Various – Rock 80

Great album! Perfect songs from that time ! Drivers seat!

Before you had “Now That’s What I Call Music” there was K-Tel. K-Tel was a record label that created various artist albums back in the 1970’s and 1980’s with current hit songs of the time. The albums were promoted on television They allowed you to get a variety of popular songs on one album.
These albums had names like “Disco Rocket”, “Gold Rush ‘79”, “Blast Off”, “Street Beat” and many other cheesy names. These were the original artist however some songs were cut on their time from the original album track and even sometimes from the original single. The sound quality of K-Tel albums was not as good and original albums but they were usually much cheaper than the artist's albums. So if you liked the songs, or most of the songs on the collection and you had very little pocket money you could get a nice collection of hits.
I remember being in a record store with my sister and I wanted a new record so bad but I could not make up my mind what I wanted. I think she was sick of waiting on me to make up my mind to she suggest a K-Tel album. The album name was “Rock 80”. I liked the bright rainbow colors on the cover. I didn’t know all the songs on the album but my sister convinced me I’d love it.
Well being only around 9 years old I played it and the album began to grow on me. Some of the songs were popular songs at the time that I had heard like: “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar, “Call Me” By Blondie (this song was on almost every K-Tel album for awhile), and “I Want You To Want Me” By Cheap Trick. However, there were songs on the album not being played on the radio at the time. The track listings included “Cars” by Gary Numan, “Brass In Pocket” by The Pretenders, “Cruel To Be Kind” by Nick Lowe, “Rock N Roll Radio” by The Ramones and others. I thinks it’s safe to say this little K-Tel album was my first cross over from listening to what was popular on the radio to songs that were recognized a great despite the radio. So K-Tel I thank you for Rock 80. I just purchased a new copy since my old copy was loved very much and a bit beat up.