Marie Osmond, "This Is the Way That I Feel"

Ever wonder what Marie Osmond would have sounded like if she had mashed up two Diana Ross hits, "Love Hangover" and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"? Then you should be aware of absolutely sweet Marie's final Top 40 chart appearance as a solo artist, "This Is the Way That I Feel." It spent a single week at #39 in June 1977 before disappearing into the Land of Lost Pop Songs. Thankfully, people like YouTube poster Music Mike remember them. (Check out his YouTube channel for an immense number of forgotten gems.)

Kenny Loggins, "Celebrate Me Home"

Somehow I managed this holiday season to not hear "Celebrate Me Home" one single time. I'm remedying that now.

It's one of the most mawkish of Kenny Loggins's efforts, and that's saying a lot for someone who's easy to mawk. But I'm a sucker for every manipulation in it - the gospelly builds, the hush moment as the backing vocalists come back in, and most of all, that simple feeling of warmth and security that comes from being greeted home by loved faces. Hearing "Celebrate Me Home" makes me pine for the days when your family and friends could actually greet you at the gate at the airport. The beautiful drama of re-entry loses something in the yards and yards of that other kind of security.

I hope that as you read this entry and listen to the song, you can look back at a holiday moment when you saw someone you don't see often enough, and smile.

PS: I've been thinking that George Michael really could've sung the hell out of this one in his prime.

Village People, "San Francisco"

I'm going offline for several days, gonna see some good friends and have some good times. While I'm gone, enjoy this clip that disproves the axiom that "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Because nothing stayed the same as this.

L&Gs, I present a very awkward and not ready for prime time Village People stumbling their way through their joyous, vibrant, rapturous celebration of America's greatest city: "San Francisco."

The Nightmare, "Riverbottom Nightmare Band"

Christmas hit midtown NYC this week.

Like an anvil.

The decorations are beautiful for the first couple of weeks, especially in the Radio City/Rock Center neighborhood. But it's really all a bit much, especially when the throngs of gawking tourists make it nigh impossible to cross the street to get to work.

Still, the weather and the strings of lights make it clear that Christmas is a-coming, so I'll kick off the season with one of the many fabulous songs from Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, a longtime Pop Argot household favorite. Alice Otter should get an entry of her own someday for the winsome "When the River Meets the Sea," but for now, here's the Nightmare, the unlikely winner of Frogtown Hollow's talent show with their self-descriptive ditty "Riverbottom Nightmare Band." As a friend once pointed out to me, it really strains credibility to think that a group of antagonistic glam rockers would actually win a sleepy town's Christmas talent show. But "Barbecue" and "Brothers" and the rest are in fact inferior tunes to RBNB. (Hat tip to friend Vern for inadvertently suggesting its acknowledgement.)

And I've been thinking a Behind the Scenes/where-are-they-now treatment of the RBNB is long overdue.

[ETA: I fixed a couple errors in this after posting - really oughta go back and watch that in its entirety.]

Bay City Rollers, "You Made Me Believe in Magic"

While walking home from Sunday football-watching, I came across a box of discard vinyl, and took the opportunity to add to my modest record collection. Among the recovered was It's a Game, a 1977 album from the Bay City Rollers that included their last two pop hits, "The Way I Feel Tonight" and "You Made Me Believe in Magic".

Most people, if they know the BCRs at all, know them only for tartan outfits and an earworm of a chant: "S! A! T-U-R! D-A-Y! NIGHT!" But I far prefer YMMBIM, an example of encroaching disco giving trash singles their last gasp on the radio. Where at the start of the '70s there was plenty of room for nonperforming songwriters to pitch pleasant if disposable tunes to nonwriting performers, as the decade progressed there was a larger expectation to write one's own material and be more complicated about it. Still, you'd get the occasional appearance on the radio of an assembly-line discofied melody rendered competently by an artist who probably didn't use more than a take or two to get it down: Jimmy Ruffin's "Hold On to My Love," Pink Lady's "Kiss in the Dark," even Leif Garrett's "I Was Made for Dancing." And "Magic," which is utter bullshit - the boys, having been touring for years and no doubt already realizing how many millions they were being swindled out of, surely had gotten over believing in magic by this point - but that rasp on the refrain-concluding "into my li-uh-ife" is such a great half-twist that it doesn't matter that he sings it the same way each time.

The Bay City Rollers may not have brought much to "You Made Me Believe in Magic," but neither did they get in its way, and they were rewarded with a surprise Top 10 hit by the people who actually do believe in magic and being truly in love. Whom I kind of envy sometimes.

Barry Manilow, "Daybreak"

This weekend I bought a Barry Manilow box set, The Complete Collection and Then Some, at a deep discount from the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. It's not like I needed more Manilow in my collection - this set is added to three other CDs, six cassettes, five vinyl LPs (but alas, no longer the 8-tracks) - but this package offered some unreleased and live cuts I wanted to hear, including an uptempo pre-hit recording of "Could It Be Magic" redolent of Tony Orlando & Dawn (and indeed, that recording, credited to the fictional outfit Featherbed, was produced by Tony O himself).

The main cut I wanted from the box set, apart from that CIBM reading, was the live version of "Daybreak," a minor chart hit in 19781977 taken from Barry Manilow Live that is notable in my world for being the very first 45 I ever bought. The studio version of "Daybreak" is pleasant post-vaudevillian positivity, but it's the stage that really makes "Daybreak" come alive. When Barry playfully does some call-and-response with his background singers Lady Flash, the listener can hardly help but grin widely like a simple child and sway back and forth. Kind of the way Kathleen Turner does in Serial Mom.

Sang, girls!

(ETA: Tip of the cap to reader Mike for his fact-checking.)

Alice Cooper, "You and Me"

Alice Cooper found a clever little niche for himself in the mid-'70s when, having realized he could move seamlessly from the shock-horror to the Hollywood Squares crowds (OK, the Squares were their own kind of shock-horror), he applied the same cross-genreational techniques to his music, resulting in stuff like "Welcome to My Nightmare" that was equally at home in a dank rathskeller or on The Muppet Show.

And indeed, it was on The Muppet Show back in 1977 that I got to know "You and Me", one of a few Alice ballads of the mid- to late-'70s that suggested he'd really absorbed Elton John's Blue Moves period. It's refreshingly anti-rockstar in its longings: "You and me ain't no superstars / What we are is what we are / We share a bed, some lovin', and TV, yeah / And that's enough for a workin' man / What I am is what I am / I tell ya baby, you're just enough for me." His workaday life is fine with him, as long as he's got his special someone in bed beside him.

I'd be lying if I said I shared those prosaic aspirations. But that doesn't mean I enjoy the song any less. (I don't get into big-bosomed ladies with Dutch accents either, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the similarly styled "You're in My Heart" from Rod Stewart.) There's an unsatisfied striving going on in my world that runs counter to everything "You and Me" stands for; sure, it's a good thing to strive, but at the cost of feeling ever unsatisfied? It's both a blessing and a curse to not know yet what's "enough for me."