So why wouldn'tThe Monkees write a song about the greater Haverhill area?
It seemed perfectly logical.
We'd pass the highway sign for "Pleasant Valley" while headed down 495 to go to my Uncle Joe's house, and though I couldn't see if from the back seat of our wood-paneled station wagon (or our yellow Dodge Dart), I knew, via the lyrics, that a very wonderful town lived just beyond the tree-line.
Kids don't know much about irony either. I thought they were singing about a simple, happy place, not a deathbed of conformity.
Anyway, now when I travel down Route 495, I smile and remember a less cynical place off the exit, that only existed in a elementary school kid's head.
I'm actually writing this post before the mvyradio Big Chili Contest, and setting it to automatically post on Sunday morning.
Because Lord knows, I will not be up and moving after a night on the town.
My Mother-in-law had the kids, and my wife and I attempted to relive our youth.
I pretty much guarantee that if you are reading this on Sunday morning, I am, at this moment, on the hunt for an aspirin and I am feeling nowhere near as romantic as Johnny makes a hangover seem.
And the smell of someone frying chicken is likely to make me ill . . .
For the first, I dunno, maybe 2 years of my daughter's life, we put on the same album every night. We had an iPod dock in the kids' room, and we'd bring up the playlist for "Bedtime With The Beatles."
It's an instrumental album, of lullaby-ish version of Beatles songs. Very pleasant, very well done.
I know that 20 years from now, even if she goes two decades without listening to a Beatles tune, that one day my daughter will hear the deep-cut "I'm Only Sleeping."
And she'll say, "I know this song. How do I know this song?"
She may not have any recollection of hearing it. But it's imprinted on her brain.
I'm guessing something similar happened to me.
I can't, for the life of me, figure out how I knew this song. My folks weren't Status Quo fans or anything. WBCN didn't play it regularly. But somehow my brain knew it.
And when the Camper Van Beethoven version came out, I knew it.
How? Well it certainly wasn't a lullaby. But certain songs imprint on your brain, don't they?
(I wrote Part 1 a year ago. Just getting around to the rest of the story now. And there was a Part 1a, too.)
"Clearly, something is happening here."
We had gone out to dinner at Offshore Ale following the Big Chili Contest. We'd just met, but the easy chemistry was evident.
We'd talked. Danced. Kissed. Said goodbye to our friends and headed off to dinner together to get to know each other.
I can't really remember what preceded me saying "Clearly, something is happening here" across the dinner table, but I wanted to acknowledge what we both knew---that this wasn't just drunk-boy meets drunk-girl and has silly night together. This was something bigger.
A week or so after the day we met, she sent me a few pictures of the night. One stood out in particular.
I don't have any recollection of who took the picture, or exactly when, or exactly what was happening in that moment.
But I will say that maybe more than any picture I've ever been in, it captured what the moment felt like.
After dinner, we'd gone to The Ritz Cafe to hear Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish, and to extend our night together. As usual, the band provided a fun frolicking time.
I think this photo was taken between sets, when we'd decided to leave. We're holding each other, looking at each other (looking a quite a bit drunk, no doubt), locked into each other.
Somehow the picture conveys both the new infatuation, and the instant, easy familiarity that usually only comes after two people really get to know each other.
8 years later, lots of things have changed. But as she was going out the door this morning, I reminded her that today was the 24th, held her like I did in the picture, and kissed her goodbye, all in that same easy way I did 8 years ago.
Today's the day, but Saturday we celebrate---at the mvyradio Big Chili Contest in the morning, and at The Ritz with Johnny Hoy at night.
Happy Anniversary!
(There wasn't really any Johnny Hoy on Youtube, so I made a video, using only the picture I'm writing about here.)
I found this page at Billboard Magazine's website that lets you look back on the Modern Rock/Alternative charts for any week, since they started the format in the late 80s. It's kinda funny to remember those early days of commercial "Alternative" radio, which had sprung out of College radio. While there were truly artists who were Alternative, there were often artists who seem so far removed from the format today, that were there.
Like Suzanne Vega.
She's pretty much the epitome of a great Adult Alternative singer and songwriter. I can't imagine her getting played next to early Red Hot Chili Peppers or the latest Morrissey track on Modern Rock radio, but she did.
Anyway, here she is at her most Alternative, with a track that seems like an anomaly compared to the rest of her catalog.
I got sucked into Billboard Magazine's website yesterday, when I discovered you could look at Modern Rock charts going back years. I'll write more about it on Monday. In the meantime, some Weekend Posts of songs I was reminded of . . .
Love & Rockets yesterday, means the rest of Bauhaus, today.
Hear the song on Youtube.
Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.
Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.
Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
I got sucked into Billboard Magazine's website yesterday, when I discovered you could look at Modern Rock charts going back years. I'll write more about it on Monday. In the meantime, some Weekend Posts of songs I was reminded of . . .
In retrospect, it's pretty amazing that this one crossed-over to be a #3 Pop Hit on the Billboard charts.
Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.
Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.
Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
After a couple of quiet months, with barely any new music coming in, this week started a flood of new CDs and tracks. But one caught me off guard.
I got a notification in my email, early Thursday:
"Bruce Springsteen - "We Take Care Of Our Own" Music Delivery"
I knew he had an album on the way, but somehow I missed that the new single was coming in this week.
I downloaded it immediately, and played it 3 times over.
It's fun to discover a song. It's anthem-ic, but what's he getting at? At first it seems like a "Yay! America!" song, but what's with the reference to The Superdome? Is this a Katrina thing?
I'm sure after repeated listens, I'll figure it out what it's about (don't tell me!). But as I was digging into those first few listens, I was struck by how much joy I still get from that initial first blush.
After 20 years in broadcasting, I could be numb to it all. But I'm not. Watching a song unfold before me made me look forward to this long year full of new discoveries ahead.
How do you keep the station's library from stagnating? Well, the easiest thing to do is remove songs. If something is burned out, or if it has aged poorly, pull it out of rotation.
That's the simple solution, but it does alter the recipe. If you reduce the number of, say, songs from the 70s that mvyradio plays, you reduce the percentage of songs from the 70s that mvyradio plays.
And like a recipe, if you suddenly reduce the percentage of, say, carrots that you put into the soup, it ultimately alters the flavor.
So we will dip into an artist's catalog and see if there is anything we can bring into the library.
I recruited Barbara to help me look at James Taylor's 70s output, to see if we could improve the quality of JT tracks. Though he is one of the primary artists some people associate with the station, we actually only play a 1/2 dozen songs by Taylor at this point. Over the years, we've weeded out tracks. Time to, uh, weed in . . .
One of the simple things to do, was to look back at songs we used to play, to see if we could put anything back into rotation. We found a couple, though we also found some that were still burned, or still sounded too dated for mvyradio today.
The other thing to do (and this is why I needed Barbara), was too try to think about what tracks would stand out on the air, to anyone who owned the album.
In 1970, you (but not me, since I was only 1 year old) might have bought the "Sweet Baby James" album because of the song "Fire And Rain." But you probably listened to that record a whole lot over the years. So even if an album track wasn't a radio hit, if the album was popular, then the songs is going to be familiar to lots of folks/fans.
That's why you'll now hear "Lo And Behold" on mvyradio, added to rotation this week.
As we were doing this, it got me thinking about the future.
In 20 years time, will we be able to do this exercise for albums released in 2012?
Fewer and fewer people are listening to albums, as we move to a digital, "singles" musical culture. Some of the people who like Mumford And Sons, will only download "The Cave" and "Little Lion Man" without ever digging into the album to discover "Timshel."
Will a future radio station Music Director be able to pick up "Sigh No More" and ask the question, "What non-singles will people remember from this record?" and actually come up with something new to play? Probably not.
I was watching late night TV, specifically to catch a much-hyped young female singer-songwriter.
The performance was pretty weak, but I had a compassionate thought. I thought to myself, how unfair . . .
Unfair to her, because she appeared to be somewhat terrified, and struggled to hit all her notes. She clearly wasn't ready to be on a stage like NBC late night.
Unfair because this was going to negatively effect her career. Whatever promo folks were in charge of getting her this gig were responsible for pushing thing too far too fast, and would have to deal with the repercussions of people saying she wasn't as good as the hype.
The year was 1994 and the artist was Liz Phair.
She'd put out the critically acclaimed "Exile In Guyville" record independently, and it was rightly lauded. Her debut was refreshing in its lyrical frankness, its overt sexuality and its lo-fi spunk. But no one bothered to check if Phair was a great live performer, or was seasoned enough to command a stage. She wasn't.
Check out the clip below, from Jay Leno in 1994, as she doesn't come close to hitting some of the higher notes.
I thought about this performance yesterday, when I started reading about Lana Del Rey's performance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend.
Her first album isn't even out yet, but people are talking, talking, talking about her. So much so, that there's already a backlash (not unlike the Vampire Weekend phenomenon). Many folks who have yet to see her live, tuned into SNL to get a glimpse of what the big deal is. And, judging from more thana fewsources, she disappointed.
I watched her spotty performance and history seem to repeat itself, I asked myself, "Is it Phair?"
Barbara and I got interviewed on Monday for a piece in Martha's Vineyard Magazine, about the radio stations that service the Island (us, WCAI the local NPR affliate and WVVY the Vineyard's Community Radio station).
We were talking about the history of the station and the evolution of the station's musical programming. And we got on the subject of how some songs last and some don't and the reporter asked an interesting question, "Is there any artist or song that surprised you?"
I don't know if I am surprised by any one song's longevity, but a few artists came to mind. Particularly this new track.
Paul McCartney has been known to release more than a few things that fans would call . . . lacking. But every once and a while he releases something that still has some magic.
It's natural for an artist's quality to drop over time. And it's okay. It's completely reasonable.
But it's surprising and wonderful, when an artist who has no reason to still be good, is still good.
Like Paul Simon's "So Beautiful Or So What" or Robbie Robertson's "How To Become Clairvoyant," the couple of tracks I've heard from McCartney's "Kisses On The Bottom" suggest that Paul latest effort is as inspired as Simon's and Robertson's.
If I say the word "Crook," who's image flashes to your mind?
You would be like a lot of folks, if you answered "Richard Nixon."
But the question is Why? Why do you associate the word "Crook" with "Nixon"?
Because, the quote he is famous for is "I am not a crook."
So, in theory, when thinking about the word "crook," Richard Nixon should be furthest from your mind, since he is likely the only person you've ever known who specifically denied being a "crook." And yet you associate the word, with the man.
Researchers think that the brain filters out the negative word in statements.
"I am not a crook" becomes "I am a crook" in your mind.
So in this case, regardless of what he was intending to say, the lingering idea that people got, was that Richard Nixon was a crook. Tying together "Crook" and Nixon in the same statement, forever bound the two.
Good to know, if you ever need to deny a wrong-doing. Avoid "I am not guilty." Go with "I am innocent."
I learned this the hard way, myself, a few years back in a pub.
Not the guilty part. I wasn't guilty of anything. Just that the brain can filter out the Not.
The whole Finn clan was in a pub, drinking a few pints, and listening to a local entertainer bang away on an acoustic guitar. He was encouraging requests, and even had booklets of songs that he knew floating around the tables.
Someone at my table was reading song titles, when they came to "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald."
"Ooh, I do not like that song," I shuddered.
I went on to say that as a child, that song scared the shit out of me. As a young kid who (thankfully) did not have much of a conception of death or the cruelty of the universe, the idea that these sailors disappeared without a trace was more terrifying as anything that walked around slowly in a hockey mask. Even into my adult life, I was as afraid of listening to Gordon Lightfoot, as some kids my age were of swimming in the ocean for fear of great whites.
About 10 minutes later, the troubadour on stage starts singing "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald."
Now I was really freaked the fuck out. I was just talking about that tune. And of the dozens upon dozens of songs in the songbook, he picked that one to play? How did he know?
"How did he know what?" my Mom asked.
"That I was just talking about that song?"
"Oh, I requested it for you!" she said, sweetly.
"Gahhh! I hate this song!"
"I thought I heard you say you liked it?"
"I said I didn't like it!"
"Oh . . . sorry."
Yeah, when you're only half listening, your brain can get tied up in Nots.
And for the record, Mom does think Nixon is a crook.
At my old station, I used to have an I.R.S. records compilation, which had yesterday's Concrete Blonde song, and this one. I always thought these guys were an interesting, tight trio.
They had to change the name of the tune to that weird spelling to avoid being sued by The Mouse.
Enjoy the very "90s" fashion/haircuts in this video!
Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.
Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.
Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
You can't mention Concrete Blonde (as I did yesterday) without mentioning this track.
Wow, Johnette Napolitano's voice has to be one of the great female Rock N Roll voices of my generation. It seems unfair that her various musical projects never seemed to break through (or match the "College Rock" success of this song).
Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.
Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.
Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
For the next couple of days, I thought it would be fun to write about a few tunes for a game I'd like to call:
"This is what it means if you hear that song on mvyradio."
There are a handful of songs, that, if I hear them on the station, I can tell you exactly what is going on behind the scenes . . .
People ask the question, "Is the mvyradio stream the same stuff as the broadcast?"
And the answer is basically, Yes. Anything the DJ says on the broadcast, you hear on the webstream. Any song that's played on the broadcast, gets played on the webstream too.
The only bit of content this isn't on the stream, is the commercial breaks.
The original reason for this, was a legal issue.
All radio stations pay licensing fees for the copyrighted content they air. That means fees to music publishers. It means fees to the Associated Press for our national news. Those fees are determined by the size of our audience. Fees in the Cape Cod market are much lower than a big urban area, like Boston or New York.
Voice-over actors are Union. And when a Voice-over actor appears in a radio commercial, their pay scale is adjusted based on the size of the market(s) the spot will play in (as well as how frequently it plays).
So when we first started streaming the station, the commercials went onto the web. But the Voice-over actors' Union realized that suddenly their spots were playing to much larger potential markets. They deserved higher pay.
New commercials for big advertisers like Ford and Dunkin' Donuts started sending their spots with bold letter caveats, warning radio stations that these spots could not be played on the web.
What to do?
Our engineer set up a system, so that every time the DJ threw it to commercial, the web listeners would hear another song.
As a programmer, this presented a problem for Barbara (who was Program Director at the time). These "insertion songs" could not be scheduled. They were fired at random, from an iTunes-like playlist. You never knew what would play during a commercial break.
That meant, you couldn't put any artists on the Insertion list, who were on the regular playlist. Otherwise, you'd risk playing Paul Simon on the broadcast, followed by a randomly selected Paul Simon insertion song.
Barbara and I went about identifying artists who only had a song or two in our library, that would be okay to move off the broadcast, to online-only.
So there is a whole body of songs that haven't been on the broadcast for years, that our online listeners hear regularly.
It's a great system, though it does drive both the listeners and the DJs a little nuts, when someone calls up and says, "What was that last song, the one before The Decemberists?" and you realized that right before the Decemberists, there was a commercial break. The insertion songs play at random, with no record of what played when, so there is no way to know for sure.
But if after all these years, I do have a pretty good sense of what songs are on that list, and can often guess, if given a lyric or some other detail.
And if a person writes in and asks, "Who did that version of 'Crystal Blue Persuasion'?" I know exactly how they were listening to mvyradio.
For the next couple of days, I thought it would be fun to write about a few tunes for a game I'd like to call:
"This is what it means if you hear that song on mvyradio."
There are a handful of songs, that, if I hear them on the station, I can tell you exactly what is going on behind the scenes . . .
If you hear this song, you know it's about 10:30am on a weekday in December, and Laurel is smiling.
This Cheech & Chong track was a staple of our Christmas programming for years and years. It would go into regular rotation at the beginning of December, and get played every few days, through Christmas.
But like any novelty song, or joke, repeating it ad nauseum just makes it lose it's effect.
So a few Christmas seasons ago, I pulled it from the automatic rotation of our Christmas programming.
But I know this song is right in Laurel's wheelhouse. A vinyl-era, pro-pot, deeply silly, shaggy and loveable riff on the holiday.
So, once a year, I program it in to her show. I try to put it in the last hour of her shift, so the heft of the morning is behind her, she's not preparing for a Newscast or Live Acoustic And Covers or Musical Notes, and she has a few minutes to listen and laugh.
For the next couple of days, I thought it would be fun to write about a few tunes for a game I'd like to call:
"This is what it means if you hear that song on mvyradio."
There are a handful of songs, that, if I hear them on the station, I can tell you exactly what is going on behind the scenes . . .
If you can hear this song, I can tell you who's NOT on the air!
I think all DJs understand, we are hear to serve up the music, based on the listeners, not solely on our personal tastes.
Imagine if I were your waiter. Just because I think mushrooms are disgusting, if you order the portabello, I'm not going to refuse to server it on the grounds of my own integrity.
So it goes with the tunes. We have the general idea that if a song or band is an mvy song or band, all the DJs will play them, regardless of personal prejudice. You can't love everything on the menu, and only an asshole would deny others enjoyment of something, based on personal taste.
But every once and a while, one or another of us will get obstinate, and out and out refuse to play a track.
I won't out the person---and like a good Agatha Christie book, everyone is a possible suspect in this case---but this DJ's political views motivate the choice.
Rush Limbaugh uses "My City Was Gone" as his theme song. And this DJ is no fan of Rush or the conservative talk show host's views.
So you will NEVER hear this song, during that DJs shift.
Use your powers of deduction, to eliminate suspects, Sherlock.
Hear the original song, and then check out the segment from Rush's show, where he details the story of how he came to pick that song as his theme, lost the rights briefly, and then gained an unlikely ally to get it back.
For the next couple of days, I thought it would be fun to write about a few tunes for a game I'd like to call:
"This is what it means if you hear that song on mvyradio."
There are a handful of songs, that, if I hear them on the station, I can tell you exactly what is going on behind the scenes . . .
Timing is everything.
Especially in a business that runs on a clock.
I mean, I know we're on Island Time on the Vineyard, but you can't start the 9am News at Ten-Past.
But sometimes your hour gets away from you. You're concentrating on other things (preparing the news, answering the Listener Line, getting your next set of songs lined up), and you look up and realize that it's five minutes before the top of the hour, and you have 4 minutes of commercials to play.
Every DJ at the station has a mental file of the shortest songs in the library. And at 1 minute and 38 seconds, "Mystery Dance" is the shortest.
Some people pick The Beatles "I Will" at 1:43, or, if they have an extra few seconds Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" or The Byrds' "Ballad Of Easy Rider" which each clock in at just about 2 minutes.
But I like "Mystery Dance" because it's a frenetically paced paean to under-performance. It seems like the perfect song to play as your rushing around to get the News ready for the top of the hour.
So if you hear this one, know that whoever is on the air was moving too slowly for the last 55 minutes, and has been racing for the last 5.
Hear it live from 1978 (with 2 other songs) on Youtube.
For the next couple of days, I thought it would be fun to write about a few tunes for a game I'd like to call:
"This is what it means if you hear that song on mvyradio."
There are a handful of songs, that, if I hear them on the station, I can tell you exactly what is going on behind the scenes. In the posts that follow, you'll look behind the curtain with me . . .
Over the weekend, I was posting about songs that mvyradio used to play, but doesn't have in regular rotation any more, because they don't seem to fit the sound anymore.
Barbara often points out, that back in the day, mvy used to play Anita Baker. Can you imagine? Anita Baker next to Death Cab For Cutie? It wouldn't work.
So, while a song might work in its day, some songs don't age with the station.
But if it was in rotation in the last 10 years, its probably accessible in the studio. And, as I often point out, just because we don't play it, doesn't make it a bad song and it doesn't mean we don't (or at least one of us doesn't) like it.
If I'm driving around and I hear the One Hit Wonder song "You Get What You Give" by New Radicals in the middle of the day, I can tell you a few things.
Barbara is on vacation.
Alison is filling in for Barbara on The Lunch Hour.
Nobody sent in an eQuest that day.
Occasionally, Alison, while filling in for Barbara, will get to the end of The Lunch Hour (which is supposed to end by playing an emailed-in request from one of our online listeners) without anything to play. So she'll pick a song herself.
She loves this song, and because it's not in rotation anymore, she doesn't really hear it.
So if you hear this one, know that it's probably Alison playing an eQuest to herself!
Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.
Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.
Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.
Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.
Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
Not for school, of course. No, just to visit a friend.
One of my closest friends went to an all Women's college in Roanoke, which was just about two hours away from Abingdon, Virginia, where I lived.
And, perhaps not surprisingly, I'd regularly drive up to Roanoke on the weekends, to a) see my friend, and yeah, b) hang out at an all girls school.
I was single, in my 20s. Where else would I want to be?
This isn't a post about girls or dating or flirting or getting drunk or acting like an awkward teenage boy who hadn't figured out girls when in fact I hadn't been a teenager for many, many years so why was I coming off like such a loser. This is a post about after that.
In those days, I was working nights. I'd get out of bed no earlier that 11am. To the radio station in the early afternoon. Off at midnight or later. And then I'd be up for several hours, drinking or writing or listening to music or watching TV or whatever, until 3 or 4am.
And if I had a Saturday off, I'd go an spend the night in Roanoke.
After a weekend of just being one of the girls, Sunday night would inevitably wind down, as my friend and her cohorts head off to their dorm rooms or study areas to call it a night. And I'd head home.
Getting in the car for a nearly 2 hour drive at 11 or 12 at night, wasn't an issue. I was awake, and happy to have something to do. Even if that something to do was just drive and listen to The Scud Mountain Boys.
My friend Teri had sent me a cassette tape of this band. They, like Teri's band Tizzy, were a Western Massachusetts outfit, a college student/graduate collective of musicians, making a record. Tizzy and The Scud Mountain Boys shared a producer, and that's how a pop-punk drummer heard about an roots/country band from New England.
The cassette combined their full length CD "Dance The Night Away" with selections from an earlier release called "Pine Box." And if I popped the cassette in, right as I pulled out of Roanoke and onto the ramp for Interstate 81, it would carry me all the way down the road, until I was on the exit ramp for my town.
I-81 is a truck route, and yeah, there isn't a lot of anything between Roanoke and Abingdon, except straight stretches, big skies and rolling, rocky farmland.
Much like the Vineyard, southwest Virginia is low on light pollution, and on a clear night (and when I was clear of 18 wheelers) you could see a million stars. It was dark. It was quiet. It was perfect for the Scud Mountain Boys.
The songs on "Dance The Night Away" are built around a slide guitar, slow gorgeous melodies and melancholy lyrics. Time flew by when I listened. Two hours seemed like minutes.
I'm not such an obsessive that I have an actual catalog of this information, but I'd wager that I have listened to "Dance The Night Away" more than any other album. Period.
The band issued one more record, "Massachusetts," and broke up. I did manage to see them live once (a story for another post), but was always bummed out that they didn't do anything else.
Of course, principle songwriter Joe Pernice has been very active, putting out Pernice Brothers records, solo albums and occasional one-off projects like Chappaquiddick Skyline.
But what a thrill to read, out of nowhere this fall, that Joe had reconnected with his old bandmates, and that they had agreed to do a handful of shows this winter.
I'll take the almost two hour journey up to the Brighton Music Hall, next Saturday night, January 14th, for what I hope will be a special night.
And yeah, if it's not too much, for the ride home, for old time's sake, I'll pop in the old cassette and let it carry me home.
I remember hearing David Letterman talk about some city that he had only limited experience with. Maybe it was Cleveland. For the sake of the larger point, let's just say, Cleveland.
He was asking his guest about their home town, Cleveland, and he prefaced the question by saying that the only time he'd ever been to Cleveland, was as part of a flight with a lay-over, and for the hour or so he was there, the skies were very overcast.
Now, whenever he thought about Cleveland, he pictured it as a grey, overcast place. Of course, he knew that Cleveland isn't always grey and miserable, but that's what he saw in his head, because that was the full breadth of his experience.
If you only have one experience with something, it can lead you to extrapolate, incorrectly.
Back in the summer of 2010, we got a copy of the Mumford And Sons single "Little Lion Man." I hadn't really heard anything about them, other than they were gaining popularity and commercial radio was starting to pay attention to them.
I listened to the track a bunch of times, but we didn't have a full length record to check out, so my experience with Mumford And Sons started and ended with this track.
Okay, if they were an "It" band, that released a Rockin' track that drops and F-bomb in the chorus, well, I don't know. Good song. But is this just another generic "We rock" rock band that churns out generic rock songs that generic radio stations play so that non-discriminating rock fans can chant inane, "edgy" choruses while they drive to the office? I don't think I need to go out of my way to play that song . . .
I kept hearing about Mumford And Sons, and when the label sent out a second single, at the end of 2010, I listened. And listened. And listened again. And I pulled out the album.
These were not generic rock tracks. Hell, they weren't really rock tracks at all. Rockin' for sure. But Mumford And Sons was more about taking Folk in new directions. Songs featured the banjo for f's sake!
When I only knew "Little Lion Man," I was only able to imagine the album at 12 tracks just like that. I extrapolated, incorrectly.
I loved the second single, "The Cave." And the third single, "Roll Away Your Stone." And the full album. And when I heard the acoustic version of "Little Lion Man" I loved that.
At least, my mother couldn’t explain syndication to an 9 year old me.
I was in our basement/TV room, devastated. I'd just learned that my favorite band was breaking up and ending their run on TV.
I was crying. Inconsolable.
How could The Monkees do this?
Well, little did I know, The Monkees TV show had been off the air for a decade at this point. It was the late 1970s, and I was in grammar school.
I had been watching The Monkees almost every day, for months, on what I now understand was a local independent TV station that aired reruns of programs all day long.
I loved the songs. I loved the guys in the band. I loved the wacky antics.
But on this day, what I had witnessed, nearly destroyed me.
The last episode of the series aired. I remember clearly that it was introduced as such (though for all my internet searching, I can't seem to find any information about it) by the band, saying that the series was ending.
This was it. It was all over. There would be no more Monkees. No more Davy falling in love. No more Mickey saying something hilarious. No more time spent in that awesome flat. No more playing along to songs on my tennis racket.
Mom kept trying to explain to me that just because it was the last episode that was made, it wasn't the last time the show would ever air.
But I would not be convinced. I mean, Mike Nesmith was just on TV, saying it was the last episode. C'mon, who would know more about the situation (or anything, for that matter), Mike Nesmith or my Mom?
Finally, somewhat exasperated, my Mom got out the TV Guide. She turned the page to tomorrow and looked up the time-slot. "The Monkees" was scheduled to air. And the same thing for the same time the next day.
I still didn't fully believe her, but it was enough to stop the full mental breakdown, or loss of will-to-live.
I rested, uneasily.
Twenty-three hours later, I was in front of the television.
Twenty-three hours later, there was an episode of The Monkees on my TV.
It turns out those last closing credits, weren't the last closing credits, for Pete's (and Mickey's and Davy's and Mike's) sake . . .
(Did you know that the closing credits song is called "For Pete's Sake"?)
Well, we didn't really shock the world here, announcing that mvyradio's listeners voted Adele's "21" record to be our #1 Album Of 2011. I mean, she topped about a hundred other "Best Of" lists, too, including the telling Billboard list, which isn't necessarily a mark of quality, but in this case denotes that LOTS of people loved this record.
This is the last song on the record, and leaves the door wide open for what might come next . . .
She could go in a fully Pop direction, and cement herself as an icon of Gaga proportions.
There is the rumored Country record that she has mentioned in interviews. Seems her tour bus driver introduced her to Patsy Cline and other classic twangsters.
Or, as she as also mentioned in interviews, she could more directly emulate her biggest influence and become an Etta James for a new generation.
It just another thing to look forward to for 2012.
(added bonus on this song . . . it was co-written by Dan Wilson of Semisonic. So nice to see a great songwriter find collaborators who can take his gifts for melody, and hit a home run with it)
This song is set to automatically post, just after midnight, because it's more of a New Year's Eve song, than a New Year's Day song. But I wanted to start the New Year off right, with a little Charles Brown.
As I said, this is set to automatically post, meaning either a) I felt the spirit of the occasion, partied a bit and I'm relatively drunk now, or b) I fell asleep playing scrabble at about 9:30.
I'm the Program and Music Director of mvyradio, a broadcast and internet station on the Island of Martha's Vineyard. You can hear it here.
I've been in radio since the early 90s, programming shows. As Music Director, I receive dozens of CDs and songs every week, from Record Labels, Promotion People and Independent Artists. I try to listen to everything anyone asks me to.
So the old iTunes list is pretty long.
The idea of this blog is to go to that list, grab one (usually at random, but not always) and write about it. Every song has a story. How it fits into the artists oeuvre. What it meant to me when I first heard it.
I'll try to post the song in full, whenever possible, and I invite you to listen and tell me what it makes you think of.
And for more great music, you can stream mvyradio from anywhere in the world, here.
