POWER PLAY [1980]

Aside from the very first album featured here on the K-Tel Kollection, HERC has tried to maintain a sense of chronological order based on copyright dates balanced with K-Tel's own matrix numbers but this has not been always possible.  For its vinyl albums in the United States since 1974, K-Tel used two matrices, independent of one another; one starts with TU 23XX and the other NU 90XX. In the scans below, the TU matrix is from 1979's Disco Nights while the NU matrix is from 1978's Emotions:

Power Play marks a hiccup in the chronology as it is an 1980 release with a matrix used primarily for 1979 releases. HERC just wanted to point this out because the next album will be from 1979 and the following album after it will once again be from 1980 before normalcy returns with five 1979 albums in a row to close out that year.

HERC first wrote about Power Play in 2012, on that other site.  Way back then, he said it was one of his favorites and that in 1980 "K-Tel... was probably at its peak".  Well, now HERC can run the sixteen tracks from Power Play through the K-Tel Scale and see if the score bears out his claims.

Power Play [1980]		K-tel Scale:				32.80
		Billboard Top 40s
		Pop	R&B	Disco	AC	CB	WLS
Call Me	Blondie	1		2		1	1
Heartbreaker	Pat Benatar	23				19	6
Any Way You Want It	Journey	23				21	17
Cool Change	Little River Band	10			8	13	37
We Don't Talk Anymore	Cliff Richard	7			5	6	17
Jane	Jefferson Starship	14				6	13
My Sharona	The Knack	1				1	1
Stomp	Brothers Johnson	7	1	1		8	20
Working My Way Back To You	The Spinners	2	6	8	5	3	3
Too Hot	Kool & the Gang	5	3	5	11	7	11
Hold On To My Love	Jimmy Ruffin	10	29		32	14
The Second Time Around	Shalamar	8	1	1		10	15
And The Beat Goes On	The Whispers	19	1	1		19	23
Desire	Andy Gibb	4			9	6	24
Pilot Of The Airwaves	Charlie Dore	13			4	12	20

Good enough to crack the Top 10!  HERC was surprised to find that several songs didn't even make the Top 10 - as often as he remembers hearing them on the Mighty WLS, he thought for sure that the Benatar, Journey, Starship and the Whispers cuts on Power Play were all Top 5 hits. Apparently not though all but the Whispers ranked higher on WLS surveys than they did on Billboard's Hot 100.

HERC has a long and fairly disappointing history of buying 45s and later entire LPs for the females he was crushing on. For Valentine's Day 1980, HERC played the odds, went out and bought three copies of his new favorite disco-rock song "Call Me" then wrote his home phone number on the blue Chrysalis sleeve.  The song was so new, that most stations were not playing it yet and it debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 for the week ending February 16.  Yet HERC had heard it somewhere and and had been fortunate enough to find three copies.  So he placed the records in each girl's inbox - in eighth grade, there were just two homerooms, two classes, like sixty kids total so all we did each day was switch classrooms.  The designated English teacher encouraged writing notes to our fellow students (during designated times of course) so in her room, every eighth grade student had an inbox.  So HERC placed the records in their inboxes on Valentine's Day and waited around all weekend for just one call, running to the phone each time it rang.  Lalani did not call.  Yolanda did not call.  And Robyn did not call.  Come Monday, HERC is a little disappointed but when he opens his locker, nearly a hundred miniature Mr. Goodbars fell out but HERC couldn't find a note or anyone taking credit.  Later that day, at the end of English, he had almost a dozen notes in his inbox.  HERC grabbed them all, stuffed them in his Trapper Keeper and didn't look at them until he got home that afternoon with at least twenty Mr. Goodbars still in his lunchbox.  As he ate them, he read his notes.  First one read: "Thanks for giving me a couple of good bars."  The next four notes were similar with one proclaiming HERC's new nickname should be Mr. Goodbar cause "he's nutty."  Then a note written in obvious girl writing: "I would have called you but I like you better as a friend." Unsigned.  A couple more notes about his candy haul.  And then this one: "That was a really good song.  Thanks.  Glad you're my friend." A couple more Goodbar notes and then the last note: "You are very sweet.  That's why I talked Robyn and Yo into filling your locker with Mr. Goodbars.  One of your friends said you told him they were your favorites.  You are the best boy   friend I have."  And she underlined boy and friend very heavily and left a bigger than normal gap between the two words.  HERC never said anything to the three girls about it and they never brought it up.  Life went on.  The following year, in ninth grade, HERC SR. got transfer orders and HERC told his friends and classmates he would not be returning to school with them for his sophomore year.  On Graduation Night 1981, HERC spent the night at a freshman party in a brightly decorated basement with a fully sober Lalani, Yolanda and Robyn taking turns sitting on his lap and whispering the most delightful things in his ears.  All. night. long.

Power Play was released on vinyl, 8-track and cassette.  It was also released in Canada with a fairly decent alternate tracklisting that repeated just five tracks from its American cousin. The Canadian version of Power Play also contained 8 tracks per album side whereas the US version featured seven songs on Side One and eight songs on Side Two.  The final five songs on Side Two of the Canadian version did not make the US Top 40 resulting in a sub-20 K-Tel Scale that HERC will not be publishing.  However, all sixteen tracks from the album are contained in Spotify playlist above.  As a special bonus, HERC has created a bonus playlist below of all but one song from both albums. Enjoy!

******

Next album in the Kollection is Gold Rush 79, a double album with this sweet gatefold: