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Goosebumps for Christmas
Eight years ago, during our first Christmas season here at the blog, my friend Rob called this song “goosebump-inducing stuff.” It still is. Reverent yet thrilling, this version is done as a New...
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Merry Christmas, mein friends!
Once again, all I really need for Christmas are these three songs. “Snoopy’s Christmas,” the Royal Guardsmen, from “Snoopy and His Friends,” 1967. (The link is to a double CD also featuring “Snoopy vs....
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For sweet Meadowlark
One of the great joys of growing up in the ’70s was experiencing the last days of free-form FM radio. Even in central Wisconsin, our local top-40 station turned freaky late at night. After 10 p.m., the...
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Gone in threes: 2015
They say celebrities and prominent people go in threes. Well, 2015 was much the same as any other year. Here’s proof. Badasses: Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead and The Head Cat), Rowdy Roddy Piper (WWE and...
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Know you ain’t going anywhere
Not sure there are any light reads about the Vietnam War. It’s been years since I read Michael Herr’s “Dispatches,” but I vividly remember that taking forever. Perhaps it’s the constant reminder — then...
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Still with us: Chuck Berry
We are not even two months into 2016, and David Bowie is gone. So are Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson. So are Maurice White, Vanity and Otis Clay, Glenn Frey, Gary Loizzo and Dan Hicks. Time, then —...
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Still with us: Little Richard
Our premise, revisited: We are not even two months into 2016, and David Bowie is gone. So are Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson. So are Maurice White, Vanity and Otis Clay, as are Glenn Frey, Gary Loizzo...
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Doin’ fine on Cloud Nine
We interrupt our appreciation of music legends still with us for an appreciation of something else still with us. AM, Then FM is quietly celebrating its ninth anniversary in the blogosphere. It arrived...
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The visitors at church
“Oooh, how was it?” was the first thing everyone wanted to know after we saw our first Bruce Springsteen show on Thursday night in Milwaukee. My friend Doug has preached to me about Springsteen since...
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The kid with the red bag
They drove 75 miles just to spend two or three hours digging through all the vinyl at the Green Bay Record Convention on Saturday. A dad and his son. The son — who seemed to be 13, maybe 14, so...
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The rest of the story
When last we left you, the kid with the red bag was sharing his finds from last weekend’s Green Bay Record Convention. One of them was this record, which I’ve had since the ’70s. “It’s on red vinyl!”...
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Still with us: Jerry Lee Lewis
Our premise, revisited: Since we last gathered here a month ago, we’ve lost even more music greats. Keith Emerson, Sir George Martin and Gayle McCormick, the lead singer of Smith, even Clare...
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Still with us: Tina Turner
Our premise, revisited: What a year this has been. Since we last gathered here just two weeks ago, we’ve lost even more music greats. Merle Haggard, Leon Haywood and Gato Barbieri — quite a...
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Meanwhile, back at the blog …
Earlier this year, we shared an appreciation of four music greats who are still with us: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Tina Turner. They’re my four. Yours may be different. Yet that...
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Politicians won’t steal this
A politician uses a popular song at a rally. The band, or the artist, objects. It’s often a good story, but you wonder. How many campaign staffs even bother contacting bands to obtain the rights to use...
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Stop chasing the ghosts
That really isn’t advice for you, though feel free to take it if so inclined. It’s a reminder for me to do a better job of thinking through which shows to pop for, and why. As this summer began, I had...
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Another comedian in the family
Our son’s news arrived via Facebook earlier this week, among some items billed as “exciting things to announce …” “I auditioned for and was invited to take the next step in joining the fine folks at...
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Chatting with Michael
Never imagined yesterday morning that when I tweeted my two cents’ worth about the J. Geils Band’s prospects for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that I would wind up discussing it with a gent who knows...
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The girl from the record store
There was a profound sense of loss today, and it had nothing to do with the news of the day. We have lost the tiny, cherubic girl from the record store. You’d see her with her dad, digging through the...
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Once again, it’s Christmas Eve
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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