Favorite Year-End Show?

[Shadoe Fan]

As I was listening through several year-end AT40s recently, I realized that my favorite 2 year-end shows to listen to are 1987 and 1991:

1987: I enjoy just about every song in the top 100, and I love the #1 montage near the end of the show.

1991: Although there are some real stinkers on that show (Vanillia Ice, "OPP", "Iesha" to name a few), there are a lot of good songs that just aren't played anywhere anymore.

I do like most shows 1977-1994 though, and I've recently rediscovered favorites from the early 80s. However, the two above rank the highest.

What are your favorites?

[Deleted]

1984

[jlbass]

Tie between 1981 and 1990

[Matt Cameron]

Tie between 1978 and 1983.

[Indycolt]

1975 and 1976. The Music was awesome for me,and I remember where I was when I listened to those shows,especially the 1976 YE. There were other YE shows I enjoyed,but not like those two.

[coldcardinal]

For reasons I explained in a different thread, it will always be 1983 for me.

However, as far as the sheer quality of music, I can't decide between 83, 84, and 85.

[cdman71031]

my favorite Year end shows and I have 3 are 1982 and 1983 and 1984.

I guess 1982 would be my favorite. I discovered at40 a little earlyer that year in September and had been listening to full countdowns only since the 10/30/82 show. First of I can still remember today exactly where I was when the show aired. It was right before my grandfather died in early 1983 and we were at his house celibrating Christmas I had my trasister Radio and tuned in to WNBC in New York. the most amzing thing I heard the countdown only once in 1982 yet 18 years later before I compleated my Casey origonal Year End collection I could still remember several thigs about this great show clearly.

the most impressive is I'd never forgot about when Casey during Hooked On Classics Mentioned every Classical peaces as they played.

The other reason is since I only discovred AT40 in October alot of the songs were new to me and I Loved that fact.

1983 and 1984 would be second and third . There are a lot of memeorys I have of AT40 but the last 2-3 hours of this show and the 1984 show were thing I'll remember forever. The felling I had sitting on my bed listening to WPLJ in new York playing this hits. It was such a shme that they had to go a screw up the countdown in 199. I never really listened after that.

[Radioman]

1986 first choice
1984 second choice
1985 third choice

If I had to include WW1 programmes,
I would take 1989 as the second choice
and the Top 40 of the 90's as the third

[charlypp]

It's really a pity and a tragedy there no 1988 YE with Casey,
1987-77.

[jlbass]

I agree. That was Shadoe's first year end and Casey was being paid not to broadcast by ABC Watermark. That show would have sounded much better with Casey. Some people like Shadoe but he was a bit too silly for my tastes.

[nenad]

My first choice would be 1984, although most of the mid 80's years were great (83, 85, 86, 87) in their own way...

[Hervard]

cdman71031 said:

It was such a shame that they had to go a screw up the countdown in 199.

Wow, the show has been on for THAT LONG? That's over 18 centuries! They must have finally improved in 1982.

Actually, 1982 would probably be my favorite show, since there were so many cool songs on there, and ones that didn't even hit the Top Ten. Starting in 1984, it was pretty much downhill from there, since as the years went by, there were less and less non-Top Ten hits on the Top 100. I don't know; I just liked the novelty of songs that missed the Top Ten yet made the year-end show.

[at40petebattistini]

My vote for the favorite year-end program goes to the Top 80 of 1970. I was 15 at the time and, as you know, music duri ;Dng adolescent years just has something special about it.

But another reason for this choice -- Casey played numerous songs in this countdown that were never before heard on AT40, songs that peaked earlier in the year. (In fact, some of those pre-July songs were played in this show and never played again.) It's too bad that we didn't get Billboard's complete Top 100 for this broadcast. But the Top 80 is better than the Top 40! ;D

[Jeffster]

My favorite year end show by far is the AT40 top 100 of 1989. Many on this site have heard me tell the story before, but here goes again:

It was a dark and stormy night...okay, kidding, it was actually a clear night, but it was new year's eve 1989 and I tuned into my local At40 affiliate here in College Station, Texas.."Hot Rockin' Oldies 1240 KTAM." The regular weekly shows were 4 hours long to do a top 40, so naturally, I assumed that the top 100 would take 10 hours. So I turned on the radio at 2pm, thinking they might start the show then, so it would end at midnight. But alas, no Shadoe. I tried again at 3, and at 4, faithfully checking every hour on the hour all the way up past the usual 8pm start time, and even one more time at 9 just to be sure. They had some special concert program on for part of the time, but the rest was just usual music, and I was crushed. It wasn't until years later, that I had any notion of the concept of stations running year end countdowns in time slots other than their usual one, so I didnt check new years day or any other day, so I have no idea if they ran it at all, but I was so disappointed. A year later, they did the same thing, only this time they dropped AT40 altogether, and it wasnt heard again in my market until 1993.

Fast forward to 2002 and the beginning of the era of show trading for me, when a kind soul, John Bass, sent me the top 100 of 1989 show. And not just any version of it. I would have been thrilled to hear the show even if it was a direct from cd or vinyl copy, but what made it all the more special was that it was an off-air recording, from "Z98" in Memphis, complete with a few local touches, like "top Memphis artist" Kevin Paige played as an extra. So when I heard Shadoe's booming voice belt out "and NOW..an American Top 40 SPECIAL.." I was back at 13 years old again, the anticipation of all the great songs from my favorite year in music and my favorite radio show host ever, Shadoe Stevens, was all there. Thirteen and a half years later, I had finally heard Shadoe count down the hits from the first year I listened to countdowns, and even though I've never been to Memphis, and knew before I heard the show who #1 would be (I had no idea back on that new year's eve in 89), I listened to that show 8 hours straight on my comouter, till 1 in the morning, writing down all the songs as I heard them, just like I wouldve done 13 and a half years earlier. And I felt like somehow my life was just a little more complete. ;D

[bandit73]

I'm surprised there was any American market as big as College Station that lacked an AT40 affiliate in 1991 (prior to the show's ruination in November of that year). Even my area still had an affiliate then.

I figured that probably every market in America had an affiliate from about the mid-'70s through 1991, except out in the desert or the tundra or something.