Snap, Crackle, POP! with Alec Cumming

Saddened by all the ugly Hall & Oates break-up news coming out around Thanksgiving 2023, I wanted to try to understand their story and their music better, f*ck the derision. So I did a my own deep dive into their music and history, and turned a vast new appreciation of Darryl and John's duo/band into a proper radio special, with soundbites I snagged here and there. (It's funny that such a bril...

Can't Get Used to Losing You – Andy Williams There's A Place - The Beatles At the Zoo – Simon & Garfunkel The Only Living Boy in New York – Simon & Garfunkel/ For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (live) – Simon & Garfunkel   Our Prayer – The Beach Boys/  Colour of Anyhow – Beverly-Glenn Copeland   Love's Theme – The Love Unlimited Orchestra Sun 100 – Bite the Wax Godhead Ram On – Paul &a...

Love Me Like You – The Magic Numbers   Tiny Spark – Brendan Benson Watching The Credits – The Beths There She Goes Again – The Las   Thinking About You – Beck Breathe In – Frou Frou Angelnumber 1210 – Goon   A 1000 Times – Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam Otherside – Sunflower Bean Waltz for Koop – Koop   Aquarius – Boards of Canada Tonight – Phoenix (ft. Ezra Koenig) Come On Let's Go – Broadcast   Wh...

This is my WPKN Peter Noone interview and special from April 2023. At the time, I was interviewing Peter at the time for gig he was promoting in Norwalk CT, and he was charming and funny and oh-so-British. You'll hear lots and lots of Herman’s Hermits (and even a bit of Beatles) music as I tell this relentlessly cheerful chappie's fascinating back story with this interview plus soundbites and song...

I've done this more than once - and I really went to town on the REVOLVER one (1/27/26) - but here I take a syndicated radio special, created by classic NYC FM deejay Dan Neer, about The Beatles WHITE ALBUM, and played it whilst surrounding it with even more tracks from the then-new re-release.  ================================ A Beginning (Anthology 3 version)  Blackbird - Brad Mehldau Back In Th...

My first try at one of these - I've done the One-Hit Wonders thing a few times since, and absolutely love these. The phones really lit up for this one, with callers - mostly from Long Island, fwiw - either cheering me on or correcting me. There is SO MUCH GREAT MUSIC HERE that is far too overlooked... but these tracks are ALL stone-cold classics and important parts of pop/rock history, even though...

( My apologies - I can't find my song list for this show... yet . I'm certain it lives somewhere on my computer, but further digging is required. Stay tuned - Alec, 1/18/26 )   This late evening/early Saturday morning I was filling in for the great Rich Kaminsky, so I decided - apropos of nothing - to do a show I called "Late-Night Beatles".  In other words, a show consisting of Beatles songs and...

This is a good one. It's December 27th 2025 as I write this, and I'm remembering now how I used to have to get to the WPKN studios at the University of Bridgeport an hour early so I could go through the stacks and pull lots and lots of the station's own vinyl, with most of the records sent originally at the time of that album's release as a radio promotional for-airplay copies. (An arduous task, a...

It started out innocently enough, as an evening prime-time radio salute to the maestro Burt bacharach, who had just turned 90...   Promises Promises – Dionne Warwick Toledo – Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello Walk On By – Dionne Warwick Make It Easy On Yourself (Live at The Garden State Arts Center, 1970) – Dionne Warwick A House Is Not a Home – Burt Bacharach Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa – Dust...

Are You Ready for Love – Elton John  More, More, More – Andrea True Connection  Steal My Sunshine – Len  Numb (Single Edit) – Pet Shop Boys Save Me a Place – Fleetwood Mac Through the Long Night – Billy Joel  Poor People – Alan Price Me and My Arrow – Harry Nilsson Mosquito – Geraint Watkins Wives and Lovers – Burt Bacharach Domingo no Parque – Gilberto Gil  Mistry Roses – Colin Blunstone  Sea Son...

If you start at the very beginning (which is a very good place to start) with these Snap Crackle POP! shows/podcasts, you'll notice I am mainly doing fill-ins, many of them in the wee hours. At the time, I was working a low-self esteem job where the hours were very... well, lets call them variable . So I was frequently doing overnight shifts there, and my sleep hours were all fakakta, and plus......

Here's part 2. Hoo boy. I wanted to do radio... I got my chance this day. (See episode 1). Here you can hear me subbing for whomever had the 2 - 5 pm slot that Sunday afternoon... it was most likely a fill-in for La Esquina Latina . So here's the latter 3/7th of my unexpected Snap Crackle Pop marathon. It was super-fun and definitely exhausting but also SO MUCH FUN. Thanks to everybody out there w...

(Note to podcast listeners: though I started doing WPKN airshifts as of April 14 2016, this is the oldest episode I have that exists as a music file. So that's where we'll begin. Enjoy... I hope!) Hoo boy. I wanted to do radio... I got my chance this day. 7 hours of it. I was subbing for Dave Golden's Morning Maniac Music between 10am and 2pm - already a generous 4-hour shift - and then I found ou...