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Dig out your Z. Cavariccis and crack a Zima. This story is a time machine back to an era when New Jack Swing ruled the world and pagers were the height of mobile communication.
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You could say that Valentine’s Day is a cheap Hallmark holiday cooked up by marketing goons to fill the shopping void between Christmas and Easter. Well, I say lighten up you sourpuss. Just kidding. Be as cynical as you want. You probably have a point. Still, I won’t ever waste an occasion to celebrate love,…
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From Dolly Parton’s 1974 country chart-topper to Whitney Houston’s earth-shattering 1992 soundtrack rendition, the history of “I Will Always Love You.”
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Happy Thanksgiving, friends! This holiday marks a few of my favorite traditions–football, gorging, and the airing of long-simmering family tension. It’s also a great time to reflect on history–the good, the bad, and the ugly. Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown for Thanksgiving week of 1982 has a bit of all three. November 20th, 1982—The Week…
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“Apache” is a cornerstone in the foundation of hip hop. But how did a 1960 instrumental novelty by a British ukulele player become “The Hip-Hop National Anthem”? The story starts as so many hip-hop stories do—with a Burt Lancastar film. British songwriter Jerry Lordan was inspired to compose the instrumental after watching classic American western…
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In 1981, California-based power pop band Tommy Tutone released the enduring one-hit wonder–“867-5309/Jenny.” In addition to topping Billboard’s Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, “Jenny” enumerated the single most famous phone number in radio history. According to songwriters Jim Keller and Alex Call, both the number and the titular protagonist were fictional. But some pop songs…
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Ribs Records, Jazz on Bones or Bones Music was a type of audio bootleg recorded onto discarded x-ray film as a way of cutting costs and proliferating smuggled Western music behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s. Find out how ribs records were made and why they were important.