“The Lost Boys: Hard-To-Find ’80s Albums” gives you exactly what the title implies: a rare or out-of-print album from the ’80s in its entirety. Some will be from CD, but most will have been lovingly transferred from pristine vinyl culled directly from the Analog Kid’s vast collection. Whatever album I choose, it will be one that you can’t easily find a physical copy for sale on Amazon or in your local record store (if you even have one anymore). Death…by stereo!
Weird confession: Loverboy’s Keep It Up was the first album I ever purchased in two different formats. Keep It Up came out in the summer of 1983, and as usual I was spending the summer in California with my Dad. He had a great stereo system, and I’m sure the elderly residents below our sublet studio apartment on Balboa Island became way too familiar with Mike Reno’s desire to find some hot girls in love.
One thing Dad didn’t have was a working tape deck, but I had a Walkman to play all of the cassettes that had traveled with me from Texas. That worked out fine until mid-summer, when I was scheduled to head up to the Valley for a few days to visit my grandparents. I listened to Keep It Up at least twice a day– what was I going to do for three days without the vinyl?
Simple solution: on the drive up to the Valley, I had Dad stop at The Wherehouse so that I could buy the cassette of Keep It Up. It was even on sale for $5.99 (why do I remember such ridiculous details? The mind is a weird thing!). My Loverboy problem was solved, but I would soon face a new crisis during my visit: the flu.
And I’m not talking about a little flu. I’m talking about the delusional, don’t-know-which-way-is-up, recurring-visions-of-the-cast-of-“Family Ties”-competing-in-the-Winter-Olympics flu. I was in really bad shape, and two songs kept running through my brain on constant auto-loop: “Sweet Dreams” from the Eurythmics (I kept seeing that damn cow!), and Doug Johnson’s hypnotic keyboard riff from “Prime Of Your Life.” I guess my flu must have been a synthetic virus. (Sorry, been watching too much Fallon lately)
One other note about Keep It Up: it contains “Queen Of The Broken Hearts,” which in my opinion is the best Loverboy song of all time. For some reason, the band has never included “Queen Of The Broken Hearts” on any of its greatest hits compilations despite the fact that it crushes “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” like a grape.
Note: if any of you are wondering why my grandparents didn’t have a record player, the truth is that they did. But it was an old Radio Shack rip-off console with speakers the size of a box of Cracker Jacks, and I wasn’t going to risk damage to my prized vinyl copy of Keep It Up by exposing it to such obviously inferior equipment. Yep, I was officially a record snob by the glorious age of 15. By the way, I don’t think I ever saw my grandparents use that record player– it just sat in the same spot untouched for years. They did had a small stack of LPs next to the stereo, and a copy of Nat King Cole’s Love Is the Thing was at the front of that stack for the first 16 years of my life. I found a beautiful used copy of that record a few years ago, and I bought it in memory of my Grandma.
Loverboy: Keep It Up
Columbia Records, 1983
1. “Hot Girls In Love” (Dean/Fairbairn)
2. “Strike Zone” (Dean/Reno/Smith/Fairbairn)
3. “It’s Never Easy” (Dean/Reno/Johnson)
4. “Chance Of A Lifetime” (Dean/Reno/Johnson/Fairbairn)
5. “Queen Of The Broken Hearts” (Dean/Reno)
6. “Prime Of Your Life” (Johnson/Dean/Fairbairn)
7. “Passion Pit” (Dean/Reno/Fairbairn)
8. “One-Sided Love Affair” )Dean/Reno/Taylor/Fairbairn)
9. “Meltdown” (Johnson/Dean/Reno)
________________________________________________________________
Bonus Tracks!
The first rule of The Analog Kid blog is that if you write about a song on the Analog Kid blog, you share the song on the Analog Kid blog.
Eurythmics: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)“ (Lennox/Stewart)
From the album Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)
RCA Records, 1983
Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)
Loverboy: “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” (Robert John “Mutt” Lange)
From the album Lovin’ Every Minute Of It
Columbia Records, 1985
Nat King Cole: “When I Fall In Love” (Heyman/Young)
From the album Love Is The Thing
Capitol Records, 1957
Rick Astley: “When I Fall In Love” (Heyman/Young)
From the album Whenever You Need Somebody
RCA Records, 1987
The Analog Kid 
Hello. I love your site..and your rule. How do you posts songs like this? I mean….the way u do..without youtube..etc. I am interested in knowing it. Thanks.
Thanks! Not sure what you mean about “how” I do it though– are you asking where I get the music? I own all of it and simply upload the mp3s and the artwork to my WordPress account and then post links to the files. WordPress has an embedded mp3 player that makes it super-easy!
What is the name of the MP3 Plugin? Thank you.
I meant the plugin, yes! Thanks so much!
Glad someone else thinks Queen of the Broken Hearts is Loverboy’s best song besides me!