7/26/09 Blog/Playlist: All About Bobby

I had a couple of events to go to the night before the show, which kept me out and up a bit later than I should be. Of course, I paid for it this morning..my lack of sleep causing a few verbal fumble bumbles.

Opening theme: So What's New - Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass

One name kept cropping up as I was going through my CD collection: Bobby. There are a few Bobby hitmakers out there so this first set today salutes some of those. But I couldn't help but start off with this song which is an ode to Bobby:

Marcie Blaine – Bobby's Girl
Bobby Rydell – I'll Never Dance Again
Bobby Darin - Dream Lover
James and Bobby Purify – I'm Your Puppet
Bobby Vee – The Night Has A Thousand Eyes
Bobby Hebb - Sunny (the dance mix strikes again! Back to CDs only...)

Segment 2: Picking Through the Record Box

Well, last week I had TJ Kirby on my show and it was a lot of fun. I was talking to him this week and we were both bemoaning the fact that we let go of a lot of our vinyl albums that we wished we still had because, well, in my case at least, who knew I'd be doing an oldies show out here after I moved? Sometimes you get lucky and you can recapture what you used to have on CD. I came across a Rhino compilation of Dionne Warwick's biggest hits, so I played something here and in the next set from that. This is one of my all time favorites.

Dionne Warwick – Promises Promises
Buffalo Springfield – On The Way Home (always loved the lyrics of this song, especially the first line that says "when the dream came, I held my breath with my eyes closed".)
Beatles – All I've Got To Do
Reflections – (Just Like) Romeo and Juliet

A couple of other things to plug—this is almost déjà vu from a couple of weeks ago with a different twist. First of all, I will once again this week be sitting in for Steve Haggard and Kimberly King on the Haggard and King Radio hour this coming Tuesday at 4 .p.m. while Steve and Kimberly are on a brief tour in Germany. Last time was fun, and this time, I'll have a co-host to talk to—our good friend and Wild Oats recording artist Garry Jackson will be joining me, so I'm looking forward to that.

Also, I noted last week TJ Kirby was on my show—well, this coming Saturday August 1 at 3 p.m. the tables will turn and I'll be on his show,TJ and Company, talking about what exactly it is I'm doing in this town!

And on next week's Never Too Old show, my guest will be singer/songwriter Denny Sarokin, author of the Lick*tionary DVD for guitar and former lead singer of Every Mother's Son. Do tune in for all of those!

Segment 3: Soul Stew
(I started running short on planned songs so I threw in a couple last minute. I've been sort of stiffing the soul set in recent weeks, so a makeup was due anyhow.)
Drifters – I Count The Tears
Dionne Warwick – Reach Out For Me
Temptations – I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)
Gene McDaniels – A Hundred Pounds of Clay
Bobby Moore and the Rhythm Aces - Searching For My Love
Eddie Holman - Hey There Lonely Girl (originally done in 1963 by Ruby and the Romantics as "Hey There Lonely Boy")

Segment 4: New/Current/Out of the Box
I made this segment a George segment today. I took this George Strait greatest hits CD out of the library the other day and it ended up in my show bag. So I said, hey, well, why not, here's a guy that fits the demographic, still making great music today after about 25years of being at it. I picked one of my favorites of his.

George Strait – Amarillo By Morning
George Adams – Turn The Knife

If you've been thinking about taking a Western Caribbean cruise in the next month or so, you might want to look at the Carnival Legend cruise ship, because you'll get to hear George Adams. He's been performing on there for a few months now and the reports I'm getting is that he's knocking them dead out at sea...so good for him!

Frequency To The Heart:From Soap Bars to Raisin Boxes...

Encouragement can be found in the most unusual and unexpected places.

Raisins have always been one of my favorite foods. I often bought them by the small boxes and back when I had a job, took them with me to work for a snack before lunch. I'd noticed the inside flaps of these raisin boxes contained inspirational thoughts or sayings. I tore off a lot of those flaps and stuck them around my computer monitor where I could see them each day. People asked what the wing-like things were I have all over my monitor, and I invited them to read some of these. They were usually quite surprised to find they came off of a box of raisins. "Healthy foods, healthy thoughts" is how I look at that one.

Not long ago I bought a 4 bar package of soap. To my surprise, I found that the individual wrappers had inspiring sayings on them—written in English and French! Cleansing thoughts on cleansing bars...makes rather clever sense as well.

Encouragement and inspiration can be found in many places...the expected as well as those from out in left field. The challenge is to keep ourselves open to finding them and applying them to our lives.

Closer – Soul Serenade – King Curtis

7/19/09 Blog/Playlist: In-studio guest TJ Kirby

If you've heard TJ Kirby, host of "TJ and Company" on Saturday afternoon from 3-5 p.m., you know he's a funny and wacky guy. So, I asked him to start my show by giving me one of those wild, over the top introductions as he does for himself. I figured that will wake people up big time!

I started with a short music set:

Intruders – Cowboys To Girls
Murmaids – Popsicles and Icicles
Johnny Nash – Hold Me Tight
(in between here was a Walter Brennan-ish character thrown in by TJ. I was playing two songs from the same CD, so he offered this up to fill the gap inbetween. I think it will make a cute promo to use in the future!)
Steve Alaimo – Every Day I Have To Cry
The Seekers – I'll Never Find Another You

TJ Kirby grew up in the Atlanta area, got 45 rpm records as an allowance as a child and loved to play those records for other people. That began his desire to do radio, eventually going on to work at stations in Georgia and Tennessee, such as Radio Free Georgia, Oldies 96.3 in Nashville (working with a hero of his, Coyote McCloud) and station WYXE ("Wixie and Dixie"). While working at a classic country station, he interviewed numerous artists. Coming from the top 40 era where the DJs were more of a personality than they tend to be nowadays, TJ brings that feel to his "TJ and Company" shows with the emphasis on having fun.

TJ is also a songwriter. He started writing poetry after his marriage ended, then began writing songs. After being involved in music industry events in Atlanta, he moved to Nashville in 1981. He's had a cut with the country/inspirational artist Cristy Lane and music in a movie. He gave some great advice to songwriters out there today: keep trying, go to workshops, learn your craft. If you manage to get your best songs listened to, take note of whatever they say and go away and take it as knowledge.

Other songs played:

Earth, Wind and Fire - September
Cristy Lane - Believin' In Your Love (written by TJ)
Ronnie Bowman - Love For An Angel


Just a reminder: I'll be a guest on TJ's show on Saturday August 1, so hope you tune in. He's become a great mentor and friend to me. Thanks, buddy.

Frequency To The Heart

Have you been a "day-maker" lately? It's probably one of the easiest things to do. And here's one of the most common ways to do that—it's with a kind word. Sure, some people will think something positive about a person, but they don't always say it to them for whatever number of reasons. But I've run out of fingers to count the number of times I've been glad I did say something because I learned afterward that by doing so, I've made someone's day.

So don't hold back. Don't hesitate. Say what you think. Make someone's day.

Closer – Soul Serenade – King Curtis

I had a few seconds before the hour ended so I thought I'd throw in a station ID off the top of my head. I completely botched it up...boy, am I useless without a piece of paper in front of me sometimes.
_
While I'm at it here, I'll add a couple of notes about last Tuesday, when I substituted for Steve Haggard and Kimberly King on their show "The Haggard and King Radio Hour". After I played the theme, I heard someone talking as I was about to speak. That meant one thing: automation was on. So I ran over and shut that off and ran back to the board and did my thing. That and not being real sure I'd fill the whole hour with the music I had (Steve and Kimberly talk much more during their show than I do!) kinda threw me off but it all ended up okay.

7/12/09 Blog/Playlist: International

Back on live this week after being off for the 4th of July weekend. The new CD players worked just fine. I tried a new system (or my version thereof) of arranging my CDs that my fellow DJ and next week's guest T.J. Kirby suggested to help me keep straight what I have in the players when. Thanks, T.J.!

Also, the automation from last week started as I hit my theme, but this time I knew how to shut it off and kick it out! Yay!

Segment 1: Theme- International
I noticed recently, especially since I got these "hard to find 45" collections I've been raving about, that I now have a few international/foreign language songs in my collection that were hits on the pop charts. So I started with a set of some of those this morning. I started with perhaps what is my favorite of all. There was an English language cover of this in the 80's by a Taste of Honey, but those lyrics were a bit far removed from what I understand to be the actual translation. The essence of the English meaning of this song is "looking up when walking so the tears won't fall". The song is Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto.

Kyu Sakamoto – Sukiyaki
Singing Nun – Dominique
Emilio Percoli – Al Di La
Domenico Modugno – Volare
Miriam Makeba – Pata Pata
Lolita – Sailor (Your Home Is the Sea)
Sandpipers – Guantanamera

I figured I was going to have a time with some of the prounciations of these titles and artist names. I studied French in high school and college...so I'm afraid I wasn't as smooth with the German and Italian this morning!

Segment 2: Picking Through the Record Box
This past week I learned of the passing of Drake Levin, the original guitarist for Paul Revere and the Raiders. Being that the Raiders were my favorites when growing up, I have very vivid and joyful memories of watching "Where the Action Is" and seeing him and Fang jump around and dance with their guitars. So Drake, this one's for you.

Paul Revere and the Raiders – Just Like Me
Beatles – Sie Liebt Dich
Sanford and Townsend – Smoke From A Distant Fire
Shelby Flint – Angel on My Shoulder

Well, I am excited because I do have a guest coming on with me next week: TJ Kirby who is the host of TJ and Company here on Radio Free Nashville on Saturday afternoons from 3-5. He's a fun guy and besides being a radio personality he's also a songwriter, so we're going to talk radio and songwriting and it's just going to be a blast..a little different from the usual and be prepared to laugh! I do hope you'll tune in.

I also have a couple of other shameless self-promotion plugs for you: I will be doing a talk tomorrow for a fairly new music networking organization in town called Indie Connect. I will be speaking on how radio appearances can work effectively for artists. I'll be talking about finding radio stations to guest on, how to prep and how you can benefit. That's going to happen tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. at Corky's BBQ, 100 Franklin Road (Franklin Road and Old Hickory Blvd) in Brentwood. You can find out more information at www.indieconnect.net .

And on Tuesday, I will be sitting in for my dear friends Steve Haggard and Kimberly King on the Haggard-King Radio Hour from 4-5 p.m. while they are away playing gigs in Latvia. That should be a lot of fun and they've picked out some great music, so do tune in for that if you can.

Segment 3: Soul Stew

Aretha Franklin – Chain Of Fools
Supremes – Nothing But Heartaches
Jackie Ross – Selfish One
James and Bobby Purify – Let Love Come Between Us

Segment 4: Non-oldie/Current/New

I played a couple of artists who are international. I've mentioned this group from Scotland, OneDay40, who actually just got a record deal with a small independent Nashville label. Colt Records, and their album, Unfinished Business, is slated for a US release. Here's the song from the CD that has done well for them overseas.

OneDay40 – Sad Cowboy
Samantha Mooney (from Australia) – Love Of My Life

Frequency To The Heart
July 2009 Wendy V's Encouraging Words piece from www.embraceencouragement.com – Everything That Glitters

This was one of my better shows. I also got a nice word of encouragement from one of my songwriter friends...thanks, Pam, I needed that!

Rewinding the Memories

I'm not on live this week because I'll be spending the 4th of July at an all-day small-town celebration in Pegram, TN, west of Nashville. Among other activities, I've been asked to help judge a baby pageant, so it should be fun. Anticipating such a long day, I've decided to sleep in through my usual get-up hour on Sunday to get ready for the show. The rerun I have planned is the "Folk 60s" show from March. Had to pick one where I didn't mess up too much!

I've been going through a fellow DJ's old shows and helping him get them re-archived at the station while he's away. When I was on at Saturdays at 3 p.m., I used to follow "Geo On The Radio". Listening to some of his archives from that time brought back a few memories for me. I'd remember a few conversations Geo and I had when I hear a song...maybe a song that gave us both goosebumps. I also recall that some of these shows were so great that it would intimidate the heck out of rookie me and I'd think "I've gotta follow THAT?". Some of the things I remember were not fun...for instance, the day when I couldn't wait to tell everyone how I'd met my hero, Brenda Lee. I started talking and suddenly the previous week's automation kicked in instead and neither of us figured out how to stop it until about 10 minutes into my show.

For the past few Memorial Day weekends, I'd have this "tradition" of tuning in to WABC-AM in New York for the "WABC Rewound" weekend. This consisted of 12 hours of airchecks from the 60s and 70s of the station's golden era as a top 40 station with some of its best known DJs, such as Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie. The best part of those years was when we would post to a message board in real time as the broadcasts were happening to share our memories. This past year was a little disappointing as WABC chose to air "Rewound" on the internet only as a download on demand. It lacked that sense of community of all of us sharing our thoughts as it happened. But now, we've been given a new alternative: "Rewound Radio", with constantly streaming airchecks from past "Rewound" weekends and a message board to go with.

Yes, it is important to go forward and forge ahead in the present and create quality radio programming. But there's also something to be said for having the ability to look back to recall and appreciate great moments in radio. (One other notable example: WSM's airing of Grand Ole Opry broadcast moments fron the 60s on Friday nights. Being able to hear some of what many of us only heard about as the stuff of legend over the years is invaluable.) Those who have missed them the first time around can enjoy and perhaps be personally impacted by what they're hearing. God knows this happened to me many times.

Radio does need to be fresh, creative and current in order to continue to thrive. But, let the memories have their place as well. That's what much of my show's about, after all.
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Upcoming on "Never Too Old":
7/11 - International theme set
7/19 - In-studio guest: T.J. Kirby, host of TJ and Company on WRFN
8/2 - In-studio guest: Denny Sarokin