Customer Reviews

Barry Scott Presents: Lost 45's

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While there are uncountable compilation CD's of 70's and 80's tunes available, this piece showcasing top-40 hits from those decades stays truer to the actual hit versions by presenting the single edit versions not usually, if ever, found on other CD's. Though tunes such as Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance" and Rupert Holmes' "Him" are not rarities on CD themselves, here you get the 45 version as remembered from the top-40 radio playlists. And while these single versions qualify as "lost 45's", there are several tunes included here that are seldom, if ever, found on CD such as Kenny Nolan's "Love's Grown Deep", his follow-up to "I Like Dreamin'", Tycoon's "Such A Woman" and "Breaking Away" by Balance among others. While the track count here for a reissue disc is on the meager side, this piece does provide a refreshing dose of 70's and 80's pop.

Production-wise, this is a high-quality effort with excellent sound quality and an informative eight-page liner notes booklet providing interesting background on the included tracks. For fans of the genre, the casual listener and avid collector alike should find this CD a worthwhile addition to their collection.

Great collection of hard to find hits from the 70's and 80's. Includes two of my favorites songs from 1984 (A Fine Fine Day and Modern Day Delilah). You rarely hear these songs anymore. Hopefully this series will continue with a Volume 3 soon

This compilation is full of hard-to-get Top 40 classics that, in some case, left the radio airwaves a long time ago. Songs like "More than just the two of us"-Sneaker, "Modern Day Delilah"-Van Stephenson, and much more songs will transport you back to a time that seemed to generate more memorable songs. The sound quality is really good, and clean sounding. I would recommend this CD to anyone that likes Top 40, AM radio music from the '80s. Some of these songs were never released on CD, it's great!

This cd was such a great suprise...The songs really took me back. I can't wait for the next one..It was definitely worth it...

Searching through the rock 'n roll/pop/Top 40 vaults high and low, Boston-based disc jockey Barry Scott comes up with some hard-to-find mostly 1980's singles gems, although some selections on this introductory volume of "The Lost 45's" series are average compositions at best. The cream of these fourteen songs are "Moonlight Feels Right" (Starbuck), "Love's Grown Deep" (Kenny Nolan), "Modern Day Delilah" (Van Stephenson), "Him" (Rupert Holmes) and "More Than Just The Two Of Us" (Sneaker). But, the most stellar track of all, would have to belong to Tony Carey, with the upstanding mild rocker "A Fine Fine Day", which saw frequent video airplay on MTV during its popularity in "The Big '80's". The former two selections mentioned above are the only seventies tracks featured in this fairly above-average compilation of Top 40 treats, including Tycoon's "Such A Woman" (another '70's "classic"). As stated previously, the other half of this disc contains mostly average songs, with the exception of both the gawdy, oversynthesized "The Safety Dance" (Men Without Hats) and "Find Another Fool" (Quarterflash). Steel Breeze frontman Ric Jacobs vocalizes a Rick Springfield-styled performance in the fast-paced "You Don't Want Me Anymore". The other average songs on "The Lost 45's", are flavored with some nice, seasoned meaty, bouncy beats, courtesy of Eric Carmen's "I Wanna Hear It From Your Lips" and Balance's "Breaking Away", among others. But, like its sister companion (Vol. 2), this first one contains at least one or two poor efforts - those being the overrepetitive, tiresome "My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)" (Chilliwack) and the somewhat...annoying "The Safety Dance". Even though Barry tried really hard to come up with some worthwhile selections here, he should be given utmost credit in locating the few non-synthesized '80's hits which were produced during that decade - one that was perhaps one of the worst, along with the '90's, as far as music quality and influences from other earlier more noteworthy artists (ex: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, etc.) are concerned. Barry Scott did manage to redeem himself on Vol. 2 of "The Lost 45's" - a collection which features one third more songs, and more premium selections at that. If there is to be a Vol. 3 in this series, hopefully Mr. Scott will come off the success of Vol. 2 on a positive note, and include some potential hits that narrowly missed the Top 40, such as Mac McAnally's "Minimum Love" (#41, 1983), as well as another forgotten lost gem that made the Top 20, the Greg Guidry hit "Goin' Down" (#17, 1982). Until Vol. 3 is released, plenty of mileage will have to be had out of Vols. 1 and 2, although it is highly recommended to make "Vol. 2" of this essential series your first purchase before shelling out more money for mostly mediocre songs, although it is worth it for the price of the handful of delights featured in this introductory disc. Keep these lost treasures coming Barry, and whatever you do, please don't stop!

If you're a collector of Top 40 music on CD like myself these type of compilations (ones that have more than 2 or 3 songs that you don't already have) come along very seldomly. I just wish there were more of them and they were more readily available. There are still a lot of rare Top 40 hits that are not available on compilations so there is still more juice to be squeezed. I don't feel the need to buy the original albums these hits came from, even if they are available on CD, just to get one song or two to fill out my collection.

I don't quite understand the high prices being sought for these CD's on Amazon ($60+) when you can order them from Barry Scotts website for half that.

Worth every cent to get the singles from Chilliwack, Balance and Sneaker. VERY hard to find elsewhere. My only quibble with the CD is that Rupert Holmes' "Him" is the shorter edit. Hoping Barry decides to do a couple more discs in the future.

This CD has songs on it that I haven't heard since I was a teenager in the 80s. I hope they continue this line of CDs because there are so many other "lost songs" from the 70s and 80s that many ppl would love to hear. I would highly recommend it.

As the other reviewers have stated, this CD contains original 45 versions of some rare songs from the late 70's and early 80's. Some of these songs ("Him" by Rupert Holmes and "Moonlight Feels Right" by Starbuck)have been available previously on other compilations by Rhino Records and other companies, but the true rarities make this CD well worth the $30.00 I spent to get it. Some of the songs on here I have not heard for 20-25 years include "A Fine Fine Day" by Tony Carey, "You Don't Want Me Anymore" by Steel Breeze, "I Wanna Hear it from Your Lips" by Eric Carmen (which for some reason is never put on any of the Eric Carmen Greatest Hits packages out there), "Breaking Away" by Balance, "Modern Day Delilah" by Van Stephenson, and "Such a Woman" by Tycoon. I also own Volume 2, and they are both quality CD's with excellent liner notes. I wish I lived in Boston to hear Barry Scott's weekly radio show where he plays rare songs from the 70's and 80's. This Volume 1 is not sold in stores, but to avoid the scalper prices here, you can buy the CD directly from Barry Scott on his website, lost45.com. I paid $30.00 there which included shipping & handling as opposed to the $50.00 price they are selling for here. The CD arrived in just a few days in perfect condition. I highly recommend both volumes. Like the other reviewers, I also would like to see a Volume 3. My wish list for Volume 3 would be:

1. "Pop Goes the World" Men Without Hats
2. "The First Day of Summer" Tony Carey
3. "Dreamin' is Easy" Steel Breeze
4. "Never Been in Love" Randy Meisner
5. "Think it Over" Cheryl Ladd
6. "Weekend" Wet Willie
7. "Goin Down" Greg Guidry
8. "You're my Girl" Frankie & the Knockouts
9. "Boys Do Fall in Love" Robin Gibb
10. "What the Big Girls Do" Van Stephenson
11. "All I Have to Do is Dream" Andy Gibb & Victoria Principal
12. "Hot Summer Nights" Night
13. "Pop Goes the Movies" Meco
14. "Holdin' On" Tane' Cain

Is anyone out there listening?

Good CD, however the Quarterflash song "Find Another Fool" has a miserable edit at the end. Boo!!