I should write more about the career of singer and songwriter Dan Hartman, but here’s something quick. Dan’s most famous solo song is “I Can Dream About You” from the “Streets of Fire” soundtrack, hitting #6 in 1984. This is the version you heard on the radio and the video I remember from MTV. That’s Dan’s voice, though in the movie, you’d hear singer Winston Ford. The person who looks like he’s singing isn’t Hartman or Ford. That’s actor Stoney Jackson, who you can also spot in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video and Disney’s 1994 “Angels in the Outfield.” The “back-up singers” are actors Robert Townsend, Mykelti Williamson, and Grand L. Bush.

There’s a second version of the video where you see Hartman’s face. The movie clip is playing on TVs in a bar and Hartman is the bartender.

So that’s the face behind the voice, but there’s also a song you hear on classic rock radio all the time, and never realized it was written and sung by Dan Hartman. That’s because the band is named for someone else. Here’s Dan and The Edgar Winter Group, around 1973 and “Free Ride.”

As a songwriter and producer, Dan Hartman worked with everyone from The Plasmatics to James Brown to Disney, co-writing a song for “Oliver & Company.” Dan Hartman died in 1994, just 43, of an AIDS-related brain tumor.

When this song popped on the radio in 1980, you probably thought it was Paul McCartney and Wings. It’s actually Glaswegian singer/songwriter Ali Thomson. “Take a Little Rhythm” is Ali’s only US hit and it went to #15. That opening sax definitely reminds me of “Listen to What the Man Said,” but there are a few more Macca mannerisms in there too.

I started playing Ali this week because I’ve rediscovered a CD series from Rhino Records called “Radio Daze: Pop Hits of the 80s.” It’s five discs of songs, usually remastered, that are hard to find and don’t get as much radio play as they once did. Rhino did the same thing with the 1970’s and the “Have a Nice Day” series, but while that’s 25 CDs of the ’70s, “Radio Daze” wrapped after just five. I’m trying to add them all to my collection, but I can’t find Volume 3, the one that actually has “Take a Little Rhythm,” for less than $30.

So what’s Ali Thomson doing right now? He put out a new album about a year ago and, in April, sat down in his garden to play.

I listen to different music depending on whether I’m brainstorming or really trying to lock in on the fine details. For dreaming up stuff, I lean toward bright and up-tempo – power pop ear candy. Of course, I can just dig out my Jellyfish (in the pic) or Rockpile or Material Issue, but I often turn to the streaming station Great Big Radio.

Great Big Radio is free, created and programmed by Howard Hoffman, currently the Creative Services/Production Director of 710 WOR radio in New York. You’ll also hear Howard’s voice on commercials and radio liners around the country.

Great Big Radio promotes its format as “The Hits. And the Songs that Should’ve Been.” As Howard puts it on the GBR blog – “ …perfectly pop, well produced, performed with passion and still couldn’t find their way back to the airwaves until we came along.” As I’ve been writing this, I’ve heard Janet Jackson, The Byrds, Rick Astley, Stevie Wonder, and early Chicago.  The Beatles play at half-past every hour. Howard also voices the sarcastic liners between the music.

When I need to concentrate on what I’m writing, lyrics are bad. I start paying attention to the song instead of my own thinking. I could switch to instrumentals, but I like the human voice. So, I listen to music in a language I don’t speak. Amadou & Miriam are a married couple from Mali who sing in French and several African languages.

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No surprise here, but oldies radio doesn’t play all the oldies. You’ll hear Electric Light Orchestra’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” a million times before “Strange Magic” ever pops up. Who’s the band in the pic up there? Exactly. The Sylvers had three Top 40 hits in 1976 and 1977, but you’re probably not going to hear them outside of a “Saturday Night Disco” specialty show. (Yep, they’re all brothers and sisters.)

Sean Ross writes the Ross on Radio column and recently broke down what he considers the songs of 1975-1979 with the biggest Lost Factor – “songs have the widest gap between hit status then and a lack of airplay today.” Go check out the full list, but here’s three personal favorites.

Donny and Marie, Bay City Rollers, and Shaun Cassidy all lost staying power for being so tied into the Teen Beat pop of the ’70s and their squeaky clean images. You grow out of sweetie Scott Baio and grow into sweaty Robert Plant. I insist this Shaun Cassidy #1 is still a fun bit of cotton candy. It’s produced by Michael Lloyd, who also was behind Belinda Carlisle’s “Mad About You” and “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from “Dirty Dancing.”

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I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of talented people on projects big and small. Today, the story of meeting a band I loved in high school and making an unofficial video for one of their songs.

Senior year of high school, the fall of 1984, must be when I first heard Los Lobos. “Will the Wolf Survive? didn’t hit big on radio, but it got constant MTV play. It’s about trying to preserve Mexican culture while living in mainstream America. It’s also a metaphor for musicians who want to be heard. A white high school kid in Iowa can’t relate directly, but I think everybody knows about feeling like an outsider.

Not long later, Los Lobos’ biggest commercial success was their 1987 cover of “La Bamba,” from the Ritchie Valens biopic starring Lou Diamond Phillips.

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