Top 40 Music on Compact Disc: Ready ’N’ Steady

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Topic: Ready ’N’ Steady - D.A.

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Paul Haney
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Posted: 14 July 2016 at 9:39am \| IP Logged

AndrewChouffi wrote:

I am now interested in the story behind "Tunnel Power" charting on Top Rock Tracks! If anybody has any info/reasons I will be interested. (I'm assuming, if ever found, the lyrics AREN'T "I'm young, I'm wild, I'm free. Got the tunnel power of the music in me")

Andy

We have assumed that the whole "Tunnel Power" thing was some sort of mistake on Billboard's part. Perhaps they somehow confused the 1981 Triumph song "Magic Power" with their 1983 album Never Surrender.

As for the D.A. song...it DOES fade just a hair at the end and it does end rather abruptly (I guess what we'd term a 'truncated fade'). It's my understanding that the cassette dub was made directly from the session tape in 1979, so it is what it is. I still can't believe how great it sounds for a 37 year-old recording!

Edited by Paul Haney on 17 July 2016 at 5:10am

JL328
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 11:15am \| IP Logged

My edition of Joel Whitburn's Rock Tracks (1995) says that "Tunnel Power"
was available on the cassette version of "Never Surrender." Is that wrong?

Edited by JL328 on 16 July 2016 at 11:15am

Chartman
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 12:26pm \| IP Logged

JL328 wrote:

My edition of Joel Whitburn's Rock Tracks (1995) says that "Tunnel Power"
was available on the cassette version of "Never Surrender." Is that wrong?

I'll help Paul out here - Triumph never recorded a song named "Tunnel Power". In fact, I don't think anyone did?!

Record Research books do contain a small number of errors (more so for the early books which were compiled without nifty software) - they are hard to find but some avid chart enthusiasts have found them and I'm sure they e-mail Paul about them.

Chartman
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 12:38pm \| IP Logged

Paul Haney wrote:

AndrewChouffi wrote:

The whole "Tunnel Power" thing was just a mistake on Billboard's part. They somehow confused the 1981 Triumph song "Magic Power" with their 1983 album Never Surrender.

Does this mean that charted song should have been "Magic Power"? Or should it have been another song from the "Never Surrender" album? Three songs from that album made the chart including "A World Without Fantasy" the same week that "Tunnel Power" was listed.

One question I always had - didn't Joel have a great working relationship with the Billboard staff, particularly the charts department? Always wondered why back in 1979 he just didn't make a call and say "what's up with this D.A. song?" Wasn't he collecting songs back then?

Edited by Chartman on 16 July 2016 at 1:09pm

Chartman
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 12:47pm \| IP Logged

Glenpwood wrote:

Was great to finally hear the mysterious "Ready N
Steady"...

Not to sidetrack into the also rare Shamus M'Cool
territory but the mentioning of him upthread made me just
notice something interesting concerning "American
Memories" brief journey up the chart in 1981. The common
story is that this song got onto the chart due to Shamus
getting Los Angeles DJ's to playlist it and those
stations market share being big enough to force it to
chart.

A forthcoming book titled Just Remember: Field Notes from a Music Biz Life has some interesting comments about pop music charts. Excerpts can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michae l-sigm an/singles-charts-and-the-ba_b_6054944.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michae l-sigm an/how-to-win-charts-and-ali_b_6100952.html

Pop charts are probably more of an art than a science driven by not always 100% reliable data - that's a nice way of saying "suspect"...

Edited by Chartman on 16 July 2016 at 12:51pm

Paul Haney
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Posted: 17 July 2016 at 3:19am \| IP Logged

JL328 wrote:

My edition of Joel Whitburn's Rock Tracks (1995) says that "Tunnel Power"
was available on the cassette version of "Never Surrender." Is that wrong?

That information was supplied to us by a customer who swore he had a copy. We later found it to be wrong and removed it from further editions. Lesson learned...always double-check everything.

Paul Haney
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Posted: 17 July 2016 at 3:24am \| IP Logged

Chartman wrote:

Correct. Triumph never recorded a song called "Tunnel Power", therefore it was removed from future editions.

As I always say, we strive for 100% accuracy, but with literally millions of data points in our books, an occasional mistake is bound to slip through. We're still human after all. I sometimes wish our customers could see everything we DO catch in the editing process. Even the computer has weird glitches from time-to-time. I was one of those customers that used to send in corrections...that's partially how I got the job in the first place!

Edited by Paul Haney on 17 July 2016 at 3:26am

JL328
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Posted: 17 July 2016 at 4:42am \| IP Logged

Interesting. Sorry for the multiple questions, but what song was
supposed to be listed on the chart instead of "Tunnel Power"?

It doesn't appear to have taken the place of another Triumph song. In
the February 5, 1983 chart, "Tunnel Power" was at 43 while "A World of
Fantasy" was at 8 and "Never Surrender" was at 23, so it didn't replace
either of those songs. "Magic Power" was 2 years old and long off the
charts at this time.

If it was a typo and Billboard just listed the wrong title/wrong artist for
an otherwise real song with real data, I get how that could happen,
especially in 1983. But if they accidentally inserted a completely
fictitious song into the chart (for multiple weeks) without having any
data/reports for it, I don't get that unless it was a plant. Or, I suppose
with the mainstream rock tracks chart back then, a big enough station
was probably powerful enough to get a song that far down the chart by
itself? So if one big station listed a bogus song (either due to a typo, an
inadvertent mistake, or I guess on purpose), I suppose that Billboard
would just take that info at face value and stick the song on the chart?
Curious to know what exactly happened there.

Paul Haney
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Posted: 17 July 2016 at 4:53am \| IP Logged

JL328 wrote:

Bottom line is we're not exactly sure what happened there. We first started researching the Rock Tracks chart in the 1990s and even by that time the "song" in question was already over 10 years old. It's not like Billboard keeps records of these things lying around, especially for a Rock Tracks chart from 1983. We just have to assume that it was some sort of mistake and move on. (BTW, I've amended my post up thread for clarity).

Edited by Paul Haney on 17 July 2016 at 5:11am

crapfromthepast
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Posted: 21 July 2016 at 1:27pm \| IP Logged

The Onion's A.V. Club picked up the Ready 'N' Steady story on July 21, 2016:

http://www.avclub.com/article/mystery-ready-n-steady-phantom -billboard-hit-final-239905

Great job, Paul!

Edited by crapfromthepast on 21 July 2016 at 1:29pm

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Paul Haney
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Posted: 21 July 2016 at 3:07pm \| IP Logged

crapfromthepast wrote:

The Onion's A.V. Club picked up the Ready 'N' Steady story on July 21, 2016:

http://www.avclub.com/article/mystery-ready-n-steady-phantom -billboard-hit-final-239905

Great job, Paul!

Yep, the story is making worldwide headlines, LOL! Glad to see Crap From The Past getting its just due too! The YouTube video is already over 4,000 views and climbing.

Edited by Paul Haney on 21 July 2016 at 3:07pm

jono
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Posted: 21 July 2016 at 5:07pm \| IP Logged

Congratulations to Paul for uncovering the story behind the song, in
addition to the song itself. Great to hear it on your show, Ron. I didn't
get to listen to the whole show yet, but what I heard I enjoyed a lot. You
actually opened and closed the show with 2 of my all-time favorite
songs, "Don't You Write Her" and "Too Late", so I was probably just as
excited to listen to those songs as I was "Ready 'N' Steady".

Great work and much appreciated,

Jon O.

Santi Paradoa
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Posted: 18 June 2017 at 12:16pm \| IP Logged

For anyone who wants to hear this entire tune all the way to the fade plus three more tracks by D.A. and the Dukes then you have to listen to Ron's May 19th show with special guest Paul Haney. They even had co-writer Jim Franks call in to chat with them. Pretty cool stuff.

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Paul Haney
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Posted: 18 June 2017 at 1:02pm \| IP Logged

Santi Paradoa wrote:

Thanks, Santi! Jim was a great sport, especially considering the little technical problems we had getting him on the air. It's always a treat to "talk shop" with Ron. We even delved into the "Roxy Roller" saga.

Here's the link: https://archive.org/details/cftp-2017-05-19

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