Hi! We're delighted you've chosen to view the fifth chapter of the 1984 Hideaway 200. If this was an ordinary, straightforward countdown like we've done in the past, you'd be reading about the songs ranked from 160-151 today. Well, one of those numbers appears in today's chapter but you're also getting a couple songs from the top 40 and a couple songs from the bottom 20 of the 1984 Hideaway 200. Some of these songs may have charted, some may have their remix versions featured and a few of the songs may have either been featured on other's lists of 1983 or 1985 songs. This is our 200 favorite songs from our 1984 presented in a completely random order! You never know what you're gonna get until you open this page and start reading. So start reading...
39
We ended part four of the 1984 Hideaway 200 with an Arthur Baker remix and here we are beginning part five with yet another Arthur Baker remix. This time around it is The Cars with "Hello Again", the appropriately titled opening track of the group's Heartbeat City album. The song is effortlessly buoyant and provides plenty of edit points for a remix. Baker and his team of editors do a good job of tweaking the song for the dance floor. We think it sounds at times a little like a Trevor Horn remix. While you may be expecting us to namecheck DJPaulT and one of his great vinyl rips as our favorite-sounding version of the Extended Remix of "Hello Again", his transfer was the runner-up. Our favorite-sounding version of the Extended Remix of "Hello Again" is on the 1994 compact disc Lost Mixes: Rare Rock Mixes.
182
Midnight Star's "No Parking (On The Dance Floor)" was a mix-show favorite back in 1984 and we were known to rock it. A funky song about not standing still ("don't park your booty/don't park your can") while on the dance floor, "No Parking (On The Dance Floor)" bears more than a passing resemblance to another "dance floor" referencing song that will pop up later on our countdown. "Freak-A-Zoid", an earlier single from the 1983 album No Parking On The Dance Floor appeared on the 1983 Hideaway 200 at number 120. The best-sounding version of "No Parking (On The Dance Floor)" can be found on the 1996 The Right Stuff U.S. reissue of No Parking On The Dance Floor compact disc.
165
After Styx finished their Mr. Roboto tour, Tommy Shaw left the band and began work on Girls With Guns, his debut solo album. When we first heard the album's title track with its bouncy synths, we thought it was a new J. Geils track. We grew to like it more each time we heard it while wondering what the rest of the album would sound like. Late in December 1984, KLPX played the second single "Lonely School", a tender ballad with a tasty Shaw solo and we decided the album might be worth a closer look. We purchased Girls With Guns in January 1985 and weren't that impressed with it beyond those two singles. Though we still have the album on the Vinyl Wall, we picked up the 2007 U.S. American Beat CD of Girls With Guns and by default, it is our favorite-sounding version of "Girls With Guns".
100
We fell for "Magic's Wand" Whodini's 1982 collab with Thomas Dolby and their 1983 Halloween jam "Haunted House Of Rock". While most of our friends and co-workers were buying albums on cassette, we were fortunate enough to meet a friend's DJ boyfriend who had no issue lending me his vinyl copies of the first two Whodini albums for 24 hours during the week so I could dub them. (We played the heck out of that tape before finally picking up vinyl copies in May 1985.) One day while listening to that tape, I became obsessed with the track "Five Minutes Of Funk" and I kept playing it, rewinding the tape and playing it again repeatedly. We all but forgot about "Five Minutes Of Funk" until we picked up the 2011 expanded reissue of the Escape album which features an instrumental version of that track we never knew existed. Our obsession was renewed. The best-sounding version of "Five Minutes Of Funk" in the HERChives is on the Columbia House pressing of 1990's Greatest Hits.
34
As we've stated before, our only qualm with the Purple Rain album is the sequencing of the final three tracks. Had those songs appeared in the same order as they are performed in the film, the album would have been near perfect. Fortunately, we were able to program our own track selection and running order of the album when we finally obtained Purple Rain on compact disc so the title song could take its rightful place as song number seven. Our favorite-sounding version of the full-length album version of "Purple Rain" is on the 1986 Made In Japan pressing for Columbia House of Purple Rain.
156
Once again, I was seduced by a pumping bassline. "I Want A New Drug" raised a few eyebrows with its title and lyrics but Huey and the gang assured us it was simply about being addicted to love. We have multiple versions of "I Want A New Drug" in the HERChives. There's the 4:45 album version, the 4:30 instrumental version, and the edited 3:29 single version but then there's the variously named 5:32 remix versions. We have it listed as the maxi mix, the dance mix, the extended version, the John Luongo remix, and the 12" mix but they are all the same recording. What gives? We don't get to say this often about recent remasters but the best-sounding version of "I Want A New Drug" we've heard is on the 2023 Japanese remaster of Sports.
196
Eddy Grant is an artist whose work we enjoy the more we hear it. From "Baby Come Back" and "Police On My Back" in 1968 to "Electric Avenue", "I Don't Wanna Dance" and "Romancing The Stone" in the Eighties, we like more than a few of Grant's songs. Grant hooked us with the rhythm track he uses on "Romancing The Stone" though the song's lyrics sound like they were taken from several different and unrelated poems. There is an epic nine-minute Long Version of the track but we prefer the single edit for a quick fix. Our favorite-sounding version of "Romancing The Stone" is the single edit found on the target pressing of the West German hits compilation Hot And New.
18
We pounced on Run-D.M.C.'s self-titled debut album after picking up two of their early 12" singles, the legendary "It's Like That" and the immortal "Rock Box". The latter single features the album version of "Rock Box" on one side and "Rock Box (Vocal Dub Version)" and "Rock Box (Dub Version)" on side two. As much as we love the album version, over the past two decades, the Vocal Dub Version has become our preferred version when we reach for "Rock Box". The best-sounding version of "Rock Box (Vocal Dub Version)" aka "Rock Box (B-Boy Mix)" in the HERChives is found on the 2019 digital download collection of Run-D.M.C.'s twelve-inch singles simply titled The Mixes.
80
Eighties Queen is our favorite period of their music. The Works continues to be a favorite album with some truly wonderful singles like "I Want To Break Free". Written by bassist John Deacon, who has written nearly a dozen of our favorite tracks from Queen, "I Want To Break Free" rolls along at a leisurely pace. A spiritual cousin to Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out" and Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" as a song against oppression of any sort, "I Want To Break Free" is a rare track whose 4:18 single version is actually longer than its 3:19 album version. Our favorite-sounding single version of "I Want To Break Free" is hiding in plain sight on a 1991 European Time Life pressing of Rock Heroes from The Rock Collection.
179
2024 marks the 40th Anniversary of Band Aid and their charity single. We loved "Do They Know It's Christmas?" then and still love it five decades later. Our preferred version is Trevor Horn's 12" Mix with all the greetings from participants mixed in, extending the song to over six minutes! We've read that Horn is doing a megamix of sorts with all the latter versions of the song mixed together with the original for the 40th Anniversary re-release of the single. DJPaulT once again delivers the best-sounding version of a track from the 1984 Hideaway 200 with his exclusive vinyl transfers of the 1984 Japanese 12" of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and the 1985 Japanese-only release of the Band Aid Special album.
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Woo-hoo! 50 songs in and only 150 more to go! We'll be back soon with ten more albums from the 1984 Hideaway 200. For those of you playing the home game, your cards should look like the ones below with fifty numbers filled in.
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