1969 Archives – How Good It Is

Hidy, friends and neighbors. Good to be partnering up with Claude on another podcasting project! This episode is about a song whose title vaguely sounds like the result of a chemical spill, but which is actually a classic piece of rockabilly. John Fogerty and his brother Tom were natives of Northern California, and their family … Continue reading "180: Green River" The post 180: Green River...

Ladies and Gentlemen, the queen of them all. Pattie Boyd was the inspiration for a huge number of songs. Some of them went to the top of the charts, some of them weren’t released as singles, but nearly all of the songs about her are well-known, and not just because they’re about her; because they’re … Continue reading "179: Influential Women, Pt. 4–Pattie Boyd" The po...

Pardon my allergies; I’ve sounded kind of rough for a week or so. There was a lot of throat-clearing to edit out of this one. I can’t even blame the Southern Studio on this one; it’s the direct result of spending too much time cutting the grass at home. (And THEN I can blame the … Continue reading "160: Failing Upward, Vol 2" The post 160: Failing Upward, Vol 2 appeared fir...

Laura Nigro was a sixteen-year-old musical prodigy who was trying on several last names, as creative types sometimes do. She happened to be “Nyro” when she finally started to catch on in the music industry, so Laura Nyro she became. Nyro was never a huge star in her own right. But she left behind a … Continue reading "139: And When I Die" The post 139: And When I Die appeared fir...

I don’t know why it fascinated me so much recently to poke around with songs that had foreign lyrics in them. But, here we are. This week’s show (and I promise I’m done with the premise for awhile) looks at four songs between 1969 and 1984 which have non-English phrases in them. Some of them … Continue reading "127: Foreign Influence" The post 127: Foreign Influence appeare...

So I’m sitting here in my home office-slash-podcast studio, researching and writing this week’s episode, and setting up the audio clips, and my dog is sitting at my feet pretty much the entire time. And as soon as I cracked the microphone open, he decided he needed to leave the room. Did he need to … Continue reading "115–Cold Turkey" The post 115–Cold Turkey appeared...

John Fogerty had already picked up some popularity with his band The Golliwogs, but Uncle Sam came a-calling in 1966. In order to avoid being sent to Vietnam, he instead enlisted in the Army Reserves, where he served for a while until he was discharged honorably. In the days that followed the discharge, he wrote … Continue reading "Episode 106–Proud Mary" The post Episode 106–Pro...

Thanks for your patience as the show migrates from one server to another. As I noted on the social media, I’m working hard to make it as invisible as possible if you listen via Google or Apple or Spotify, etc. And the website here is going to look kind of weird for awhile with a … Continue reading "Episode 105–Under the Covers, Part 6" The post Episode 105–Under the Covers,...

Roberta Flack was one of those artists that the label couldn’t quite pigeonhole, which meant that they couldn’t find a way to make her accessible to listeners. As a result, her first two albums got some positive press, but the sales weren’t especially great. It wasn’t until after her second album came out that a … Continue reading "Episode 102–The First Time Eve...

The Summer of 1969 was also the Summer of Woodstock. Hundreds of thousands of people made their way to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York (they couldn’t get a permit for the town of Woodstock, but the posters had already been made, and you know how it goes…) for a few days of Peace, … Continue reading "Episode 89–Woodstock" The post Episode 89–Woodstock appea...