Episodes

The Grateful Dead were definitely a rock band, and at the same time they managed to defy most definitions with regard to their specific genre. Sometimes they were funky, sometimes they were bluesy, sometimes they were jazzy, sometimes even gospel. Usually they were jamming, and rather than discouraging fans from recording their concerts, they encouraged it, often even giving them opportunities to plug recorders into their own equipment. Going to a Dead concert was a weird, beautiful, communal ex...

This week’s show was suggested by someone in the Listener Survey, so thank you, Kind Stranger, for making that suggestion. Maybe next time I do this sort of thing, I leave an optional space for putting your names in. So the car in the episode artwork isn’t THE vehicle in question, but it’s the same make and model, and (I think) year. There are some stories that say it was a 1964 others that say it was a 1965. Both stories came from the Ides of March lead singer and songwriter Jim Peterik, so I ...

Apologies for the delay; once again I’ve been at a podcasting conference and I got in from Boston a little later than I expected to. This one was geared entirely toward educational podcasts (and yes, I do consider this show educational, though it’s probably more in the “edutainment” corner), and I picked up a lot of information I’m hoping to take to my school and see what we can do about getting something launched with my students. Aaaaanyway, I don’t have a lot of backstory to add to this one,...

Holy Moly! The show is back! For those of you who don’t follow the show on Facebook or Twitter, I’ll be posting the pictures here in another couple of days, outlining the New Studio Project. My return to the Podcast Zone was delayed a little bit by a faulty cable I needed to replace, plus I was getting into a weird funk. But fortunately I got a mental boot in the butt by Greg Yates over at the No Head Trash Nation Podcast. I met Greg a few weeks ago when I was in Orlando and, while he considers...

What do you think? You like that picture? I PAID for that stock photo, like some kind of honest guy. Despite this being perhaps The Hollies’ biggest hit in the US, it still managed not to make it to the Number One position on the Billboard Hot 100. It was kept out of that position by Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” for both of the weeks that it spent at #2 with a bullet. And for all that time on the charts (11 weeks altogether), that’s a pretty popular song, considering that nobo...

The Summer of 1969 was also the Summer of Woodstock. Hundreds of thousands of people made their way to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York (they couldn’t get a permit for the town of Woodstock, but the posters had already been made, and you know how it goes…) for a few days of Peace, Love and Music. Woodstock proved to be like nothing else, before or since. Attempts to replicate its feeling, or its scale, or anything else about it gets washed away by nostalgia and the sense that someone’s try...

Click here for a transcript of this episode. This is the penultimate of my special episodes concentrating on the Summer of 1969, and this time around it concerns one of the more horrific crimes of the 20th Century–the Tate-LaBianca murders during the weekend of August 8 and 9. The murders were incredibly savage, and intended to strike terror into the hearts of Californians, but the hidden agenda behind them was that they were meant to be a model for African-Americans to use as part of the upri...

Click here for a transcript of this episode. In the late 1960s, both the music scene and the theater scene were changing, and the 1968 premiere of the show Hair on Broadway was a confluence of the two. Hair is generally considered to be the first rock musical, as opposed to a rock opera, where all the dialogue is sung, and apparently there are debates about which one was first because there were several concurrent projects going on. At any rate, several songs from the show became pop hits in t...

We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with a look at three records that commemorated the event.

This week, we’ve got a super-sized episode of the show (nearly an hour!) as I sit down with Christopher McKittrick, author of Can’t Give it Away on Seventh Avenue: The Rolling Stones and New York City. Chris and I had a fascinating chat about the band and their long-term relationship with New York. All of them, whether collectively or as individuals, spent a lot more time there than you probably suspect, and McKittrick takes us along on the journey, demonstrating how the city infused itself into...

The Dixie Cups' first and biggest hit got its writers into a minor feud with Phil Spector.

The song that was pretty much a throwaway B Side for Carl Douglas turns into a worldwide hit, and turns Douglas into a one-hit wonder.

It's been a while, but once again we take a look at popular songs that you may not realize were recorded by someone else first.

Del Shannon's first and biggest hit got its distinctive sound from a musical instrument that his keyboard player pretty much invented.

Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be spelled with periods, but that really screwed with the file names, so let’s all just live with it, OK? Victor Willis was hired on to be the voice of the Village People, but like Ron Dante and The Archies, he was pretty much all there was to the band until they needed to put in some live appearances. So, like The Monkees, a casting call went out. Sure, the criteria for being in the Village People were a little different from being in The Monkees, but most of the ...

The first single from Simon and Garfunkel's final studio album wasn't their biggest hit, but technologically it was their most ambitious.

Click here for a transcript of this episode. The Who was gaining popularity in the UK, but they hadn’t reached the point of having huge amounts of money yet. So when Pete Townshend found himself accidentally(ish) living in a posh neighborhood near Buckingham Palace, he noticed that everyone around him was treating him badly. So on his twentieth birthday, while sitting on a train, he composed this song, as a means of getting back at all the rich people who were mean to him. Why didn’t I think o...

Jefferson Airplane's breakout hit was written by Grace Slick's brother-in-law and first performed by her in a band formed by her then husband. Ain't nothing but a family thing.

Despite the lyrics, David Allan Coe's breakout hit isn't about a woman.

Billy Joel's longest studio track has a lot of Long Island landmarks in it, and most of them are easily identified. But what restaurant was he referring to in this song? This week we look at some contenders.

Gary US Bonds was still just "US Bonds" on the record labels until shortly after this record came out. This week we look at the story behind this song, and how it influenced another hitmaker to write and produce Bonds' 1981 comeback hit.

Click here for a transcript of this episode. Let me open up with an apology for the delayed show. Those who know me well know that there was a medical issue in the family that distracted me, and that’s got to come first, right? For me, “Classical Gas” is one of those songs that passes in and out of my consciousness. I forget about it for a long time, and then I can’t get enough of it for awhile. And when I did that trivia question last week about instrumentals, “Classical Gas” returned to my r...

Click here for a transcript of this episode. In 1981 Bonnie Tyler had exactly one hit, 1977’s “It’s a Heartache”, so it was no mystery why people were calling her a one-hit wonder. Her record label cut her loose, so she found a new manager and talked Jim Steinman, the guy responsible for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, into partnering with her for a new album. Steinman wasn’t easily convinced, but ultimately he came to her with a couple of older songs that he thought she could record, and when she...

Devo's one trip to the Top 40 was a cultural touchstone partly because some people misunderstood the intent of the lyrics, and partly because MTV was starved for programming.