The Record Player

Send us Fan Mail The great John Sebastian celebrates his 81st birthday today as we're posting this. We had the good fortune to have a lengthy conversation with John this past fall to discuss John B. Sebastian , his 1970 debut as a solo artist. It's an album which is certainly underrated and if your ears have never had the pleasure of hearing it, today's the day to change that. Our g...

Send us Fan Mail In picking her favorite album, author K.L. Doty let us know up front that she couldn't settle on just one -- something which we're all familiar with as music fans, right? So we talk about a lot of different music. But in regards to Disintegration by the Cure, specifically, she shared a thought that will land with many of us who have grown up (I guess that's all of u...

Send us Fan Mail You might know Brian Wecht as Ninja Brian . Or maybe you know him as Trey Magnifique . Perhaps, you just know him as Brian and that's fine too. Matt and Jeff were just thrilled to have him on the podcast to talk about Al Jarreau's mighty fine Breakin' Away album. But there were conditions. First, an impromptu 20 minute discussion about Kenny G. You'll see. Is t...

Send us Fan Mail Rob Baker of The Tragically Hip joins Matt to discuss the 35th anniversary of the band's 1989 debut, Up to Here , which is being celebrated with a lavish box set featuring a wealth of previously unreleased content. The box set is available today digitally and will be released in a variety of physical formats on Nov. 15. You can order your copy of the box set here . The conver...

Send us Fan Mail Professor Louis Moore joins Matt and Jeff to discuss his essential new book, The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans and the Making of the Black Quarterback . Our engaging discussion with Lou took us deep into the history of Black quarterbacks and athletes in general in the NFL and he talks about the journey he took as he was writing the book. However much progress you mi...

Send us Fan Mail This is almost a "lost episode" of sorts. To pull the curtain back a bit, we recorded this episode back in July and then promptly got busy with a bunch of other things. So if you hear a mention or two that sound a bit dated, there ya go. What remains is a fun discussion that we had regarding Robert Wyatt's 1974 album Rock Bottom. We examine where Robert was career-w...

Send us Fan Mail The guys end summer break with a completely random "accidental Cassingle," as Jeff tagged it. There are discussions of Funyuns (which still exist!), Taco Bell, concept albums, Jeff's new book , asbestos, kids who swear a lot, new music from Jon Anderson of Yes, the upcoming solo album from Warren Haynes and other subjects that are probably being forgotten. We got to...

Send us Fan Mail Our latest Bonus Track features a conversation with author and journalist John Barry, who covered Woodstock '94 as it happened. Thirty years later, he joins Matt to share some of his memories of the experience. Music fans will also be interested in the book that John wrote about Levon Helm's incredible second act with the Midnight Ramble and other events that happened du...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Matt love nothing more than coming across obscure AOR gems. Jesse Colin Young' s 1982 album, The Perfect Stranger , fits into that category. Featuring guest appearances by Carly Simon, Michael McDonald, Bill Payne and Fred Tackett of Little Feat and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles, The Perfect Stranger also finds Jesse surrounded by an unbelievable cast of many of th...

Send us Fan Mail Podcasting pioneer Jimmy Pardo hosts the award-winning podcast, Never Not Funny . But he also puts his name behind a lot of good things. Witness his annual Pardcast-a-Thon , which provided nine hours of laughs from Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Dave Holmes, Jon Cryer and numerous others -- INCLUDING DAVID FOSTER -- raising over $125 thousand dollars for charity in the process. F...

Send us Fan Mail This is a flashback moment to our previous podcast, 1991: The Year AOR Ate Itself . For those of you who didn't hear that podcast series, you'll be interested to hear this episode, which aired July 5, 2021. In my memory (note: I'm making this up), we decided to celebrate Independence Day by talking about Foreigner's first album without Lou Gramm, Unusual Heat ....

Send us Fan Mail Our latest Bonus Track features a great conversation with the legendary Leland Sklar and director Denny Tedesco regarding his film, The Immediate Family . That's right, someone finally made a movie about Lee Sklar, Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel and Russ Kunkel. If you're a liner notes nerd, you know those names! Here's one example: Jackson Browne's Running on...

Send us Fan Mail The 1974 Project continues as we welcome back our friend and A&R man Peter Lubin to discuss Pussy Cats by Harry Nilsson. Produced by John Lennon, Pussy Cats is an interesting and at times, unfortunate mile marker in Nilsson's career -- and the guys discuss why that is. There is once again a great tribute album at the heart of all of this Nilsson stuff for Jeff and Matt, 1...

Send us Fan Mail In 1984, Christopher Cross added a unique new entry to his discography. " A Chance For Heaven " was selected as the official swimming theme for the Olympics. I bet you didn't even know there was an official swimming theme that year, did you? Neither did we. Discovering that factoid during our episode about Christopher's 1985 album, Every Turn of the World , was...

Send us Fan Mail In our first Bonus Track of 2024, legendary artist and producer Narada Michael Walden tells Matt about his time working with the late Tommy Bolin. It's an emotional subject for Narada, but also a period in his career that he retains a lot of love and affection for. We spoke in November of 2023 as Narada was just about to release his newest solo album, Euphoria . The record fe...

Send us Fan Mail The magnificent Davia Schendel joins Jeff and Matt to discuss Suzi Quatro's second album, Quatro. Today's conversation definitely goes deep into "music nerd" territory. We talk about record stores of the past, making playlists devoted to things like gated reverb and snare hits. Should we talk about the underrated power player in music that is known as the saxop...

Send us Fan Mail It's time for the first solo Jeff and Matt episode in a good while! Today, the guys team up to look back at Every Turn of the World , the third album by Christopher Cross. They dig through a number of topics including the album's relative lack of success, how Jeff found it -- and why he loved it so much at the time. We also discuss Jeff's forthcoming debut novel, La...

Send us Fan Mail We have another first on the podcast, but you're going to have to listen to find out what it is. Let's start with the facts: Benjamin Miner of The Feldons joins Jeff and Matt to talk about 1969's Uncle Meat album, by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Have you ever heard this album? It's a wild ride, just like our discussion. In addition to Uncle Meat ,...

Send us Fan Mail Benjamin Wagner joins the guys for a frank discussion about mental health in the midst of Mental Health Awareness Month . He's spent a good amount of time thinking about -- and researching the subject. His new film, Friends & Neighbors , is the result of that work. Benjamin tells Jeff and Matt how his own mental health struggles influenced the movie -- and what he learned...

Send us Fan Mail Emmy-nominated songwriter Ben Arthur released his third album, Edible Darling , in 2004. A longtime friend of the podcast (long before there was a podcast, in fact), Ben joins Jeff and Matt to look back on the album in its 20th anniversary year. He recaps his rollercoaster experience navigating the music industry in those early years and how it ultimately influenced where he'...

Send us Fan Mail Legendary producer Tom Werman joins Jeff and Matt to talk about one of his favorite albums, Who's Next , by the Who. Tom is one of the best kind of people you can hope to meet in the music industry, because not only is he very talented as a producer, but he also is a music fan at heart. That's something that comes through again and again as you're reading his new me...

Send us Fan Mail Andy Timmons is one of our favorite folks to talk about music with and he returns to the program -- with his guitar once again in hand -- to discuss his love for Peter Frampton's fourth studio album, 1975's Frampton . Andy tells Jeff and Matt why Peter has been such an important influence on his own career -- and he shares the story of how he came to write his newest sin...

Send us Fan Mail The Reverend Shawn Amos is our guest today on the podcast. Matt has had a conversation with Shawn in the past, so he knew that Jeff would love speaking with The Good Reverend. Shawn opened up right away, getting deep and personal with Matt and Jeff about a wide variety of sociopolitical topics surrounding his latest album, Soul Brother No. 1 , including the reckoning with past tra...

Send us Fan Mail UCR's Allison Rapp is back with Jeff and Matt for another episode of The 1974 Project . This time, they're talking about On the Border by Eagles and digging into a bunch of related (and yeah, sometimes, unrelated topics). For instance, why do so many people hate the Eagles? Why do people get worked up about calling them "the Eagles" instead of "Eagles&quot...

Send us Fan Mail We couldn't miss out on the chance to post a new episode of The Record Player on a rare Leap Day! As one of our comrades said very recently, "Happy Leap Year, to all who celebrate!" We're back with the latest installment in The 1974 Project, our ongoing collaboration with Ultimate Classic Rock spotlighting a variety of albums that were released, as you might ha...