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Boom shaka laka laka by the lake
Depending on your passion, today was a day chock full of anticipation. If you dig the Green Bay Packers, as many in these parts do, you likely enjoyed getting the first glimpse of the preseason...
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The kicker, the go-go girls and Nixon
On the sports wire today was a short item out of Missoula, Montana, that Errol Mann, an NFL kicker during the ’70s, had passed away. That name rang a bell. He’d played for the Green Bay Packers,...
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In search of the girl from U.N.C.L.E.
A couple of thoughts in the wake of Record Store Day 2013. Have we come full circle? On the local hard-rock FM radio station last week, they were making a big deal about playing a vinyl record with...
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Mission: Accomplished
Why so few posts here lately? Blame it on senioritis. Our son’s senior year of high school, now down to just a handful of days, has been a blur. You want to save each memory, savor each moment, but...
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Soundtrack to the ride of a lifetime
One of the girls was still in high school, the other not long out, listening to the radio as they cruised what they called “The Circuit” in the late 1960s. They sat up front in that Mercury Cougar,...
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Mr. Green is not serene
The weekend squire is back from mowing his lawn, but Mr. Green is not serene. He has a nice new Mac, but is discovering there is more assembly required than anticipated. The turntable that plugged into...
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Our evening with Paul McCartney
It’s been almost two weeks since we saw Paul McCartney at Miller Park in Milwaukee, and I’m still trying to make sense of everything we saw and heard. It was almost surreal. Buying seats on the field...
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Bad news, or just bad news?
Back in January, I wrote about four guys — bullies, I guess. Three of them were dead, the third one just then. Now the fourth one, the guy who hassled me in junior high school and stole my wallet, is...
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Was the Camaro’s radio on that night?
Little mysteries are fascinating. Especially little mysteries about old cars fished out of water after many years missing. That happened here last summer. A guy went to a blues club one cold Saturday...
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Adrift
The calendar that so neatly defined our lives for so long has been shredded by the winds of change. There’s no longer any need to save vacation days for November, first for the high school musical and...
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Another little mystery
So I’m over at Funky 16 Corners not too long ago, digging what my friend Larry had cued up. He’d dropped both sides of “Do What You Wanna Do,” a single I’d never heard, from Frank Howard and the...
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With a little help from his friends
Let’s say a new record came out today. All four Beatles are on that record. That would be a big deal, wouldn’t it? Let’s say some of their pals are on that new record. You might have heard of them....
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‘Happiness, through the years, to you’
Six years ago, readers who made their way to this corner of the blogosphere found “Three Under The Tree,” a series of Christmas music posts. Every December that followed, readers who made their way...
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Freed, Nelson Mandela
Originally published in slightly different form on July 1, 2013, on our companion blog, The Midnight Tracker. Among my great memories of the mid-’80s are the politically-tinged protest songs so often...
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Another Christmas with old friends
It was late 1969, when I was 12, that I really started listening to music. That year, I got a Panasonic AM-FM radio for Christmas. This model, though this is not my radio. I still have mine. It still...
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I still want my MTV Christmas
Believe it or not, there was a time when artists made Christmas videos and MTV played them at Christmas time, just as radio would play their Christmas singles at Christmas time. ‘ “Christmas In Hollis”...
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‘And that goes for Satchmo, too’
On this Christmas Eve, a post that has become a tradition. On a winter day more than 40 years ago, Louis Armstrong went to work in the den at his home at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, Queens, New York....
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‘We could sure use a dude like that’
So, anyhow, Santa Claus. Right, yeah. Before Christmas Day gets away from us, sit down, kids, and let Cheech and Chong tell the story. The premise, in the unlikely event you’ve not heard this: One...
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Gone in threes: 2013
They say celebrities and prominent people go in threes. Here again is proof. Gone in 2013 … Badasses: Jim Kelly (“Enter The Dragon”), Tom Laughlin (“Billy Jack”), Tony Musante (Left TV’s “Toma” after...
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The only ones left to tell the tale
The other day I was going through the dollar records at Rock ‘N Roll Land, a fine indie record store in our corner of Wisconsin. I pulled out a couple of Cowsills records, then couldn’t remember which...
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