Song #381: "Digging Your Scene"--Blow Monkeys (1986)

I paid tribute to one of my first radio friends and mentors, Mike Rancourt, back at Song #459. "Mr. Mike", as he was known on the air, wasn't just the zany overnight guy, he was the station's music director, and he had a knack for picking out songs that other directors could not. His category on the hourly music clock of new music came up usually between :45 and :50 after the hour, just before the last commercial break. And we "tested" some good stuff.

WUPE was playing "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House eight months before it finally started charting in 1987. And another song I distinctly remember when it landed in that rack of carts (oh, yes radio friends, music on carts....and with two triple-decker cart machines with trips so you could play three carts in a row without being in the studio so you could go to the bathroom! Those were the days...so long as everyone remembered to tone the carts at fade out....)

Okay, I'm sorry to my non-radio career crowd, I know I lost you there for a moment.

I probably saw the cart label the first time and thought, "Who in the world are Blow Monkeys?". But the first time I heard the song, and it's unmistakable open, I, pardon the pun, "dug" it. Big time.

It still sounds as fresh today as it did thirty summers ago (wow, really? Thirty summers?), and here it is, one of the many one-hit wonders in the Rob Witham 500.