After a few minor technical aggravations and repeated do-overs, here's the fourth batch. Only 96 more volumes to go. CD baby just recently sent me an email saying they already don't have enough room and could I please just send three. Next month they'll be like "we can't fit the whole CD, can you just send, like, a couple songs dude? NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #39 "Look What You Started" From my I sound like country John Fogerty Dave Edmonds Nick Lowe rock this month area of stuff. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #40 "How Far This Dream" Oh those dreaded drum machines......this would still be good for Michael McDonald if he ever gets to hear it ever ever. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #41 "Revenge" One of the best tracks I ever did with a real band. Gary Wehrkamp on guitars, Neil Braunstein on drums, Kevin Luggeri on bass, I'm playing a real fender rhodes (not a synth that sounds like one), and we did this track I think three or four times before we just hit it on the head in about an hour. This is one of the half dozen tracks that I used otherwise not percussion instruments for...percussion. The clanging in the "hook" is me hitting the top of a metal music stand with two pencils. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #42 "Love Me Tonight" Me behind the kit for this one, playing drums as well as any keyboard player can mind you...along with everything else, which is quite sparse and refreshing, just piano bass drums....I think I did this drunk somewhere in the late 70's, making me around 22 at the time? All i remember is I recorded 8 full tracks somewhere all day, then drove home smashed and when I woke up the next morning I almost had a whole CD, of which there was still no such thing. Did you get all that? If not, read it backwards. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #42 "Avalanche" From the EMI collection that they have no idea about, or care. Just your basic 80's pop rock song based on metaphors and crap. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #43 "Where's This Love" Very Hall and Oates green-eyed soul, more from the Red Rock Recording sessions in Pennsylvania around 1987? NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #44 "Believer's Eyes" One of my hundred, (2? 3?) or so "1-4-5" progression songs...I am always amazed at how many bazillions of ways you can use a simple root-fourth-fifth structure and make it sound "new". The Cars were masters at it. 80% of all the hits rely on it. I like the cowboyish electric tremelo guitar solo I stuck in the middle. I hate the way I sound like I'm straining to reach the notes in the bridge. It's kind of a cool song I guess. One of my rare one's where the mode is optimistic, although I still manage to complain throughout the lyrics. I'm guessing if I'm lucky enough to to go Heaven, if there is such a place, I'll probably complain that I wish I had a better cloud. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #45 "Watchin The World Go By" The quintessential, the proverbial, the obligatory Radice ballad. At one point one of the secretaries at EMI Music Publishing (who I later dated) was calling me Mark "Nothing But Love Songs" Radice......what can I tellya they were just pouring out of me. Interesting twenty years that I often wonder how much better they would have been if I was actually aware I was experiencing them. This one, the structure of it, the universal theme, the "coverability" of it leads me still to wonder exactly what the hell EMI was doing all those years when I was spinning out 5 to 10 of these a week. NOT HIT NOT EVEN CLOSE #46 "Until We Meet Again" Woke up at engineer David Dale's house in NYC one morning missing Suzanne...song directly written to her from that morning, in the moment. The line "I still see you standing at the (train) station, with your tear and your alibi" I really did, and do....as well as "I still remember riding in the back seat (of my parent's car driving us somewhere) looking up at the moonlit sky".....beautiful memories, she was a beautiful girl. Now she hates me, won't talk to me and thinks I'm some kind of freak, even though she only lives 20 minutes away. Year after year I send her birthday cards, year after year she ignores them. NOT HITS NOT EVEN CLOSE #47 "What Are You Talkin Bout Patrick" Funny story. Some guy Kevin Patrick, who I'm sure has been out of the business for at least 25 years, sent back a "review" on some song that EMI sent him, saying essentially "the song is kind of nice but I don't like the singer's voice". So immediately (next day) I wrote this and had this on his desk 24 hours later with the lyrics "what are you talking bout Patrick you don't like my voice, I can play rings around all those dead cassettes sittin on your desk from people who pretend to be as talented as me" and then David Dale launches into a purposely horrible keyboard part that almost plays the melody. His response? "The song is kind of nice but I still don't like the voice". NOT HITS NOT EVEN CLOSE #48 "Pennsylvania Winter" During the recording of the "Razor Rock" album (coming soon, not part the the Not Hits Collection) I was somewhere out in Philly one day, can't remember why, stopped in a studio they had a really nice grand piano so I booked an hour and dumped this on them. Nice stuff if you can find it. NOT HITS NOT EVEN CLOSE #49 "When They Turn Out The Lights" I think almost everyone was so blown away by "I Am The Walrus" that alot of people, myself included, were so frustrated with how far ahead of all of us the Beatles were that we tried our hardest to write just like them to see if we could capture any of the magic. I'm sorry, apparently nobody else could, it was exclusive to them. There are still people out there trying to sound like the Beatles. Stop it, please, I'm begging you.