A (Mostly) 80s Music Podcast: What Difference Does It Make?

What do you do when the creative juices are still flowing twenty years after your band breaks up? Well, in the case of The Jenny Thing, you get the band back together and release a new album. Lead singer/songwriter Matt Easton joins the What Difference Does It Make Podcast to talk about what led to creation of their new album, American Canyon. Matt gets into the details of the music, the videos, a...

Kristin Hersh might be best known as the singer-songwriter in the band 80s music band, Throwing Muses, but she is also an acclaimed author. Her latest book, Seeing Sideways, takes us on an emotional journey as she reflects on thirty years of creating music, raising kids, and maneuvering her way around the trauma she has faced in balancing the two. Kristin is a true independent spirit. We were deli...

Darren Brady-Harris gained fame as nerdy Cliff in the iconic 80s teen movie, 16 Candles. He's also one of the most passionate music fans we've ever met. Darren loves to talk 80s music, and he calls it like he sees it. This makes him the perfect guest, as we count down songs 10 to 1 from the KROQ 1984 year- end chart. Darren is also the former music director for the student-run radio station at UCL...

Singer/songwriter Kat Goldman has a unique insight into the music industry, and writes about it in her book Off The Charts. Like anyone who has stepped onto a stage to entertain for a living, Kat has experienced many highs and lows. She shares it all with a charming sense of humor and awareness, which makes her a great guest for our podcast. You can hear Kat's music by signing up for three free mo...

Her name is Annie and she dances on the sand...whenever she hears the album Rio by Duran Duran! Writer Annie Zaleski joins us in the virtual What Difference Does It Make podcast studio to talk about her 33 1/3 book, Rio. Like us, Annie is a self-described 80s music nerd, so were thrilled to nerd out together over all the details that made this band, and in particular, this album. It gave us a "che...

Simply put, Dan McGrath is a huge Depeche Mode fan, I mean his initials are DM. The Creative Director of No Sheet Music and soon to be member of the duo cover band "Master and Servant", that plays only music by duos, steps into our virtual studios. We discuss songs 20 to 11 based off radio station KROQ in Los Angeles' year end chart from 1984. We let Dan chose this ten song chunk because it not on...

Many of you know Jose Perez Navarro as the original anchor of Contacto Deportivo or as the play by play announcer for World Cup games since 2002. What you may not know, is his career started in radio back in his hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico. He is particularly passionate about music from the 80s which is why we happily invited Jorge Perez Navarro into our virtual What Difference Does It Make st...

People listening to KROQ in the mid 80s got the good fortune to hear "Mega-mixes", a medley of songs from artists like Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys that stretched out into one ten minute jam. The man responsible for these mixes is Christer Modig, aka Swedish Chris. Chris steps into our What Difference Does It Make virtual studios and discusses exactly how a high school kid from Sweden landed at K...

Our favorite Los Angeles radio station is 885FM, so it was very cool to get Marc "Mookie" Kaczor into our virtual What Difference Does It Make studios. Mookie has turned us on to so many new artists that it was great to return the favor and introduce him to some of our favorites as we look at the songs KROQ played back in 1984. This week we focus in on songs 50 to 41 which covers everything from P...

JC Douglas, steps into the What Difference Does It Make virtual studios to discuss songs 60 to 51 from the 1984 KROQ year end list. This ten song chunk of songs really encapsulates why the music was so influential to our burgeoning musical taste. In this episode, we cover artists from Lou Reed to The Time to R.E.M. and our titular song from The Smiths shows up as well. J.C. the "Hyperactive" Canad...

We all miss the connection of live music, and that's why we're so happy a movie like Long Live Rock has been released. This rock documentary pays tribute to the many factors that explain our passion for rock music AND rock festivals. The film features many of the musicians, the people working behind the scenes, and of course, the fans. AreJay Hale, drummer for Halestorm, director Jonathan McHugh,...

Russ Borris, Music Director at WFUV in New York enters our virtual studios and immediately throws down some knowledge. 1) "Duran Duran is Life" 2) Flight of The Conchords are Hall & Oates 3) When it comes to Masters of The Universe, Leech is so much cooler than Moss Man. He also asks the important questions like, "What is the difference between an Alligator and a Crocodile and "Why was Poison a bi...

Kyle Meredith, Music Director at WFPK in Louisville and host of his own podcast Kyle Meredith with... is ready to step in the ring with Holly and Dave and offer up his opinion on the year that was 1984. In this episode we look at songs 80 to 71 from radio station KROQ in Los Angeles' year end chart. Kyle may have been a young child in the 80s but he has strong opinions on the music played during t...

Carmel Holt, creator and host of Sheroes Radio, steps into the virtual What Difference Does It Make studios. We dig into Carmel's musical origin's and lessons learned as Music Director at WDST in Woodstock and WFUV in New York. We also discuss why her intense love of music discovery led to her creation of Sheroes. Always the pro, she learned early on to "always prep" and so Carmel is ready to give...

Dave knew he had found a new friend when he saw Joel ...clad in a Wilco t-shirt...at his daughter's soccer game. They bonded easily over music and sports. Dave was also happy to discover another good friend, in Joel's wife, Melissa Gould. She is warm, with a great sense of humor. While learning to live with his MS diagnosis, tragedy struck when Joel passed away in 2013 at the age of fifty. Melissa...

You might know Mike Marrone as the guy that created and hosted The Loft for SiriusXM for 17 years. He first established a name for himself in 1984 at Your Rock Alternative FM 106.3 WHTG, a free form rock station in New Jersey. And so, Mike is the perfect guest as we analyze the top 106.7 songs played on KROQ in Los Angeles back in 1984. This week we take apart songs 100 to 91. Mike says there are...

Our cover photo boy this week is Swedish Egil The jock from KROQ in Los Angeles kicks off our countdown with a song that time has forgotten, 'Erotic Egil'. Time has forgotten it because it is nowhere to be found. Fortunately, most of the songs played back then are still around and ready to be dissected. We jump right in to the year that was 1984 and discover many lost classics. We strive/strove/ar...

Season Premiere! In anticipation of our upcoming dissection of the songs played on KROQ in 1984, we wanted to set the table so to speak, and take you back to what we might have been doing back in the day. Dave was probably driving his Dodge Turbo Colt and wearing his sunglasses at night on his way to see Beverly Hills Cop....again. When not working at Camp Beverly Hills, Holly was sitting at home...

If bands can have greatest hits albums why can't podcasts have a greatest hits episode? We talked with so many talented artists in 2020 so this is a look back at what the year was like for What Difference Does It Make, your 80s music podcast. If this is your first time visiting our show, it's the perfect introduction to our podcast. We are a proud member of Pantheon Podcasts. Get 3 months of Amazo...

We couldn't be more delighted to talk with self-described "Big 80s Icon", Mark Goodman. Of course, we all know him as an MTV VJ, but his roots are in radio and so we dig into his start working small town markets, and moving on to free-form radio and what it was like to be in the eye of the hurricane during the beginning of MTV. You can currently hear Mark on the SiriusXM show "Debatable" which can...

Like many significant moments in our lives, we remember where we were when we heard the devastating news about John Lennon. We tell our stories and then turn it over to a couple people that surrounded the event of December 8. Mark Goodman was on the air on New York radio station WPLJ on the evening of December 8, 1980 and photographer Bob Gruen was a family photographer for the Lennon family, capt...

Jules Shear created a name for himself as a pop songwriter in the 80s writing Top 40 hits like "All Through The Night" for Cyndi Lauper and "If She Knew What She Wants" by The Bangles. He's also the originator of MTV's Unplugged series hosting and playing on the show in its first season back in 1989. He's been releasing his own classic material for nearly 40 years now. His just released album is e...

November 6, 1970 marked the first ever gig for the band Aerosmith. It was played at Nipmuc Regional High School Gymnasium in Mendon, Massachusetts. To paraphrase "Walk This Way", we can easily imagine there were definitely at least "three young ladies in the school gym locker" that were staring at the band. The band continues to capture our attention so we talked with author Richard Bienstock to t...

What Difference Does It Make celebrates the release of Strum and Thrum by talking with members of the Bangtails, The Ferrets, Great Plains, and The Darrows as well as Captured Tracks label head, Mike Sniper. The Strum & Thrum compilation includes an 80+ page booklet with an extensive oral history of the ‘80s indie scene and tons of archival images and ephemera. If you're wondering what "strum and...

Bob Gruen has snapped so many iconic photos of our rock and roll heroes from Tina Turner to John Lennon to Led Zeppelin to Green Day. His memoir is called "Right Place, Right Time". As Bob tells us, it's a matter of anticipation, patience and skill as well as being in the right place at the right time.. We touch on just a few of the amazing stories in his book including how he created a magical ph...