Everything old is new again... Or so it seems when you turn on the radio in Buffalo these days.

For those of you who live out of town, the AM radio station on 1520 -- it used to be WKBW, it's now WWKB because the radio and television stations are owned by separate companies -- is trying nostalgia as a format. Danny Nevereth is the new/old morning man. Jackson Armstrong is on at night. (He's actually down in Charlotte in the morning, but the show is replayed up here at night.) Joey Reynolds hosts a talk show late at night. They even had Don Berns come down from Toronto to record a few announcements.

Listening to KB is a rather odd exercise, because its playlist of songs is pretty wild. Recently I heard "What's New, Pussycat?" for the first time in years. They'll go from the 50's to the 70's without any notice. Which got me to thinking ... what were the most popular songs when we were all seniors? I have reference books for just such moments. Let me start with the singles, that we were all much too cool to listen too, yet still knew all the words. Here are the number one singles:

Date	Song	Artist
8/26	Brandy	Looking Glass
9/2	Alone Again (Naturally)	Gilbert O'Sullivan
9/16	Black & White	Three Dog Night
9/23	Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me	Mac Davis
10/14	Ben	Michael Jackson
10/21	My Ding-a-ling	Chuck Berry
11/4	I Can See Clearly Now	Johnny Nash
12/2	Papa Was a Rolling Stone	Temptations
12/9	I Am Woman	Helen Reddy
12/16	Me and Mrs. Jones	Billy Paul
1/6	You're So Vain	Carly Simon
1/27	Superstition	Stevie Wonder
2/3	Crocodile Rock	Elton John
2/24	Killing Me Softly With His Song	Roberta Flack
3/24	Love Train	O'Jays
4/7	The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia	Vicki Lawrence
4/21	Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree	Dawn
5/19	You Are the Sunshine of My Life	Stevie Wonder
5/26	Frankenstein	Edgar Winter Group
6/2	My Love	Wings

Funny how every guy will look at this list and go "ugh" when "I Am Woman" comes up.  At least there's some interesting subject matter on there.  "Black and White" is the only number one hit about a Supreme Court ruling on desegregation.  "Me and Mrs. Jones" is a surprisingly frank talk (for the time) about an affair with a married woman.  "Tie a Yellow Ribbon..." was about a convict wondering about his response when he gets out of jail.  As for "My Ding-a-ling," um, never mind.

We're not at the level of "Seasons of the Sun," which remains the top upbeat ditty about death ever recorded, but you get the idea.

The albums (you'll have to explain albums and singles to the kids) tended to stay on top of the charts for longer periods of time:

Date	Album	Artist
9/1	Chicago V	Chicago
10/21	Superfly	Curtis Mayfield/Soundtrack
11/18	Catch Bull At Four	Cat Stevens
12/9	Seventh Sojourn	Moody Blues
1/13	No Secrets	Carly Simon
2/17	The World is a Ghetto	War
3/3	Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player	Elton John
3/17	Dueling Banjos	Eric Weissberg
4/7	Lady Sings the Blues	Diana Ross/Soundtrack
4/21	Billion Dollar Babies	Alice Cooper
4/28	Dark Side of the Moon	Pink Floyd
5/5	Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite	Elvis Presley
5/12	Houses of the Holy	Led Zeppelin
5/29	The Beatles 1967/70	The Beatles
6/2	Red Rose Speedway	Paul McCartney & Wings
6/23	Living in the Material World	George Harrison

That's better.  "Dark Side of the Moon" is still selling 30 years later.  I think you could make a good case that Led Zeppelin turned out to be the most influential band of the 1970's. And just think -- we had only heard "Stairway to Heaven" a couple of hundred times by graduation, instead of the 20,000 we have now.