A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Before 1988 I pretty much listened to music my parents made me listen to: The Beatles, The Monkees, and a lot of Jimmy Buffet. The first music I ever owned I got for X-Mas from my Aunt: Michael Jackson’s Thriller on vinyl. It came out in ’82, but I probably didn’t get it until X-Mas ’84. It might have been ’83, but I have a pretty clear memory of dancing to Michael Jackson in pre-school and I was born in 1980 so I am not sure if I remember much of anything that happened in 1983. I do have vivid memories of wanting Regan to win in 1984. So back to my point. In 1988 I was in the second grade and I really started to listen to music on my own. The rock songs I remember being into were Born In The USA by the Boss and We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel. Other than that I only listened to Hip Hop. Run DMC, Fresh Prince, LL Cool J and mostly Young MC. In the 4th grade I switched schools and this popular kid Stephen Salyer told me to listen to this top 40 radio station in DC called WAVA. (Strangely that same kids’ brother played me Nirvana for the first time. I heard Bleach before Nevermind was out but I couldn’t stand it.) From 1990 – Valentines Day 1992 I listened to nothing but top 40 music, most of which was rap. On Valentines day WAVA switched formats to Contemporary Christian music. That day I moved the dial over to WJFK and started listening to Howard Stern in the morning and pretty much listened to exclusively Nirvana (who I got into after hearing their Incesticide Album) until Kurt Cobain killed himself and I started listening to exclusively to punk rock until 1999 when I moved into a dorm room with a guy who hated punk and loved Dave Mathews. We made a deal: No punk for me and no Dave Mathews for him. We could however agree on one music and that coincidentally was old school hip hop and I was back to the beginning. Anyway, there is a lot of music that I listened to from 1989 to 1992 that were HUGE hits to me, but no one really remembers because of another huge hit on that album. I want to talk to you about three of those secondary hits today. So my three favorite forgotten hits after the break.

1. Young MC: Principals Office – 1989
This is the song that made me want to write this article. In the early days of DBB3.0 way back in April or something I blogged this video. We are returning to it today because it was my favorite song ever in the third grade. Yeah, I know every word of Bust A Move, but seriously, Principals Office was everyones favorite jam at Alexandria Country Day School. That song was such a bigger hit to us cause we could relate. These are lyrics a 9 year old can get down with. I didn’t know anything about hitting on women in movie theaters, but I did know all about passing notes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7fs2979Y4[/youtube]

2. Another Bad Creation: Playground – 1991
Many of you might not even know that this band existed. If you have heard of them you probably only remember their hit Iesha. This band was a bunch of little kids talking about hanging out on a playground. I mean, for serious, I was all about that shit when I was 11. Playgrounds were fucking awesome. I mean they still are. Do you have any idea how much sex I had in playgrounds when I was in high school? It was either in my car or on a jungle gym. Plus I love swings. ABC was part of the “East Coast Family” which consisted of Boyz II Men, ABC and Bel Biv Devoe. Look how cute Mark AKA Mizzark is… I wonder what the hell that kid is doing now? These kids were so hard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsWCfemmUxg[/youtube]
3. Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch: Wild Side – 1991
I know you have heard Good Vibrations a million times and I am sure you hate it. I always have. That being said, I fucking LOVED Wild Side, the second release off Music For The People. Now this is a song an 11 year old can really relate to, drugs, drive-bys and killing pregnant women for life insurance money. And the whole thing was set to Lou Reed’s Wild Side. Take that Tribe Called Quest. The only song I liked more than this at the time was Do The Bartman, which I swear to god was the most popular song that radio station ever played. Evidently there is not a video for this song, but I did find a video of an Academy Award winning actor acting like a gosh darn fool.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQsbYIrxgD8[/youtube]

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