12/13/08 Playlist - Highs of the 60s

Segment #1 – Highs of the 60s
I started the first part of the show today with "highs of the 60s". Now, that's not to say that I'm talking about anything I might have partaken –I didn't do the drugs (I was only a kid, you know), I just did the music. I'm a CD collections and compilations fan and in the 80's Warner Brothers put out this great one called Highs of the 60s. It's a little bit garage, a little psychedelic, and it's got one of those pink/blue color combinations on the cover that makes your eyes freak out and vibrate. (I remember I did an art project like that once in grade school with those colors.)

Count Five – Psychotic Reaction
Shadows of Knight – Gloria
Left Banke – Walk Away Renee
Knickerbockers – Lies
Swinging Medallions – Double Shot of My Baby's Love

By the way, if you are a fan of the psychedelic, early progressive rock, summer of love type music, check out "Strange Daze" with Beau Hunter Thursday nights from 8-10 on Radio Free Nashville. I sat in with Beau on his show when I first got here and trained in and I had a blast—I heard stuff I hadn't heard in 30 years.

(Brief WRFN pitch)
I talked about this last week and I just mentioned quickly once again...if you're planning some year end giving. I hope you'll think about a gift to Radio Free Nashville if what you hear on this station is important to you. Radio shows do matter in people's lives; I found that out this week (more on that later), but in the meantime let me tell you what you can do to support RFN:

Write a check payable to Radio Free Nashville and send it to Post Office Box 41488, Nashville, Tennessee 37204. Visit the web site at www. radiofreenashville. org and make a donation via PayPal, through your PayPal account or on your credit card. Or become a sustainer and make a monthly donation through PayPal, adopt-a-bill, or make a workplace donation through Community Shares. Of course your donations are all tax-deductible.


Segment #2 – Picking Through the Record Box
When I was growing up, we had one of those big furniture like stereos, which I eventually inherited or was cast off on to me. But, I used to have the worst time with the turntable. As it got older, the thing didn't work or the speed would be off. I would know precisely if it was too fast or too slow, and it would bug the heck out of me. I finally complained enough to have my dad look at it and we figured out the belt drive was the problem. The belt would fall off or not set right. Eventually I started fiddling with it myself, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I put up with it until one day it finally gave up the ghost completely. So we junked it and I got one of those new "component" stereos. I'll always remember how excited I was about that.

I kicked this off with something from 1961, something we sure had enough of around here this past week.
Dee Clark - Raindrops
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida – (I bet you all thought you were in for the 18 minute version...so if you took a potty or smoke break or did something else, well, you missed a few songs! This was the 3 minute edit version that top 40 formats had.)
Sir Douglas Quartet- She's About A Mover
The Music Explosion - A Little Bit O Soul
Denver and the Mile High Orchestra - Frosty the Blues Man (giving a sneak peek at what next week's "Twist On Christmas" show will be like! I'll play that next week, too)

By the way, speaking of the blog, I've gotten a few compliments on the picture of me that's out on the blog and the MySpace page for the show. Thank you! That was taken on my 50th birthday back when I was still in St. Paul and back when I still had a job. My co-workers came in and assaulted my desk with all that 50th birthday stuff. I was picking little glitter "50s" out of my keyboard for weeks afterward. My favorite thing of all that was a hand drawn sign one of my co-workers's daughters made which simply said "wow—the big 50". So I doctored the background of the picture, took the office out and made it kinda retro.

Segment #3 – Soul Stew
I had with me a great two disc collection of hits by the Temptations. I got one or two of these in, starting with one of my favorites when I was in junior high.
Temptations - You're My Everything
Mary Wells - You Beat Me To The Punch (Our technical glitch of the day. Don't ask me what happened in the beginning. I played this from the online catalog made up of MP3 files and it started sticking like an off track CD and sounding like one of those weird dance mixes. Fortunately, it fixed itself.)
Temptations - You've Got To Earn It (not a big hit I don't think, but a cool catalog song I discovered on this set. I really dig this tune.)

Segment #4 Recent/current section
My "This week's featured songwriter" out on my Wendy V MySpace page. I have been doing some screening of music for an independent music awards project for the last few weeks and came across this gal who is from the Gold Coast of Australia. Her voice and her songs touched my heart in a million pieces. I had to buy some of her tracks for myself and they are in extreme heavy rotation in my MP3 player. Her name is Samantha Mooney .

I started with the title track from her album
Paper Memories – Samantha Mooney
A Thousand Miles Away – Steve Haggard (Love Conquers All)
In the "support your fellow DJ department", Steve Haggard is co-host with Kimberly King of the Haggard-King Radio Hour on Tuesdays from 4-5 pm on Radio Free Nashville.

With Paper Memories being a song about reflecting on change, here's what I hope is a word of encouragement for you.

Encouragement: Change

Change. It's a given. It's the one thing that is ever constant in our lives.

If ever you had a doubt that a radio show matters in many people's lives, you need only to have experienced the outpouring of love and support for the hosts of two radio shows that ended in the St. Paul/Minneapolis MN market over the past two weeks. On one of the shows the hosts got to say a fond farewell to their listeners; the other sadly did not.

In that farewell broadcast of the first show I mentioned, I was struck by something said which was part of a humor skit that came from the pen of one of the co-hosts, the brilliant Dale Connelly. The character in the sketch noted it was too late for so many things, "because every ending, whenever it comes, comes early. And there is always something left undone."

And so it is when change comes, whether it is something quick or planned. If we don't get to do or say something before it comes to a close and it's beyond our control, we could be filled with regret. Sometimes there are things you can't do anything about, even despite your best efforts. When this happens we need to be kind to ourselves and not beat ourselves up. Know that we did the best we could do...and move forward with hope and anticipation to the next--you guessed it--change in our lives.

Closer: King Curtis - Soul Serenade