For those who have asked, I have finally received the answer to the numbness in my hands. The results of the EMG showed that I have mild/moderate carpal tunnel syndrome. It is worse on the left side.
I suppose it is nice to have an answer, but at the same time I am still left with questions. What about the swelling I had in not only my hands, but my feet? What about the pain in all my joints that day? Carpal Tunnel explains part of the stuff, but not all of it.
So now I am wearing braces on my wrist/ hands at night. I am wearing one now because the numbness on my left hand is really bad today. Hopefully, this isn’t a permanent thing. It’s kind of hindering.
Today, I’d like to introduce you to another blogger friend of mine, Dana. At her blog, Regular Girl Devos, she shares stories of praise, stories of faith, meaningful quotes, and personal stories. I had reached out to her about my next Share Your Nostalgia feature (more on that soon) and she sent me this knowing I worked in radio. I loved it so much, I asked her if I could publish it here.
Here piece is one that I think a lot of my music blogger friends can relate to. Read on as Dana takes us back to 1970 ….
How Radio Changed My Life
In the summer of 1970, I was struggling with the dynamics of my home life. Holed up in my bedroom, the music from my radio was my escape, my safe place.
One Saturday morning, a friendly, cheerful voice announced the countdown of the American Top 40. Based on the Billboard Hot 100 weekly chart, he promised to play “the best-selling and most-played songs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico.”
In an instant, Casey Kasem changed my life. Now I had something to look forward to, something to be excited about! Every Saturday, I had a date with Casey. He would play my favorite songs mixed with flashbacks and fun facts about the artists. Notebook in hand, I wondered if my favorite tunes would make it to number one, or slide back in the countdown. Not only that, but the “Long-Distance Dedication” letters he read gave me hope that someday someone would love me enough to dedicate a song to me.
Casey was a friend. He would describe his smooth baritone voice as “more like the voice of the guy next door.” Casey was an encourager. His signature sign-off was “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”
But Casey wasn’t my only radio friend. Back then, DJs in my area would answer the request line themselves.
Many an evening, I would make my escape from the raised voices in the living room and sneak the princess telephone from my mom’s room to mine. I would call my local radio station to request songs.
The evening DJ had a warm, smooth voice, like melted butter. Remembering me when I called, he asks if I was okay. Looking back, I wonder if he could hear what was happening outside my bedroom door. He would tell me, “Remember, as long as you have your radio, you are never alone.”
He was right. But later in life, I began tuning into another voice. Zephaniah 3:17 tells us, “The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” The music of God’s unfailing love and peace is more beautiful than I could ever imagine.
With a nod to Casey, let me encourage you today: Keep your heart with God and keep reaching for His peace!
__________
Thank you, Dana, for sharing such a great piece!It hit home on many levels.
Casey was a big part of my life, too! He used to air on Saturday afternoons in Detroit. My dad would often be outside washing the car or mowing the lawn and American Top 40 would be playing. I had a notebook, too! I would write down the Top 10 every week.
Casey’s show would be recorded in Hollywood right after the charts were released. He would go into a studio with that week’s script and lay down all of the vocal tracks. A producer would add the tunes later. They would be shipped to radio stations on vinyl records. The entire show would be on 4 records.
I was lucky enough to nab a few old shows back in the day.Almost all syndicated shows came that way. Eventually, they came on CD before coming digitally.
The reason Casey was a hit was because of what you said, “he was a friend.” A good on air personality knows that you talk to just one person. That one on one connection is where the “friendship” starts. He was so good at making it all seem effortless.
When I think back on my years in radio, one of the things I am most grateful for are the listeners who became friends. I have so many wonderful friends who I met by talking to them on the request line. I still talk with friends I made in 1988 at my first radio job.
I am sure that the DJ you spoke with had a gut feeling about whatever was going on. You’d be surprised at how much we can tell by just listening to a voice on the other end of the phone. Kudos to that guy!
Now the other Voice that you listen to, well, He will never steer you wrong! I am well aware of that Voice and without Him, I’d be very very lost. How awesome is it that He wrote a book for us to hear that Voice whenever we read it?
Thank you again for sharing such a great story, Dana. I can only hope that I touched the lives of my listeners like Casey and the other DJ did for you!
I am looking forward to reading your next piece in the next installment of Share Your Nostalgia.
I just wanted to inform you that the next couple weeks are going to be busy for me. My wife is having some surgery this week. I will be home helping her get around and taking care of the kids.
I hope to have all of my weekly features ready to go for the next two weeks. Hopefully, you won’t notice I’m gone. I am going to try to watch comments and interact, but I can’t promise anything.
In the meantime, I ask that you keep Sam in your thoughts as she has her surgery and recovers. Thank you in advance!
I recently finished The Author’s Guide To Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White. I’ve had luck in the past with books written by more than one author, but this one wasn’t all I had hoped for.
Before I give my brief thoughts, let’s looks at the Goodreads synopsis:
Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote meets #MeToo in this witty locked room mystery and literary satire by New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.
There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?
A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!
The fact that the synopsis refers to this as a “locked-room mystery” is a bit misleading. Perhaps it should have been referred to as a “Stuck on an Island” mystery because the characters are roaming all over the island, rather than being locked in a room.
I’m not sure I agree with the Agatha Christie or Murder, She Wrote nods either. I never felt like this book was close to either one of these.
For what it is worth, I liked the premise and it certainly had potential. I just never felt any excitement or that the story moved at all. There were parts I felt were unnecessary to move the plot along. Many of the situations were forced with awkward predictable dialogue.
Without giving any spoilers, some of the outcomes of the characters just didn’t make any sense to me. One minute they are normal, at the end, not so much. With the exception of one or two, the characters seemed flat or stereotypical. Not to mention the introductions of some of them with the “Oh my goodness, you are _______!” or “You and ________ are related?!”
Don’t get me started on the ending.
This was an example of “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Each of these authors had written books, apparently some good ones. (I don’t know as I have never read them separately.) Three heads are not better than one for this story ….
I had forgotten all about this picture. I’m not even sure who took it, to be honest. This is me and my lifelong friend, Jeff, in the studio at WMXD in Detroit. The photo had to be taken around 1990.
This studio was tiny. Behind me was a wall that had the station’s CD’s. about 4 feet from where Jeff is sitting was the door to the studio. There wasn’t room for more than three people in there at a time. It got a bit close when the next air personality was getting ready for their show.
I love this picture because, while you can’t see everything, there is so much in this room. Behind me to the left is the reel to reel machine we used to record phone calls. Every once in a while, I would get called in to play voice cuts from jocks who couldn’t be there. They would prerecord the intros on the reel to reel and I would play it back on the air when they were normally supposed to be there live.
To the right of my head in this picture, on the top shelf is a cart machine. It had spots for three carts (one is in the machine in the photo). These carts were tapes that had our commercials on them. They also had the sweepers of our big voice guy saying “This is new music! On 92-3 The Mix!” To the left of the cart machine, you can see about 6 carts stacked up. That was probably the next commercial set.
Below that on the bottom shelf was the CD players. You can see one is playing and Jeff’s head is blocking the other one. In front of me was the control board. Oh, how I miss those slider pots. Each one of those colored sliders went to something – CD #1, CD #2, Cart #1, Turntable #1, Reel to Reel, etc…
Up above the board is a little shelf that held liner cards or station liners that needed to be read throughout the show. It would also hold your “copy” for news or weather. Anytime I wrote out something I wanted to say, it would sit there on that shelf.
To Jeff’s right you can barely make out that turntable. There were two side by side in the studio. When the Electrifying Mojo did his show, he played almost everything off of vinyl. There would be records all over the studio. He’d also have the heat cranked up in there. It was always an oven when I’d have to follow him on the weekend.
This picture brings back some great memories. Jeff used to come up and hang out a lot. We’d stay up all night and he was always trying to crack me up on the air. He did it more times than I could count! Lord knows if it was the other way around, I would have been trying to crack him up, too.
It was on this day in 1816 that Gioachino Rossini’s Barber of Seville premiered in Rome, Italy. It is considered to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all “opere buffe.” (For those wondering what an opera buffa is, it is “a comic opera (usually in Italian), especially one with characters drawn from everyday life.“)
Rossini wrote The Barber of Seville in just 12 days! On top of that, he wasn’t even 24-years-old and had already written 16 operas at the time! Wow! If you think you are unfamiliar with the opera, I assure you, you are wrong. You have heard it in one way or another in pop culture over the years.
The music of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville has been ingrained in popular culture longer than any of us have been alive! From Citizen Kane to Mrs. Doubtfire to Pixar’s Luca, Rossini’s famous comedy has been indelibly woven into film and television history. One of the most recent occurrences can be found in Seinfeld‘s “The Barber” in which the opera’s music replaces the incidental bass lines for the episode. Another was in The Simpsons‘ “The Homer of Seville,” in which the title character discovers his hidden talent for opera singing.
One of the oldest appearances was in the Little Rascals feature, The Our Gang Follies of 1938. In the story, Alfalfa quits singing pop music to become an opera singer. Needless to say, the audience didn’t care too much for his version.
The most memorable to me (and many others) came about in the cartoons. Woody Woodpecker gave it a try …
Tom and Jerry’s hijinks went on throughout their version …
The one that is the best, of course, belongs to Bugs Bunny. The Rabbit of Seville is a classic. Sadly, I could only find it on Youtube in 3 parts….
Who would have thought that a piece of music 2 centuries old would still be making us laugh??
Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.
We are in the home stretch, as they say. We’re closing in on 2025 and admittedly, the newer music is not as well known to me. Once I was forced into retirement from radio and mobile DJing in 2020, I lost touch with almost all new stuff. I am guessing as we get closer to the end, I may need to double up on years and maybe feature 5 from some of them instead of 10.
I was introduced to Colby Caillat when I worked at the Adult Contemporary station. There was something about her voice that really stood out to me. I Never Told You is a song that I like not because of the lyrical content, but because of her voice.
As I heard this the first time, there was just something that sounded “real.” It was like there was real hurt and real struggle to it. It was only later that I found out why. She told songfacts.com in an interview that it was “the most difficult song she ever wrote. “‘I Never Told You’ was a long work in progress, said the Malibu-based singer-songwriter. “I started it by myself when I was on tour in Germany. Then two years later I played it forJason Reeves and Kara DioGuardi when we were writing together in Hawaii for my album ‘Breakthrough’, and they helped me finish writing it that week. It’s now one of my favorite songs!”
I Never Told You
They say you are your own worst critic. When I listen back to my old radio shows, I think of how things could have been edited or worked with a better punch line. I’m fine when it is me telling myself what to do. Sometimes, however, there are people who think they know it all. They offer you this “sage” advice that isn’t worth squat.
That kind of situation led to my next song. I love the angst that you hear in the lyrics and voice of Sara Bareilles on King of Anything. She told Billboard magazine:
“It was the last song I wrote before we went into the studio, and I was at the point where I started sharing the music with my inner circle and started getting feedback. I remember having a very vivid realization of, ‘Oh, I forgot that this was a part of it. Everybody gets to tell you what they think about what you do.’ I could tell I was getting defensive. That song was a little bit of a pep-talk song-and that’s exactly what ‘Love Song’ was.”
She went on to tell PopEater:
“I’ve had more unsolicited advice on my life than I care to mention, and this was how I dealt with it. It felt empowering to turn that frustration into music, especially a song that doesn’t even sound angry. Apparently, I don’t get over things very quickly.”
She says that it is sort of an “F You” song. What do you think?
King of Anything
Adam Levine said that “‘Misery’ is about the desperation of wanting someone really badly in your life but having it be very difficult. Kind of what all the songs I write are about. I’m not treading on new ground, but I think a lot of people – including myself – deal with that all the time. Relationships are difficult, and it’s good therapy to write about them.”
I had never seen the video before choosing this one for my list. It’s loaded with some steamy scenes. Levine told MTV News about the Joseph Kahn-directed video.
“The cool thing is, when Joseph wrote the treatment after reading a few sentences, I thought it was really amazing,” he said. “Because it kind of turns the whole idea of the sexual energy between two people – a guy and a girl, a music video, you’ve seen that a million times – that exists in this video, but it’s turning it on its ass and having the girl be the more domineering one who’s trying to kill me.”
The song was one that really just stood out when it played on the radio.
Misery
I was still working at the Adult Contemporary station when I was going through my divorce. After it was finalized and Sam and I started to feel like there was something between us, I heard this song. The lyrics really struck a chord. I really did feel like a teenager again.
Katy Perry says that, “‘Teenage Dream’ is a euphoric feeling. It gives off this feeling that a lot of people have been through. I remember my teenage years, and I remember falling in love for the first time and how impressionable that was. How sensitive I was to every feeling. Heartbreak was really hard. Of course heartbreak is really hard now, and love is still intense, but it’s a different type of feeling, that teenage love. I want people to have that feeling again of falling in love unabashedly – those teenage dreams.”
This new love was unexpected, but made me feel giddy inside. It still feels that way.
Teenage Dream
In this world, we tend to beat ourselves up. We pick on ourselves. When we feel like doing that, we ought to remember what Mr. Rogers taught us. He would say, “I like you just the way you are. You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you.” That’s great advice for children and adults. That’s also why I picked the next song.
Bruno Mars conveys that Mr. Rogers message to his lady – “You’re amazing just the way you are!”
Bruno said, “I’m a big fan of simple songs. When we wrote Just The Way You Are, I wasn’t thinking of anything deep or poetic. I was telling a story. Get ready to fall in love!”
Sometimes the simple messages hit just right. The song went to #1 for Bruno.
Just The Way You Are
The Bruno Mars song was written with Cee Lo Green in mind. Cee Lo didn’t feel it was right for him, but he did feel like Forget You was.
Before I go on, I should state that Forget You is like the “Edited for Television” movies. If you replace “forget” with another F word, you’ll see what I mean. When I first hear this, I had no idea that is what the song was really called. The music service I used when DJing sent over the “radio edit” which had edited out the “s*#t” from “ain’t that some s*#t.” In the unedited version, Cee-Lo drops 16 f-bombs in just 3 1/2 minutes.
The song features Cee Lo’s Elektra labelmate Bruno Mars. It originated during a session in L.A. with Mars and Phil Lawrence.. The pair played to Cee-Lo a rough demo of a song they weren’t sure was worth completing. “When Bruno first sung ‘F—- You’ to me, they were still a bit indecisive on whether or not it could work at all,” Green told Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘I like it. Let’s record it.'” The trio then completed the song with Cee Lo contributing many of the verse lyrics.
I loved the feel of this song and I was hooked from the line, “I guess he’s an X-Box and I’m more Atari!”
Forget You
A lot of folks dissed Michael Buble’ when he first came out. He was doing covers of old standards from crooners from the 40’s and 50’s. I guess they figured, anyone could do that, but Buble’ wrote some great original stuff. When his original stuff gained popularity, those folks shut up.
He has proven his talent and his fans love him. I love the arrangements he has come up with for his covers and his original stuff stands out, too. The guy is more than just covers and Christmas music.
Hollywood is not only a great song, but a great video. Michael likes to have fun and it shows here. His personality really shows through here I think. The video parodies several celebrities, including Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber. Speaking of the clip, Bublé told The Sun: “The video is about celebrity culture, people’s dreams about fame and what can go with it. You can see what fun I had playing the characters.”
Again, the song was different, fun and stuck out when it played on the radio, which is why I love it.
Hollywood
Christina Perri’s voice is very unique. It is almost as though it changes with each of her songs. For Jar of Hearts, I almost felt that it was deeper and darker than her other songs, if that even makes sense. I truly am mesmerized by her voice.
I have been accused by certain people from my past as being a “heart collector,” but that is really just nonsense. I was never a stud in school or afterward, and to say I was a Cassanova or Rudolph Valentino is simply hilarious. Anyway, in the song, Christina Perri looks to distance herself from a guy who is worse than a heartbreaker – he’s a heart collector, keeping them in a (metaphorical) jar and tearing love apart.
She wrote the lyric about a serial heart collector she once dated. On her blog, she told the story behind the tune: “I wrote the song after I went home to Philadelphia for the holiday last December [2009]. I sat in my childhood bedroom and hid from the boy (with the jar of hearts) who wanted to see me. My heart wanted to see him, my head knew better.”
I am aware that men are the more common keepers of “jars of hearts,” but I know at least two females from my past who were the same way.
Jar of Hearts
Train was really one of those groups I liked. I played a lot of their stuff on the radio and at parties and dances. This one, I found out, didn’t start out as Marry Me. From songfacts:
Pat Monahan got together with the producers David Katz and Sam Hollander to write the title track of the album, but their sessions also sparked “Marry Me,” which started off as a song called “Stay On Me.”
“It was absolutely beautiful and had the same longing melodies,” Hollander said in a songfacts interview, “but it just didn’t raise its hand. Then Pat went back in and flipped it to ‘Marry Me,’ and the emotion went a step further.
When Jonathan Daniel, Pat’s manager, played it for me, I had chills. I could not believe what Pat did with it. Sometimes you get those surprises. Sometimes a song never lives up to the demo in the room, but that one far surpassed it. He deserves the credit. That’s his heart – he’s a big-hearted guy with a really deft lyrical touch.”
I love hearing the origin stories for songs. I love the idea for the video, too. The video, directed by Lex Halaby, opens with a montage of real married couples telling the stories of how they met. When the song starts, it turns into a storyline where Monahan falls for a waitress, played by Anna Camp of True Blood and The Good Wife.
Marry Me
My final song is one that just “sounds happy.” What makes this unique is that instead of Tom Higgenson singing lead, guitar played Tim Lopez does the honors. Tim actually wrote the song. He told songfacts:
“It was written for this girl that I was dating while we were making our last album out in Malibu. We have a lot of history; I’ve known her since I was 11 or 12. I wasn’t really emotionally available to her at the time. I hadn’t completely gotten over my divorce, so when the band left on tour, I decided it wasn’t right to try to keep the relationship going so we called it quits. It was only over the last year or so that I’ve realized what I walked away from. The song was an attempt to rekindle things and win her back. She’s currently dating someone else, and I’m happy for her. But in case it doesn’t work out… who knows?”
The song barely cracked the top 40 (peaking at #38), but it is a song that sounds so good to me.
Rhythm of Love
With that, we wrap up 2010. Did I miss one of your favorites? Tell me in the comments.
Next week, we venture into 2011. Looking at the list, there is at least two ear worms; there are plenty of songs that I always played for one particular high school at their dances; and a song that I thought should have been a hit for a group who was big in the 80’s. I hope to see you next week.
Today We wish Juice Newton a Happy 73rd Birthday. She is one of those artists/songwriters who was very big in the 80’s and sort of disappeared. The truth is, she’s always been around, we just don’t hear her stuff thanks to a variety of things. One of those things is the mindset of corporate radio.
I have featured uptempo stuff from Juice before, but I wanted to feature her voice today. Her ballads really showcase her singing voice and one of my favorites is The Sweetest Thing. This song was written for Juice Newton by her music partner Otha Young (Robert O. Young) for her 1975 debut album Juice Newton and Silver Spur. She re-recorded it in 1981 for her groundbreaking album Juice.
Country singer Jamie O’Neal covered the song for her album of cover songs. She told songfacts.com:
“I think there’s songs, like ‘The Sweetest Thing,’ that’ll live on forever, and when you hear it, it takes you right back to where you were when that was a big hit for Juice Newton … I think that song stands the test of time and that’s what makes it a classic to me is the fact that everybody knows it. Not just in one little area of music, but across the board, everybody knows that song.”
The song was a Top 10 hit on three different Billboard charts: #1 on Adult Contemporary, #1 on Country and #7 on the Hot 100.
So this morning I was picking up groceries. My wife texted and said, “Can you stop at Bigby and get me a bagel sandwich?” I’d never had one of theirs, so I got one, too
When they handed them to me, they were each in a bag with ONE napkin. This has been something I’ve noticed over the last couple months. Why are places skimping on napkins?!
I’m not saying I’m a messy eater, but let’s face it some of these places make messy burgers. You need way more than one napkin to eat it!
I remember back in the day, you’d get a handful of them. I’d use them when I spilled something or when I had to blow my nose. Those extras came in handy.
God forbid you ask for extra napkins. The looks you get are nasty. It wouldn’t surprise me if they started to charge for extra napkins!
Is there a napkin shortage we are unaware of? Can anyone explain this?
It was on this day in 1995 that the Brady Bunch Movie was released to theaters. Rather than rehash the show in its own time period, producers placed the family in the 90’s…..and rehashes the show there.
Fans of the Brady Bunch TV show either loved or hated the film. I was actually impressed with how well the actors played the original characters.
It was also nice to see some familiar faces in cameo roles. Among those cameos were Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork of the Monkees. Some of the original cast appeared, too. Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, Barry Williams and Christopher Knight all appear in other roles. Drag Queen, RuPaul, has a cameo as a teacher/counselor named Mrs. Cummings.
I admit I almost picked Sunshine Day from the soundtrack. It’s the same song the original Brady kids did on the show. As I started to listen to it, I thought I’d spare you having to hear that one. Too cheesy. Instead, how about we feature RuPaul’s You Better Work? At least that one won’t be stuck in your head for 10 days after one listen…
FYI – the spoken lines at the beginning are said by Lawanda Page – Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 