22 May 2015, No. 96, Johnny Dynell, ‘Jam Hot (12 Inches)’

I’ve been putting off writing about No. 96, “Jam Hot” by Johnny Dynell, probably because I’m a little ashamed of its appearance on this list. The cheese content is pretty high here, but that tweety little synth line cures all the song’s other ills for me. This is one of those 12-inch singles that I dug up in my 20s and that transported me instantly to U93 FM’s “Hot 9 at 9” or Zip104 FM’s “Top 10 at 10” in the mid-1980s. It wouldn’t actually have been on one of those countdown shows, not in the town where I lived anyway, because the tune didn’t chart, I don’t think. But maybe we got some WBMX spillover after the pop charts were counted down, and that would explain why this melody sticks in my head. The featured video is not the mix I want—“Jam Hot (12 Inches)” is the one I’m listening to—and the “Rhumba Mix” here has the wrong drums. The snare especially is bad in the rhumba mix, and that’s bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good.