Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Rant #1,353: Bubbling Under
Several months ago, I told you that I was on a quest, a musical one, to obtain as many of the Bubbling Under tunes that I could, put them on disks, and listen to them in the car.
Just to refresh your memory, Bubbling Under songs are those 45 RPM singles that did not manage to reach the Hot 100 singles chart in Billboard, for whatever reason, but did get some airplay and sales, so they fell just short of the main chart and became part of the Bubbling Under chart.
These songs include regional hits, songs that in their original release simply did not do well, and songs that, well, they are lucky they made even this chart.
I chose the years 1964-1971 to focus on, because those are my favorite years in music, and it would keep me from taking years to accumulate all of these songs if I did it from the inception of this chart in the 1950s.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I am done with the first part of my quest.
I have accumulated approximately 1,950 songs that charted in the Bubbling Under chart from 1964-1971. I have done this by searching through my thousands of records, and using other sources for these songs.
I have to tell you, it's been a lot of fun doing this, and I have discovered an incredible resource of music that I would have never heard, or at least probably totally forgotten, if I had not started this quest.
However, I am missing about 270 songs, music that I could not find anywhere, and that leads to the second part of my quest.
I have tons of music stored on CD-Rs that I have accumulated over the years, and it is time to start searching through them for the tunes that I am missing.
I figure that if I can even get 50 of those missing tunes, I will be way ahead of the game.
This process is going to take some time, but I am sure I will find that I actually have at least some of the songs that I am missing.
Next comes the hardest part.
I will have to ask the public--the public that reads this blog and that participates in the various Yahoo Groups and Facebook groups that I run and participate in--to assist me in my quest.
I am sure somebody has these missing pieces somewhere, so maybe they can help me. If even someone can contribute one song that I need, that would be fantastic.
So I have reached this juncture, and it has been lots and lots of fun.
Everyone from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to Elvis to heck, a group like the Robbs had Bubbling Under songs, tunes that simply didn't catch the fire of the listening public.
They weren't bad 45s, just singles that missed the widest listening ear, I guess.
Some are as good as what did make the Hot 100 during those years, some deserved to be where they were placed.
When I come up with that final list of missing songs, I will let you know.
I guess we all have our quirks, and this is one of mine. It helps to pass the time, and it is fun, doesn't effect anyone but me, and it has opened up a whole new world of music to me.
And I am all for fun!
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