Show of hands, how many of y'all watched the video above?
It is the original commercial for the Canadian version of 1977's Stars, one of them there K-tel hits collections packed with ORIGINAL STARS performing ORIGINAL HITS. In today's post, HERC runs the American version of Stars through the old K-tel Scale to see how it ranks among other K-tel albums in HERC's quest to determine the most hit-packed K-tel compilation ever! Though Canada has been banned from the K-tel Scale competition, HERC imported the tracklist and presents it below, with tracks in common with the US release colored blue:
| Don't Give Up On Us |
| Year Of The Cat |
| Devil Woman |
| Are You Ready For Love |
| Right Before Your Eyes (Rudolf Valentino) |
| You, Y' Look Good |
| Fly At Night |
| Beth |
| So In To You |
| Torn Between Two Lovers |
| Don't Leave Me This Way |
| Enjoy Yourself |
| Lido Shuffle |
| Cause There's Another |
| The World Is A Ghetto |
| Fightin' On The Side Of Love |
| Save It For A Rainy Day |
| Dock Of The Bay |
| Carry On Wayward Son |
| Tryin' To Love Two |
Did HERC ever tell you about the time he cracked the inscrutable K-tel matrix code? No? Well, maybe another day. The Canadian version of Stars features 20 songs while the US edition contains 18, including four Number One pop songs.
HERC's 45 collection has four singles heard on Stars and though the scans below are from Discogs users and not HERC's stash, they are accurate depictions of his records EXCEPT his copies have his legal name scrawled across the label:
HERC's copy of "So In To You" even has a smiley face teacher's ink stamp because he won it in sixth grade music class for answering trivia questions. HERC is gonna play it safe and say Stars scores a 30 on the K-tel Scale. Let's do this.
STARS [1977]
| K-tel Scale: |
30.97
| |||||
| Billboard Top 40s | |||||||
| Pop | R&B | DISCO | AC | CB | WLS | ||
| The Things We Do For Love | 10cc | 5 | 12 | 4 | 1 | ||
| Rich Girl | Hall & Oates | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Year Of The Cat | Al Stewart | 8 | 8 | 4 | 2 | ||
| Torn Between Two Lovers | Mary MacGregor | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| A Little Bit More | Dr. Hook | 11 | 15 | 9 | 27 | ||
| Love Me | Yvonne Elliman | 14 | 5 | 10 | 18 | ||
| So In To You | Atlanta Rhythm Section | 7 | 11 | 5 | 8 | ||
| Devil Woman | Cliff Richard | 6 | 30 | 5 | 2 | ||
| Slow Dancin’ Don’t Turn Me On | Addrisi Brothers | 20 | 34 | 18 | 31 | ||
| I’m Your Boogie Man | KC & the Sunshine Band | 1 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 2 | |
| Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel | Tavares | 15 | 3 | 1 | 18 | 10 | 20 |
| Don’t Leave Me This Way | Thelma Houston | 1 | 1 | 1 | 40 | 3 | 4 |
| Coal Town | Stanky Brown Group | ||||||
| The World Is A Ghetto | War | 7 | 3 | 9 | 10 | ||
| Theme From Roots (aka "Roots" Medley) | Quincy Jones | 32 | 21 | ||||
| Hard Luck Woman | Kiss | 15 | 19 | 7 | |||
| Tryin’ To Love Two | William Bell | 10 | 1 | 25 | 8 | 25 | |
| Couldn’t Get It Right | Climax Blues Band | 3 | 7 | 4 | |||
Pretty dang close, huh? The two songs that missed the Top 40 definitely brought the score down and there was a noticeable lack of crossover except on the AC chart. Still, the score of 30.97 puts it in the K-tel Scale Top 10 so things kinda worked out. Instead of a Spotify playlist, HERC leaves you with a link to listen to Stars in its entirety over in the Mixcloud where DJ Adrian Qitana plays it "from the top of the A side to the bottom of the B side". Look for more of Adrian's K-tel shows going forward and check out his two websites via links in the Phriends of the Kollection section in the lower left of this page.
Had this album back in 1977, the Canadian Version, and did you notice the last songs on side 1 & 2 have a thing in common....ha
ReplyDeleteYes, yes I did notice. ;)
DeleteYou think it was accidental or on purpose?
Ive got the Canadian version still unopened
ReplyDelete