#52 of VJ Samsonite's Top 100 80's Dance Hits Countdown! "Weird Science" (1985) by Oingo Boingo

Welcome back once again, here we are at #52, lets have a moment of silence...ok and the song is....Weird Science by American new-wave band Oingo Boingo. Oingo Boingo formed orignally back in 1972 (under the title The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo) and were located in Los Angeles, California, and they were active as a band up until 1995. "Weird Science" appeared as track 9 on their fourth studio release album (released in August of 1985), and it also was featured as the theme song to infamous John Hughes 80's teen-comedy and all-time 80's classic film of the same name. It was also became the theme-song for the mid-1990's Weird Science television series. I must add that Weird Science is one of my favorite movies of all time and it is definitely on my top 5 80's movies of all time, but that will be a topic for a later post, and mark my words but I figure its only a short matter of time before they try to remake this 80's classic too, I just hope they don't butcher it too bad...

#54 of VJ Samsonite's Top 100 80's Dance Hits Countdown!: "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" (1985) by John Parr

And #54 of the Countdown is....St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) by English musician John Parr. John Parr is from Worksop, Nottinghamshire in jolly old England, and he is to this day best known for this hit song which was a #1 single in the USA in 1985. Parr entered the music world at the early age of 12 when he was a part of a band with fellow classmates called 'The Silence'. He later worked with acts such as the singer 'Meat Loaf' and the rock band 'Toto'. Following a tour with a band called 'The Business' producer David Foster asked Parr to record a song for the soundtrack of Joel Schumacher's 1985 Brat-Pack film 'St. Elmo's Fire.' He wrote the song with Foster as a tribute to Canadian wheelchair athlete and activist Rick Hansen, which is partly why the song is so powerful in its lyrics and effects. Rick Hansen, at the time was well known for his lectures to raise awareness about spinal cord injuries, which was dubbed the "Man in Motion Tour."On September 7th, 1985 the song hit #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at #6 in the UK that same year. This song would also receive a Grammy Nomination and various cross-references in popular media in later years. Well, that's #54, what oh what could 53 be?? You'll have to tune again in a few days time to find out, so don't hold your breath, stay in motion!

#73 of VJ Samsonite's Top 100 80's Dance Hits Countdown!

Well hello again, here we are at #73 of the Countdown! And the song is...Through the Fire, by musician Larry Greene (1986). Now, strange as it might seem, neither wikipedia.org nor lastfm.com have a lick of info on this guy. So I will talk about Top Gun instead, not just because it is also an 80's super smash, but also because this song was on the soundtrack, which was part of what really made that movie such a true 80's classic not to be forgotten. The soundtrack for Top Gun reached #1 on the Billboard 200 for 5 consecutive weeks in the Summer of 1986. For some interesting facts on the movie by wikipedia are as follows:

"The AFI's 100 Years%u2026100 Movie Quotes list had the line "I feel the need - the need for speed!" from Top Gun at number 94 on the list. The film also ranked at number 455 in Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest films of all time.[16] Yahoo! Movies recently ranked Top Gun #19 on their list of greatest action films of all-time."

Well that sounds enough for now, I hope to not have so little info on the artist like this, including the fact that there are no public domain pics of him, but there really aren't very many not so well-known artists on my countdown. Make sure you go out and watch the movie again, mos def a Summertime classic.