Come see Duende tonight at Jester’s in Westfield, and you’ll hear us premiere not one but two new pieces.

You can tell everyone you were there, and make them jealous.

That’ll be cool.

Go to this convenient compilation site right here http://longboredsurfer.com/charts.php and find the five years you were in high school. For each year, admit to the song that was your favorite at the time, then decide which one you now generally consider to be the best song on the list. Lastly, pick the year’s worst song, snarking optional.

This also appears in ocvictor‘s comments…

When it comes to the Top 100, I believe my high school years (1974-1977) may be the worst in history.

I left out 1973 deliberately, though I loved a lot of pop music before that (the summer of 1972 was my favorite year for pop music ever, and I found it too hard to choose favorites).

1974:
Fav — Stevie Wonder’s “Livin in the City” then and now. I remember discovering the long version (what we used to call the album version) late one night and falling in love with how much he changed his voice.

Worst Song:
“A Very Special Love Song,” Charlie Rich. You’ve come a long way from the rockabilly, O Silver Fox, and it’s all been down hill…

1975:
Fav then: “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” — Freddy Fender. Um, drugs, anyone? It was our senior class song two years later.
Fav now: “Third Rate Romance” — The Amazing Rhythm Aces. I still play this song on guitar now and then. Great, unsparing look at a one night stand.
Worst: Oh, so many candidates! I’ll go with John Denver’s “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” because he’s not around to argue. Donny and Marie’s “Morning Side Of the Mountain” is right up there too.

1976:
Fav then: “Dream On,” Aerosmith. Coming from southern Worcester County where Joe Perry was from, this was all about local boys making good. They actually played teen dances at the Lakeview Ballroom on Satruday afternoons when I was 11-12; I recall going to one once because my parents heard it was sponsored by the local Catholic Youth Organization and they figured it was OK. If they only knew…

Fav now:”Tear the Roof Off The Sucker,” Parliament. I hadn’t discovered Parliament back then because local rock radio didn’t play it at all.

Worst: Can anything beat John Travolta’s “Let Her In?”

1977
Fav then: “Walk This Way,” Aerosmith. See 1976 for details. (Point: by the fall of 1977, I’d fully discovered punk and didn’t think about the Top 100 for years after that. Also, this was high time for Bruce, the Jukes, and this was also the year I discovered the Dead and chased them around a bit; was also listening to all sorts of other stuff that wasn’t charting, so this is definitely a default choice.)

Fav now: “Strawberry Letter 23” by the Brothers Johnson. Again, not getting much play on our local stations back then — what a great song. How much more would I have been into funk and related stuff if it had been available to us then?

Worst: I hated then and hate to this day “Stand Tall” by Burton Cummings, because I was a Guess Who fan and felt betrayed. (If “Nashville Sneakers” had charted, though, I might be putting that on the Fav list.)

Interesting. I’m struck by how much just focusing on the Top 100 limits my list — I was already listening to freeform radio by the time I was 14 so I knew and heard a LOT more music than just the chart hits — probably liked a lot of it a lot more than this stuff. Shit, I was a confirmed Robert Johnson fan by the time I was 15…