Song Of The Day 7/3/2016: Laverne & Shirley – “Sixteen Reasons”

You can tell I'm doing research on the upcoming Hidden '70s multi-week feature (starting July 17!) because the strangest sounds are coming out of my laptop and my children are doing their best to pretend not to know me. I can't tell you too much about the song selection process because that would give too much away, but there are some nuggets I can reveal because they aren't exactly headline news. For example: Christ, you have no idea how many things went through the disco filter in the '70s. What we heard on the surface was alarming enough, but try to imagine the stuff we didn't hear on the radio. I may have to spin off another disco mixtape just to cover these aberrations.

And speaking of spin-offs, here's something from the album Laverne & Shirley Sing. Like all the other songs in The Hidden '70s, this one flirted with the charts but didn't break on through to the other side of #40. As I child I didn't watch Laverne & Shirley or Happy Days for that matter, because they both fell on Tuesday nights which were reserved for religious instruction it turns out I had absolutely no future use for other than obtaining looks of pity and sympathy. "Sixteen Reasons," a cover of a song originally made popular by Connie Stevens, is surprisingly un-disastrous. This is more because of Penny Marshall's rote recitation of the numbers rather than Cindy Williams' serviceable-plus singing of the lyrics. It could only be made better if they'd recruited a couple of Squigtones.