Lisa Lisa "All Cried Out"

We were slow dancing. She was singing along to Lisa Lisa's "All Cried Out." She was smiling. Her hair was perhaps the hugest 'do at the Prom. It was totally 80s.

Let me see if I can describe her outfit.

Black stockings. Some kind of black tutu frilly thing, with a studded belt twice wrapped around her. She had some kind of black undershirt on, but over that was a ripped up black t-shirt, off the shoulder a la Flashdance. Jean jacket with the sleeves rolled up. Covering each forearm---what must have been hundreds of bracelets. And on each hand, a pink lace glove.

Eyeliner. Eyeliner. Eyeliner.

And her hair. Huge. The top pulled into a ponytail on the top of her head. All of it crimped for the evening. It smelled of hairspray. A pink feather earring.

In short, she looked like a young Madonna.

I, on the other hand, was desperately trying for a punky coolness, with my Miami Vice jacket, with the Clash t-shirt underneath, hair spiked straight up. And sunglasses. At night.

"All Cried Out" by Lisa Lisa blasted over the P.A. and she sang the ballad at the top of her lungs as we slow danced the night away.

And now, whenever I hear "All Cried Out" it takes me back to that night . . . five days ago.

Yes, last Friday, my wife and I re-lived our youth, at the "Awesome 80s Prom" hosted by WXLO in Worcester.

I can't tell you the last time I saw her that happy. Just the getting-ready process made her giddy. She and her friend Nikki had an absolute blast trying on various outfits and hairstyles and make-up scenarios, acting like teenagers again. Going to the event was just icing on the cake.

And good Lord, what a scene. We were not the only ones excited about going back to the future. Sixteen hundred folks dressed from Prom 1985. And a handful of folks in amazing costume: Beetlejuice, Marty McFly, Pac-Man, Tom-Cruise-in-Top-Gun-dress-whites.

Music cranking, with videos on big screens of all the hits of the 80s. And when I say my wife was singing along to Lisa Lisa, I mean the real thing. They had Lisa Lisa on stage, running through her hits. She sounded good.

I can't say that I have really ever spent any time wishing I could do my teenage years all over again. But it's cool to now have prom pictures in a Clash t-shirt, instead of that white tux I wore in 1986.


See the video on Youtube.

Emmylou Harris "The Road"

I got to interview Emmylou Harris once, by phone.

Being an interviewer gives you license to ask questions. It even gives you license to ask questions that you wouldn't ask a total stranger under any other circumstances.

In short, you can ask personal questions---up to a point---without seeming . . . unusual.

Musicians (and actors) have been asked probing questions thousands of times before, and if your question crosses a line, most know how to simply deflect it if it's something they don't want to answer.

Knowing this as an interviewer, I'm aware of the kind of question a particular interviewee has been ask before, and I usually try to avoid asking it if I know they're not going to answer.

Talking to Emmylou . . . I really wanted to ask probing questions about her relationship with Gram Parsons. But geez, Gram died nearly 40 years ago, so if she were going to talk about it in detail, she would have done it somewhere else already.

I mean, she'll talk about him. I asked her an open-ended question about him, to see where she'd take it.

I'm my interview fantasy world, I'd ask her to talk about what her relationship with Gram Parsons was like, and she'd refuse to answer, and instead tell me that everything she has to say, is in the song, "The Road."

And really, telling you everything you want to know through their art, is how pretty much every musician (and actor) would prefer to answer all questions . . .


See the video on Youtube.

The Passengers "Miss Sarajevo"

I’ve had this argument with perhaps every DJ I’ve ever managed . . .

Inevitably, they get the itch to play something that goes beyond the bounds of normal station programming. Every DJ has done it (including me).

The station---whatever station you are talking about---has a defined sound, defined boundaries. But people---DJs---have tastes outside of the station’s parameters. What could it hurt to slip a little something in?

And this is the argument we have.

I say to the DJ, “Hey, that’s not really something mvyradio would play.” And the DJ counters with, “It’s just one song, what's the big deal? . . .”

And yeah, it IS just one song. And, yeah, on some level it's not a big deal. But sometimes one song is all it takes.

I used to bump into this guy, a UPS driver on the Island, who wasn’t a listener. But because we’d talked a few times, and he was a (classic rock) music fan, he was interested in checking out the station.

I had told him that, yeah, we play a lot of classic rock artists like The Allman Brothers and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and that we mixed in contemporary artists who were compatible.

“I’ll check it out,” he promised me.

The next time I saw him, he gave me this perplexed, frowny face.

“I tuned in yesterday, around 1 o’clock, and I heard some opera shit. I could only take about 30 seconds of it. Is that what you guys play?”

I tried to explain to him that it was just this U2 and friends track, and that we didn't play opera as a rule, and I told him to try back again another day, and he said he would . . . but I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't coming back, that I'd lost him.

I'd lost him in the same way people/places/shows have lost me.

Like that restaurant that everyone says is good, but when I ate there I had a lousy experience. Or that show that's popular, but the one time I watched it, I thought it was dumb.

With life full of choices and options, yeah, one underwhelming experience can mean the customer is never coming back. Or in a less-worst-case scenario, has hit the button to change the channel.

And in the story I'm telling, this is a song that we normally play. Imagine his reaction if we were really stretching boundaries.

Anyway, this is a beautiful song, and is a great chance to hear Pavarotti's voice on a rock radio station.


See the video on Youtube.

And here's a Luciano-less version, with Bono doing great justice to the Pavarotti part.

See the video on Youtube.

Jon Astley "Jane's Getting Serious"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Here's an 80s hit that I remember being ubiquitous back in the day, but never hear anymore.

And as an added bonus, the song used in a commercial, starring a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc!


See the video on Youtube.


See the video 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.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Peter Wolf "Lights Out"

Here's another Weekend Post:

We were reading bedtime stories to our 3-year-old last night, and after the last one, my wife started singing this. Which was so weird and surprising and fun because she doesn't have this reservoir of lost hits rattling around in her brain like her husband.

She reserves that space for things like, you know, our checking account balance and stuff.


See the video on Youtube.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Lori McKenna "I Know You"

I did this interview with author Sandra Boynton, who writes and illustrates children's books, and I asked her if her family and friends ever had this moment of discovery where they looked at one of her characters and said:

"Hey, I think that cow is me?!?"

She laughed, and pointed out that her renderings were generally benign, so folks in her life didn't mind if they were portrayed as a Pig or a Goose or a Chicken.

It must be a little harder, and weirder, if you're a songwriter and your lyrics aren't benign.

If you write incisive or sad or angry lyrics, that you record and put out to the world, are your family and friends wondering if those cutting remarks are about themselves? It must be especially true if you use a little of your real life as a starting point.

You know, you start a song about a break-up, using a line from a recent argument you had with your spouse. But because you are a storyteller, the characters in the song take the argument to deeper, more hurtful places and the story ends with the characters splitting.

Does your spouse then worry that your little spat about cleaning the coffeemaker has really led you to consider divorce?

Hopefully, your spouse understands your creative process. But how about your mother-in-law?

Since being in the room for this interview*, I have always wished I could've been a fly on the wall, the first time Lori McKenna's husband's Mom heard this tune.

Lori describes "I Know You" as a list of bragging rights she has about her husband, as she reels off all of the little details that have accumulated through years of marriage. And no doubt, many, if not all of the details are about her real life husband. Then the song makes mention of the husband's mother and her wooden spoon and her tattoo.

I get the hugest kick hearing Lori crack up at the end of the song---which was pretty new at the time of the interview---realizing that her mother-in-law would probably hear this song and blanch at the way she was portrayed.

Awkward next family get together!


See the video on Youtube.

* She introduces the song around the 15:45 minute mark.

Beastie Boys "Make Some Noise"

If a new R.E.M. track throws me back to when love was young, a new Beastie Boys track has the magical ability to make me feel like a teenager.

I remember the effect that first Beasties record had on me, clearly. And this new track taps into this very primal, very youthful, very joyous place in my psyche, in a way that no other current artist (who was making records in the 80s) is able to do.

The song isn't nostalgic in-and-of-itself. It's not a throw-back. It simply possesses something in its DNA, identical to the Beastie Boys songs of a generation ago.

I'm not sure anybody who wasn't 17 in 1986 would say this, but "Make Some Noise" feels timeless . . .


See the video on Youtube.

And check out this amazing preview of a 30 minute movie featuring Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood and Danny McBride as The Beastie Boys of the Past, and Jack Black, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as The Beastie Boys of the Future!!!
See the video on Youtube.

Carly Simon "Halfway Around The World"

This is a little tune I hum to myself, whenever I'm grinding through a long task but I'm making progress and suddenly, there is more behind me than in front of me.

I started this blogging venture nearly two years ago at the behest of my boss, who had suggested that some of the mvyradio DJs should be blogging as a way to offer listeners more music-related information and entertainment.

I was pretty resistant to the idea, knowing that blogs are like diets and New Year's resolutions---people start them and they don't last. And I also knew that blogs are only successful if you post frequently---once a week would never build a following.

Call it good luck or stupidity . . . I ran through a bunch of names for the blog, based on some favorite song titles. You came very close to reading something called "Real Live Bleeding Blog" (after a Lucinda Williams song about Paul Westerberg).

Every Day I Write The Blog.

And, well, settling on a name like that, is a challenge to live up to.

I started slowly, to see if I could get into the swing of writing regularly. Three days a week. When I got comfortable with that, I bumped it up to 4, then 5.

By January 2010, I was actually writing a post every day. And I've been able to maintain that groove for the last year, plus.

It's been extremely rewarding.

I mean, I hope people are enjoying it. I certainly do write for an audience, I write to be read.

But let's face it, blogs are an indulgent art form. But that's the rewarding part.

I've had fun revisiting old songs and old times and old girlfriends and old memories, while throwing in new thoughts about new songs that provide new twists to my job as a Music Director.

And I've been rewarded with discipline. Demanding of myself that I write a post per day has been a challenge that I've been happy to rise to. It's made my writing better, and it's been an asset to my time management and my creativity.

All good things.

While part of me feels like I could go on and on and on . . . well, that's not realistic.

This blog is largely about memories, and the supply and demand was never going to be in synch. I'm writing about more memories than I'm creating. I mean, I can't have a memorable life experience with a song to remind me of it, every day (now THAT would be a project).

So somewhere along the line, I picked 1000 entries as my goal.

I still have tons of stories I haven't put down, and lots of ideas to come, so 1000 seems like a good number.

That'll take me to around August 2012.

Maybe I'll write beyond that. But at the very least, I want to write up to that number.

Thanks for checking in with this blog, thanks for your feedback and thanks for passing the link on to friends.

I hope my stories have made you laugh or think or conjure up memories of your own.

See you tomorrow.

Nirvana "Heart Shaped Box"

It was some kind of amazing teenage Rock N Roll fantasy come true. I was on the radio.

Better yet, after only a couple of weeks on the air, I was getting my own specialty program, and it started tonight! It was April 8th, 1994.

I'd been hired to work at a small, independent radio station near the Virginia/Tennessee border, as a part-time evening DJ. They needed someone to cover their nightly 2-hour call-in request program. But in the interview, I pitched the idea of having an Alternative specialty show.

It's kind of hard to imagine this, but in 1994 much of the country still didn't have radio stations for Modern Rock. Classic rock station were playing Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, but as "Alternative" got punkier and/or weirder, there wasn't a place for it on the radio dial yet.

And in Southwest Virginia, there was nowhere on the radio to hear Beck or Smashing Pumpkins or this up-and-coming little band called Green Day. But that was about to chance.

I was positively giddy at the notion that I'd be sharing this great music with an audience that (I believed, anyway) hungered for it. So I spent the week preparing and refining the playlist for my first program, Friday, April 8th.

Unfortunately, the pickings were pretty slim at the station. WABN was a Top 40 station, so the CD selection for Alternative tracks was limited. I used a ton of my own CDs, but there were still gaping holes between what we had, and what we needed.

Still, I had crafted a playlist for an amazing tour-de-force of a debut program, and bounded into the station Friday evening, ready to set the world on fire.

Rita, one of the station owners, stopped me dead in my tracks.

"PJ, Kurt Cobain is dead. I'm sorry."

She said "I'm sorry" with a seriousness that made it feel like I had known Cobain personally. That this loss was real and profound and near.

The wind was definitely taken out of my sails.

Instead of hitting the airwaves like a gleeful pirate, spreading musical anarchy to southwest Virginia, I now had the unpleasant duty of being the guy who came on the radio and told you about a terrible human tragedy.

Worse, we only had one Nirvana song in the building: "Heart Shaped Box." It had crossed over to Top 40, so the station owned a copy of that, and nothing else.

In the ensuing years, I would do a Cobain tribute on April 8th, and play songs from throughout the band's career: "Lithium," "About A Girl," "Sliver."

And I would play that one song that I had played (and replayed) on that sad day in 1994, that represented a small and feeble gesture in the face of incomprehensible sadness.

Hanson "Mmm Bop"

I spent 6 years in radio---my first 6 years in radio---at a station that played Top 40.

And yes, a lot of what hits the Top 40 is inane drivel. Pap. Garbage.

Silly Pop songs that don't have the gravitas of a Fluffernutter sandwich.

But not "Mmm Bop."

Sure, when I first heard this song, I was ready to dismiss it. The chorus is ridiculously catchy, yet requires no knowledge of a spoken language. I saw that it was performed by young boys so precocious they practically qualified as Muppets. And the Request Line phone calls from hyperventilating teenage girls . . . Oy!

But then I heard an interview with one of the Muppets who explained that an "Mmm Bop" was a split-second. That in the larger picture, our time on Earth is nothing but a blip, and then it's gone. Gone in an Mmm Bop.

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, "Mmm Bop" is about death.

"Mmm Bop" is about the temporal nature of our corporal being. It asks the existential question of "Who will still care?" when you look up one day and you have become old and irrelevant.

So next time you hear this song and you start to mock it as a sugary trifle, know that the song, and the universe, are paying your disdain no mind, as you will be gone and forgotten in an Mmm Bop.

Hanson, introduced by Kelsey Grammer. How 1998!