HEARD IT ON THE RADIO Volume 4 [2001]

After releasing three volumes of relatively obscure and increasingly hard to find AOR music from the late Seventies and early Eighties, Renaissance planned to release the fourth volume in their Heard It On The Radio series and distributed a "promo only not for sale" disc (below) containing eighteen tracks and absolutely no artwork in 2001.

Featuring as many Hot 100 charting singles as Volumes Two and Three combined, this Volume Four CD kicked off with Asia's "Gypsy Soul", a song that was otherwise only found on the soundtrack to Sylvester Stallone's arm-wrestling pic from 1987, Over The Top.  As the newest track on this compilation, "Gypsy Soul" and the Over The Top soundtrack album had been released on CD in 1987 which set it apart from all of the other tracks on Volume Four.

For HERC, the only songs on Heard It On The Radio Volume Four that lived up to the title were the four Top 40 hits pictured above, none of which were available on compact disc here in the States in 2001 though both the Shaw and Giuffria parent albums were available as pricey Japanese imports.

	title	artist	year	label	Hot 100	Rock
1	Gypsy Soul	Asia	1987	Columbia
2	Sausalito Summernight	Diesel	1981	Regency	25	27
3	Where Did The Time Go	Fast Forward	1984	Island
4	Blue Windows	Glass Moon	1980	Radio
5	Shakedown Cruise	Jay Ferguson	1979	Asylum	31
6	Everything Is Changing	Streets	1983	Atlantic
7	Hot Summer Nights	Night	1979	Planet	18
8	Physical Speed	Private Lightning	1980	A&M
9	Relentless	Red 7	1985	MCA
10	White Lies & Black Satin Nights	Spirit	1984	Mercury
11	Fool Moon Fire	Walter Egan	1983	Backstreet	46
12	Young Heart	Blanket Of Secrecy	1982	Warner Bros.
13	For The Weekend	BTO	1984	Compleat
14	Call To The Heart	Giuffria	1984	MCA	15	3
15	Keeping Our Love Alive	Henry Paul Band	1981	Atlantic	50	23
16	Girls With Guns	Tommy Shaw	1984	A&M	33	6
17	Fire With Fire	Wild Blue	1986	Chrysalis	71
18	Uranium	Zot	1985	Elektra

Which brings us to the album pictured at the tippy-top of this post which clearly reads Heard It On The Radio Volume Four. Flash forward ten years after the promo only disc above was released: It's 2011 and Renaissance has regrouped as RDEG (Renaissance Digital Entertainment Group?) and is now offering digital versions of many of its former CD only releases, including the first three volumes of Heard It On The Radio, at all of the usual outlets like iTunes, Amazon and Spotify.  To further promote the label's latest endeavor, they issued three more digital-only (no CD) volumes in the Heard It On The Radio series, with each track coming from a licensed RDEG album.  The artwork at the top of this post accompanies the sixteen track digital version of Volume Four which retains just four of songs from the promo only CD version.  (One song each from the Volume One and Volume Two discs also reappeared on this incarnation of Volume Four.)  Ten of the sixteen songs on Volume Four made the Hot 100 and half of those even made it into the Top 40. HERC's favorite song on this playlist is Planet P Project's "What I See", an ominously haunting mechanical rocker from the Pink World double disc concept album.

	title	artist	year	label	Hot 100	Rock
1	I Could Be Good For You	707	1980	Casablanca	52
2	Breaking Away	Balance	1981	Portrait	22
3	It's Inevitable	Charlie	1983	Mirage	38	13
4	My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)	Chilliwack	1981	Millennium	22	16
5	She Looks A Lot Like You	The Clocks	1982	Boulevard	67	47
6	Where Did The Time Go	Fast Forward	1984	Island
7	On A Carousel	Glass Moon	1982	Radio	50
8	Turn Your Heart Around	Keats	1984	EMI
9	Am I A Dreamer	Kelly Groucutt	1983	Riva
10	Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya	New England	1979	Infinity	40
11	What I See	Planet P Project	1984	MCA		25
12	Nicole	Point Blank	1981	MCA	39	20
13	Relentless	Red 7	1985	MCA
14	Summer Sun	Shooting Star	1985	Geffen
15	Fool Moon Fire	Walter Egan	1983	Backstreet	46
16	Fire With Fire	Wild Blue	1986	Chrysalis	71

Other RDEG releases on Spotify