ABOUT THIS DATABASE This database contains over 2500 song titles of which 99.9% were top 40 hits on pop radio stations from 1950 to the present. The remaining .01% are titles from soundtracks. Only 2 entries that I can think of offhand are from obscure artists which few, if any, people will recognize. The database is pretty self-explanatory insofar as the field entries are concerned. WHY USE A MUSIC DATABASE? I assume that most people who will download this database will be serious music lovers. Granting the validity of that assumption, you probably have a fairly large collection of music in various forms. That makes keeping track of what you have in your collection a difficult chore. It also makes it difficult to analyze your investment in your collection for things as mundane as insurance claims (God forbid!). However, putting your collection into a database can render much more pleasant results than you might imagine. For example, I like to create genre-specific tapes to listen to that reflect my mood at any given time. With a personal music database, creating such tapes can be made a whole lot easier. In my own version of this database, I have a field titled "CATEGORY" where I label each song as being either soft-rock, rock, love, soul, soundtrack or just plain oldie. Because of this field, I can simply create a database "query" and my database program will automatically generate a list of all the songs in my database that match the genre I select. It then becomes easy to create tapes of love songs, soul or any other genre I wish to create. You can also use the database to generate music shopping lists to help you concentrate your music buying efforts toward getting your favorite songs without having to try and remember if you already have that song in your collection. I created a field I labeled "MEDIA" where I listed the form of media I had each song on. I used "C" for CDs, "D" for DAT tape and "A" for albums/vinyl. I then generated lists of all the songs I did not yet have on CD to use as my shopping lists. Depending on how much additional time and effort you want to devote to it, a music database can become even more powerful and capable of generating ever more selective lists of your music. My version of this database contains information on each song such as the week it debuted on the charts, the highest position it reached on the charts and the position it held in comparison to all the other songs of the same year it charted. This gives me the capability of generating lists as specific as all love songs that charted in the top 40, 30, 20 or 10 for any particular time period I choose! Imagine being able to easily create a music menu for a class reunion or a special anniversary with a few keystrokes! WHY IS THIS DATABASE MISSING SOME OF THE INFORMATION FROM MY OWN VERSION? Chart information is copyrighted material. I got much of the chart information in my version of this database from Joel Whitburn's "Hot 100" books and others he has written. He, in turn, gleaned much of his information from Billboard's charts. While owners of these books are free to use the information in them for their *personal* use, we cannot duplicate and distribute that copyrighted information. I *strongly* recommend Mr. Whitburn's books to the serious music collector. The address of Record Research Inc., where you can order these books, is included later in this text file. I'd love to save you the effort of plugging all those numbers in yourself, but I can't. I know of a few people who are presently working on massive music databases which may soon become available on CD-ROM, but from what I've heard, they will likely be very limited in how you'll be able to customize and use the information in them. If you're really serious about your collection I'd recommend using this database as a starting point and dedicating some serious keyboard time to filling in the blanks you want to add. It isn't nearly as hard as you might imagine if you have the right reference materials to work with. The first time I released this database, I did include the CATEGORY and MEDIA fields but I realized that they would be of little use to most people in that the CATEGORY field is purely subjective based on the individual's assessment of a song and the MEDIA field pertained to the format I personally own the tune on. Thus, I omitted those fields in this updated version. ABOUT MY DISC COLLECTION All but a few (less than 10) of the titles were/are available on CDs. My CD collection presently totals out at about 750 discs which consist of roughly 1/3 various artist compilations and 2/3 single-artist albums (most of which are greatest hits/anthologies). A couple of the titles are on bootleg CDs but that is because that's the *only* way I could get them on CD as there are a few artists and labels who are sitting on music and refusing to release it. You can probably find 90% of the songs in this database on CD at your local music retailer. You might not find them on the same disc that I have them on, but most of this music is readily available either on the same discs or on newer compilations and reissues with different titles. The 10% you can't find in the racks of retail shops are likely available through mail-order outfits. All of the mail-order dealers I recommend later in this text are people I've done business with. While they may differ slightly in their efficiency insofar as processing orders go, they all deliver the goods as promised. THE RERECORDED HIT SCAM I've become something of a reluctant student of the machinations of the music industry where their CD product is concerned. I call myself a reluctant student because the lessons I've learned have been at the cost of yet another piece of innocence on my part as well as at a personal cost of dollars and cents. Perhaps it was naive of me to grow up under the impression that music was one of the few things in life that one could turn to for pure enjoyment. Throughout my pre-CD music consumption years, obtaining the tunes I had come to know and love was pretty much as effortless and straightforward as heading to my local music retailer and picking out the album I was seeking or dialing a number that appeared on my television screen. Some people say I was lucky because I don't recall a single instance in those days of getting something I didn't pay for. Unfortunately, with the advent of CD technology, my former carefree music shopping forays became fraught with pitfalls I never dreamed I would encounter. For that reason, I include the following in the hope that I might help the novice music shopper avoid some of those pitfalls. The music industry has to be populated by some of the most arrogant, narcissistic and unscrupulous people to stride upon this planet. Not only do they bask in the cult-like devotion of millions of music lovers, but they also have have the arrogance to fleece those unwitting lambs for the sake of a couple of bucks beyond the billions they've already been happily given by music consumers. As a baby-boomer who grew up in rock & roll's golden era, music became an important part of my life. As a result, the money I, and millions of others of my generation have passed along to the recording industry through our purchases of 45's, albums, 8-track tapes, cassettes and now, CDs, has enriched the industry by untold billions of dollars. We baby-boomers literally transformed garage bands and basement recording studios into the mega-stars and giant recording houses of today. To borrow and paraphrase a passage from a well-known tune, "We built [that] city on rock and roll!" Given the aforementioned, you would think that the industry would feel some obligation towards us baby-boomers and strive to deal with us honestly and ethically. Yet, anyone with more than 50 CDs in their music collection has likely been victimized by the music industry's sleight- of-hand. The music industry gets away with unscrupulous practices which would land people in other businesses squarely behind bars. I have no idea why this is, I only know that it is absolutely true. Some years back, I worked in the employment agency business where you could lose your license and face heavy fines for a tactic known as "bait-and-switch." That's the practice of advertising a great job that's extremely difficult to get and then steering applicants to other less attractive but more easily filled positions. The recording industry gets away with an identical scam all the time. Labels and artists regularly sell rerecorded versions of well-known hits without any hint on the packaging that they are doing so. In some cases, the artists are out for a quick buck so they create a completely new version of one of their hits so they can sell it to a label other than the one they originally recorded the hit for. In other instances, a label will sell what amount to what the motion picture industry calls out-takes in that they sell the studio session tapes of hits which were not selected as the final single version they released, to smaller independent labels. In still other cases, an artist will rerecord hits he or she had on another label and combine them with hits from their present label to create the illusion that they are selling all their major hits in one package. Anyone who has ever bought a substantial number of compact discs featuring hits from the '50s, '60s or '70s has very likely been burned by one permutation or another of this scam. In some cases, it's absolutely impossible to keep from falling prey to such scams. For example, if you purchase Neil Diamond's "The Greatest Hits 1966 - 1992," don't count on seeing the word "live" anywhere on the outside packaging. Yet, once you get the CD home and anxiously insert the discs while looking forward to hearing those old musical memories, instead of the old standards you grew up with and loved, you'll find yourself listening to a reggae version of "Red Red Wine" and an audience participation version of "Sweet Caroline." You'll wince as Diamond down- tempoes and psuedo-raps "Morningside" as you strain to hear the instruments through the audience noise. You won't understand why you got this "bait-and-switch" deal unless you open up the booklet that accompanies the CD set and are treated to Diamond's explanation that he replaced the original versions of half the songs in the set with the live versions because, in *his* opinion, some songs lend themselves better to live performances than others. Never mind that if his fans wanted reggae they would be Bob Marley fans.... *not* Neil Diamond fans. Never mind that Mr. Diamond *couldn't* have included the hit versions of the live songs he substitutes because he recorded them on another label that retains the rights to them. Since Columbia released this ripoff, even placing your trust in a major label is no guarantee that you won't get burned. A few other examples of the music industry's scams are; "26 ORIGINAL TRACKS BY THE ORIGINAL ARTISTS" is the come-on utilized on the cover of "70 Ounces Of GOLD" released by Compose CDs & Cassettes. In this case, the folks at Compose are telling the absolute truth. What they *don't* tell you is that many of the cuts on the CD are studio versions of the songs that are nothing like the hit versions that we listened to as they climbed the charts! This CD probably sold like hotcakes because it featured hits like "Soul Man," "When A Man Loves A Woman," "Lightnin' Strikes" and "Wipe Out." Yet each of these top ten hits on the CD were anemic renditions of the chartbusters we remember with the single exception an outstanding stereo version "Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals. Unfortunately, most people who buy this CD are not looking to add a single song to their collection. A double whammy! "Rock 'n' Roll Fever of the 60's" and "Rock 'n' Roll Fever of the 70's" released by LOMI. Not a single hit version to be found in these previously unrealeased studio rejects. If you want to hear Christie screw up "Yellow River" or a muted version of "Little Children" by Billy J. Kramer, these lemons are for you! What happens when you put a generation-Xer who cares nothing about the music of the baby-boomer era behind the mixing console? Answer. "The Rare Breed - The Super K Collection" on the Collectables label. The remix of the one and only hit song the Rare Breed ever had, namely "Beg, Borrow and Steal" so badly muted the instruments that the group might as well have done the song acappella. For 9 years, I have been waiting and regularly checking with my CD vendors for Paul Davis to release a CD of his greatest hits. Finally, just recently, I discovered he had done so and I promptly ordered one for my collection. What I got was what should have been titled "Half of Paul Davis' Greatest Hits." Neither "Cool Night" nor "65 Love Affair" are on this new disc. This is another case where an artist switched labels in the midst of his popularity and could only include his early hits on the CD he released. So why not call the CD something like "His Early Hits" or "The Bang Years" as other artists have done when they've had hits on different labels? At least that would alert novice buyers that they were getting a less than complete collection of the artist's hits. Apparently, the industry and artists so reknowned for their self-aggrandizing charity love-fests feel no guilt whatsoever about ripping off music lovers with scams like this. Remember the Sir Douglas Quintet? Their two claims to fame were "She's About A Mover" and "Mendicino." This time, Rhino is the culprit to blame for putting a heretofore unheard version of "She's About A Mover" on their "Texas Music Vol. 3." I don't know about other music enthusiasts, but speaking for myself, I firmly believe that if a record label can't come up with the hit version of an old song, it should not try to pass off a studio reject or live version on to consumers unless they clearly state on the outside of the CD package that this is what they are doing. In the case of "Texas Music Vol.3" I didn't recognize any other song listed except "She's About A Mover" and "Ju Ju Hand" by Sam the Sham and The Pharohs. I doubt if anything else on that CD charted nationally, so it is likely that those two songs are the major selling draws for the disc. This makes it all the more incredible that the original version that charted wasn't what was actually on the disc. Why have I droned on for so long about this particular subject? It is simply because I'm by no means a wealthy man. I schlep packages for a living, live in a blue-collar neighborhood and drive a 12 year old car. However, where music is concerned, I have a collection and equipment to play it on that most people with incomes twice or three times mine don't have. It is one of the few grand passions of my life. I have been a voracious conusmer of music since my prepubescent years. It would be impossible to calculate the amount of money I've poured into the coffers of the music industry throughout my 44 years on this speck of dust. In return for my lifetime of investment, I foolishly expect some sort of loyalty from the industry toward those of us they owe so much to. When I instead get the back of the industry's hand, I become enraged. Thus this venting of my spleen. My parting advice to novice music collectors is to beware of the labels on the CDs they buy. Even though you can't always rely on the major labels to deal with you honestly, buying a CD made by a label you've never heard of is definitely a crap shoot with the odds stacked against you. Many mail-order houses such as those I list at the end of this file have knowledgeable phone salespeople who can tell you whether or not a particular CD is what you're looking for. Some, like DisCollector, don't even carry rerecorded material so they're very safe bets. IF YOU NEED HELP..... I'm always happy to lend a hand to fellow music lovers in their quest to find their favorite musical memories on disc. I've been very lucky to encounter many very helpful people who selflessly gave of their own time and effort to assist me in getting some of my most treasured music. That's why I am distributing this database, which represents so many hours of my time and effort, with no strings attached. It's my way of repaying the online community for all the help they've given to me. If you would like help in setting up this database for your own use, finding a tune on CD or even help in finding out the name of a song that you can only remember a few lines of lyrics from, you can find me in the American Oldies Diner forum on CompuServe or you can call my BBS, The Monsoon Hotel, at 312-927-9534. My handle on my BBS is Vinh Long (from my Vietnam days). Happy listening! Kevin J. Osiowy CIS ID 70313,2466 TRIED & TRUE MUSIC SOURCES CDMO - 516-385-2366 DisCollector - imports 303-841-3000 Midnight Records - imports - boots 212-675-2768 Metro Music - 301-622-2473 Thoughtscape Sounds - imports - soundtracks 800-435-6185 Footlight Records - soundtracks 212-533-1572 Remember When - 708-963-1957 Chicago Digital - 708-383-1870 To order the Joel Whitburn books; Record Research Inc. 414-251-5408