop music charts, saying that "nobody else is even close, not even the Beatles!" I'll just pretend I didn't hear that.
Or the miserable song, either.
23. Casey again explains what a Pipkin is for his intro to "Gimme Dat Ding". Waiting for J. Cole's rap remake, "Gimme Dat Azz." Didn't Arte Johnson sue these guys for stealing his act?
And not a single Ding was given.
22. Casey haltingly predicts a US #1 for Mungo Jerry, having not learned his lesson from "Mississippi Queen."
Sorry Casey. "In the Summertime" only hit #3. But it was atop the Canadian chart for 2 weeks, if that is any cosolation.
21. Casey tells us that the song "Aquarius" was written especially for Ronnie Dyson when he joined the cast of "Hair". Then he plays "Why Can't I Touch You?" instead, the classic bait-and-switch (from Hollywood.)
20. Miguel Rios. "Song of Joy". No joy here. Casey calls it, "most unusual."
19. Robin McNamara makes it a "Hair" twin spin on the countdown! I'm pretending I didn't hear "Song of No Joy", and that "Lay a Little Loving On Me" came right after "Why Can't I Touch You." Casey does not mention if Robin's high voice and gender-neutral name caused him any problems on the streets of New York in 1970.
18. Casey recites 20% of BJ Thomas' "I Just Can't Help Believing" before eventually playing the record. I guess songs were so short in 1970 that it was tough to fill those 3 hours!
17. Back-to-back "Hair" is followed by back-to-back long hair, with CSNY doing "Ohio" followed by
16. "Teach Your Children." Casey does his job in pointing this out to us, but is derelict in his duties by not commenting that one of the most biting protest songs of the Vietnam War era is followed by this lame cream puff of a song. I mean
sound.15. Casey buries the lead by proclaiming, "HERE ARE THE EDWIN HAWKINS SINGERS!
and Melanie."
He doesn't say "Lay Down" which is guess is OK, as Melanie will say it about 100 times in the next three minutes.
Elton John would later change the lyrics to "Candles in the Rain" to honor the passing of Princess Diana.
14. Casey had teased this by saying, "Coming up the long and less-frequently-heard version of a hit that's been in the Top 40 for several weeks now." I cringed to think it was going to be "American Pie" (worst song ever recorded), but I was saved by it not being 1971, and it being "Are You Ready" by Pacific Gas & Electric. I liked hearing this expanded take, my only disappointment being that Casey didn't bark, "Here's P, G and E!!!"
13. Twenty weeks of Vanity Fair's "Hitchin' A Ride" means twenty weeks of flutophone, and Casey being long out of things to say about the song, group, producer or record label.
12. "Here's social commentary by Edwin Starr!" No, not "Happy Radio", but "War".
11. Casey says "Ride Captain Ride" is by "The Blues Image", but my SirusXM display says "Blues Image." Does anyone know which is right?
"American Top 40 originates in Hollywood." I've lost track of how many times he's said this. Did he get a check from the COC or something?
10. Casey calls The Stairsteps "the big family of the pop music charts - 5 brothers and a sister." SiriusXM 70's and 7 calls them the "5 Stairsteps". I wonder who does the math over there? Wikipedia calls them "The First Family of Soul." I love "O-o-h Child" and am quite saddened that the promise of things getting brighter, and walking in the rays of a beautiful sun has yet to come our way, mostly because I thought my generation was much smarter than the one that preceded it.
9. I have a theory that in the same way movies have shorter and shorter scenes as they reach the climax, Casey says less and less as he climbs the Top 10 during the countdown. He calls "Tighter & Tighter" by Alive & Kicking his "favorite song on the countdown."
"Does anyone know how many times a group hit the Top 10
with an ampersand in their name and in the title of
their song? Does Mouth & MacNeil's "How Do & Do"
count as one?"8. The Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" is called their "4th protest song in a row." I don't think it is. They are also called "the most successful male group on Motown." I think they are.
7. Casey's long-winded exposition about Eric Burdon and War completely blows my theory about top 10 brevity out of the water. "Sill the Wine" was Eric's exit from and War's entrance into the Top 40. As a kid I thought he was saying, "Do I, dig that girl?"
6. "The Love you Save" by the Jackson Five gets the swarm of butterflies treatment, so that Casey can tell us that Michael Jackson is young.
"We're in the home stretch now, headed for the cream of the crop." Yes, he said that.
5. More confounding comments, this time about Stevie Wonder and books for the blind, but they can't blunt the greatness of "Signed, Sealed, Delivered." Only Peter Frampton could do that.
4. Casey resists what must have been a very compelling desire to tell us that Freda Payne's "Band of Gold" is the first Top Five hit about impotence.
3. "In the number 3 position this week, Three Dog Night is still wishin' they'd listened to mama."
Yes, he said that.
"How many songs had group names with numbers in them where
the number in the group name was also the same number
as their position in the Top 40? "...from the Atlantic Coast to the Kona Coast..."
Yep!
2. Casey fights the urge to whisper "Here's Bread, and "Make It With You." But just barely.
1. But he can't help himself when he gets to "Close to You" by the Carpenters!
It is so much fun to see how much of what we came to love about the show was already in place, even at this early date in the show's history. Casey is charming and engaging, and for so many listeners his stories about the artists and songs was the only information fans had access to.
Now THAT is how you do a critique!