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Gone in Threes, 2023
They go in threes. They always go in threes. 2023, though, was a bit different. We lost some musical and entertainment giants whose gifts, greatness and accomplishments were so substantial that they...
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This boot is made for walking
As AM, Then FM quietly celebrates 17 years on the web, we may have arrived at a crossroads. On this sunny Wisconsin afternoon, I’m sitting in my office for the first time in almost two months. Doctor’s...
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On the tip of my Tongue
Five years ago today — on Saturday, March 30, 2019 — I went record digging at a place that was new to me. (I don’t much care for that place today, but that’s another program.) That day, I found this...
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Record store of my dreams
Had this dream the other night. Someone handed me a small card. It had a simple black-and-white line drawing with an autograph. Eric Clapton’s autograph, perhaps? A crudely drawn riff on the “Slowhand”...
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If I had only 10 records …
Last week — May 23, to be precise — marked 49 years since the release of Elton John’s “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” album. It’s been one of my favorite records for that long. That day,...
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My heart belongs to Dad’s records
This week brings my dad’s birthday — he’d have been 99 — and Father’s Day. Been thinking about how the music my dad loved influenced the music I love. Dad had a modest record collection, maybe 50 LPs....
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Bootlegged
Bootleg records were once a mysterious thing, seemingly verging on illegal. Shows, concerts, performances you couldn’t hear anywhere else. Finding a bootleg was cool. That was the lure. Growing up in...
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The sounds of this summer
With Labor Day weekend upon us, and as the sun starts to set on another summer, did you have a song of the summer? Identifying THE song of the summer has become increasingly difficult because communal...
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We must make a stand
As it turns out, I was on tour — visiting Virginia and Maryland — when REO Speedwagon announced earlier this month that they would stop touring in 2025. That news caught me by surprise, if only because...
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The birthday present
Mike and I have been friends since meeting in third grade in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. We were reunited in seventh grade — junior high school — when my family moved back to the south side of town, where we...
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‘Tis the season, Day 2
This is a story about a holiday commercial with Coca-Cola trucks. Thankfully, it has nothing to do with AI. This is a Coca-Cola holiday commercial from 2001. Listen to the music. This is a Coca-Cola...
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‘Tis the season, Day 3
You really had to have been there, but Cheech and Chong once did a Christmas record. The premise, in the unlikely event you’ve not heard it: One stoner tries to explain Santa Claus to another stoner....
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‘Tis the season, Day 4
Today, some good news. Christmas just won’t be a drag. Why? Santa’s got a brand new bag. So says a young Bob Seger on a rave-up that mashes together “Deck the Halls” with Mitch Ryder and James Brown....
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20th Century Man
Today’s the day that WXPN radio, the fine public radio station out of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, begins its annual year-end countdown of songs as determined by a vote of...
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‘Tis the season, Day 5
Today, for Day 5, let’s dig the Jackson 5. If there’s one song that demonstrates how that radio changed my life, it’s the Jackson 5’s — and especially an 11- or 12-year-old Michael Jackson’s — take on...
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‘Tis the season, Day 6
MTV crashed onto the scene in the summer of 1981, elbowing conventional Top 40 radio aside as quickly as cable systems picked up the new channel. That happened later than sooner where I lived*, so I...
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‘Tis the season, Day 7
Billy Squier opened the door for Christmas rock videos in 1981. George Thorogood and the Destroyers strolled through that door two years later and found themselves in the middle of another holiday...
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‘Tis the season, Day 8
It was a year ago today — Friday, Dec. 8, 2023 — that Irish singer-songwriters Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill joined the Pogues to perform “Fairytale of New York” at the funeral Mass for Pogues leader...
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‘Tis the season, Day 9
Yesterday’s song was a Christmas song that doesn’t sound much like one. Today’s song is widely considered to be a Christmas song but … is it really? When you hear the Pretenders’ “2000 Miles,” you hear...
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‘Tis the season, Days 10, 11 and 12
It just isn’t Christmas around here without Alexander O’Neal. “My Gift To You,” the R&B singer’s holiday record from 1988, gets played every year. I’ve long thought it to be underrated and/or...
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