The Hustle

Jan and Jon answer questions sent in by listeners, and rank their top 5 episodes of 2017

Danielle Dax was an artist in the truest sense of the word. Yeah, she had a successful music career during the 80s, but that was just one facet of her boundless creativity. Her career started with an avant-garde group called the Lemon Kittens when she didn't even know how to play an instrument. Experimentation and performance art remained her guiding force as her solo career took off and she garne...

For a duo with a hit as big as "Let's Go All The Way" was in 1986, there should be more to the Sly Fox story than there is. Brought together in an almost "boy band" fashion, Michael Camacho and Gary "Mudbone" Cooper only managed one album that featured one giant hit (#7 in 1986) and that was all she wrote. To this day, their one album, also titled Let's Go All the Way, has never been released on c...

Chicago's Brad Elvis is both a power pop legend and a lifer. His career goes back 45 years and has passed through several excellent bands along the way. After coming up through the local ranks with piers like Cheap Trick, his first brush with greatness was drumming for the tragically short-lived Screams. After the band ended in 1980, he went on to form and play in the Elvis Brothers throughout the...

There was a New Wave revolution happening in rock music in the late 70s and the poster boy for it was the bespectacled Elvis Costello and his band of Attractions, which included our guest this week bassist Bruce Thomas. While the band was leading a new charge, the various members were also sorting out a dynamic that saw Elvis rise as their clear leader, a move that never sat well with Bruce. Over...

Regular listeners know how much the Smithereens mean to me. Sadly, frontman Pat DiNizio passed away at 62 on Tuesday night after suffering through poor health for many years. To discuss what the band meant to us we bring on musician John Montagna and share stories, interactions, and impact. What was supposed to be a 30 min chat turned into a 75 min discussion! It's hard to stop when two guys talk...

The 80s were the decade of the movie montage. And one of the classics is from Revenge of the Nerds when the guys find a frat house and begin fixing it up to the tune of "One Foot in Front of the Other" by a band called Bone Symphony. Our guest this week, Scott Wilk, was the lead singer of Bone Symphony and before that he fronted his own New Wave rock group called Scott Wilk + the Walls, where his...

Mega-producer Steve Thompson's career goes back 40 years and includes every genre of music from disco to heavy metal to alternative to hip-hop. Along the way he's collected 7 Grammy Awards for his work with artists such as Paul Simon, Whitney Houston, Blues Traveler and Korn. The two notorious projects he gets asked about the most are GnR's Appetite for Destruction and Metallica's ...And Justice F...

This week we are going deep on one of the most iconic songs ever. "867-5309/Jenny" hit #4 on the US charts back in 1982 and has never left the public consciousness. It has to be the most famous phone number in history. First up this week we talk to the man who wrote that song, Alex Call. Alex began in the band Clover dating back to the height of the Haight/Ashbury days in San Francisco. Also notab...

Though Chris McLernon was the bassist for hard rockers Saigon Kick during much of the 90s, his often hilarious story really begins in the late 80s when his first band Cold Sweat threw their hat in the hair metal ring and whiffed. They had it all - the hair, the spandex, the pyro - but it didn't take. Luckily, he got a second shot when he was asked to join Saigon Kick during a tumultuous time in th...

Hired Gun is one of the best rock docs of the last couple years. It details the realities of life as a struggling musician whose career is dependent on being employed by big artists. Imagine you go from nothing to being someone like Billy Joel's drummer. You now fly first class, stay in fancy hotels, and play in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Then, Billy decides to go a different direct...

The Call were one of the preeminent alternative bands of the 80s and early 90s. They never quite cracked the top 40, but had several hits on college radio like "Let The Day Begin", "Everywhere I Go" and "The Walls Came Down". Regular listeners know of my affection for the Lost Boys soundtrack, well they were the originators of "I Still Believe" which was covered excellently by former guest Tim Cap...

To me, the Smithereens are the greatest American band of all time. And while each member deserves credit for being exceptional at what they do, a large part of the magic of the Smithereens is found in the sound and riffs of guitarist Jim Babjak. Here we talk about their flirtation with having hit records ("A Girl Like You" reached #38 in 1989 and "Too Much Passion" hit #37 is 1992), the financial...

Surely, when Lol Tolhurst was growing up in the English suburb of Horley with his mate Robert Smith and the two decided to start a band, they couldn't have known the cultural impact they would have on millions of people throughout the world. Unfortunately, just as the Cure was cementing its place as alternative rock legends, Lol was spiraling downward with drugs and drink, ultimately getting himse...

Since Halloween is next week and we have a very special guest lined up, I thought I'd repost my chat with Gerard McMahon (G Tom Mac) from 2015 because 1) it seems fitting since he's the man behind "Cry Little Sister" from the Lost Boys soundtrack, 2) the Lost Boys turned 30 this year, 3) there is some very exciting news in the G Tom Mac world happening right now that we might be talking to him abo...

The Trashcan Sinatras have been one of the most respected British pop bands of the last 30 years. Though they've only released six albums in that time, each one is an exercise in perfection and craft including last year's blissful Wild Pendulum. All the accolades in the world, however, don't make it easy being a cult band. Here, guitarist John Douglas and I discuss their current acoustic tour, the...

Alannah Myles struck gold in 1989 when her gigantic hit "Black Velvet" reached #1 in the US. The song won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Performance and achieved radio spins of over 5 million. It should have been smooth sailing from here, yet it wasn't. While she's mum on some of the details to protect the living, it's clear from her story that she has not had an easy road in the music business...

As is our tradition, in the wake of the shocking death of Tom Petty we bring back our resident Dr. Death - Steve Spears of the Stuck in the 80s podcast to make sense of it all. 

In the 80s bassist Matthew Seligman was a part of some of the best alternative music coming out of England. Within the span of just a few months he managed to join the Soft Boys near the end of their run and Thompson Twins near the beginning of theirs. And shortly thereafter he forged longstanding partnerships with Robyn Hitchcock and especially Thomas Dolby, contributing to the excellent music th...

Anyone over the age of 40 probably grew up watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood where we learned valuable life lesson's, visited the Land of Make Believe, and interacted with his cast of characters like Mr. McFeely, Lady Aberlin, Chef Brockett and, of course, Joe "Handyman" Negri. What you may not know is that Joe is a highly-respected jazz guitarist in the mold of Django Reinhardt and at 91 years ol...

Prior to being the drummer of the legendary Surf Punks, Dennis Dragon earned his bona fides co-producing a little song his brother Daryl was working on with his wife, Toni. Well, that tune became "Love Will Keep Us Together" and Daryl and Toni became the Captain and Tennille. The success from that song propelled him to a long career in production and audio-engineering, but along the way he befrien...

Nelson basically owned 1990 and '91. But, despite having four top 40 hits and selling five million copies of their debut album After The Rain, the Nelson twins, Matthew and Gunnar, couldn't get a follow up released for five years and by then tastes had changed and the moment had passed. Still, the brothers have carried on entertaining crowds playing their own music, doing Christmas concerts, and e...

Everyone remembers Kiki Dee for her #1 duet with Elton John, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" from 1976. But, did you know she is approaching 55 years in the music business? After starting out as a teenager with singers like Dusty Springfield, she "rocketed" to stardom when she was signed to Elton's Rocket Records in the early 70s (after a stint at Motown) and eventually topped the charts. Though ther...

After bursting out in the early 80s with one of the greatest debuts in modern rock history, and, thus, rock critics falling all over him as the next big thing, Marshall Crenshaw has settled into a career as a sort of highly respected cult artist. He may not be the household name his fans think he deserves to be, but he's forged a steady career playing by his own rules and gaining mounds of street...

The Sighs were an excellent power pop/rock band in the early 90s with a ton of promise. They released a stellar debut album, What Goes On, in 1992 that was produced by the great Ed Stasium and were starting to get some traction, but ultimately fell victim to almost every pitfall on the "shoulda been" checklist - label was sold, no marketing, poor distribution, internal label politics, etc. Frontma...