Journalist Marc Masters joins us to discuss his book, High Bias: the Distorted History of the Cassette Tape. We dive into how the oft-maligned cassette influenced the music industry and our culture by inspiring musicians, taking music to the streets and returning power back to listeners. Show Notes High Bias: The Distorted History of the […]
Arlo Guthrie’s seasonally appropriate “Alice’s Restaurant” is getting dusted off once again for radio airplay this Thanksgiving 2023. I’ve been documenting this radio ritual for many years (even while suffering with COVID last year) and was pleased to be able to speak to THE Alice in 2020. Our Radio Survivor conversation with Alice Brock is […]
Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide. Thanksgiving is nearly upon us and for radio fanatics like myself, that means another year tracking the radio stations that play Arlo Guthrie’s seasonally appropriate “Alice’s Restaurant.” Especially with the strangeness of the last few years in light of COVID, nostalgia is […]
On this week’s program, we turn our attention to the history of industrial music – not the noisy music genre – but music played in industrial settings for workers. A variety of services offered (and still offer) background music for workplaces. Muzak and the RCA Plant Broadcasting System are just a few of the products […]
Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide. As Thanksgiving approaches, my thoughts turn once again to “Alice’s Restaurant,” the epic Arlo Guthrie song that is a beloved turkey day tradition for radio stations all over the United States. I’ve been chronicling this ritual for many many years and was […]
On this week’s show, we return to the topic of hip-hop on the radio. While on Radio Survivor, we typically focus on non-commercial radio, like college and community stations; in this episode we look at why certain types of commercial radio stations were important to the growth in popularity of hip-hop music. Our guest, Amy […]
I have been collecting digital music files since the MP3 became a practical storage and transmission format in the late 90s. Whether traded, ripped from my own CDs, downloaded in the heydays of Emusic.com – which for a time served up all-you-can-download music from mostly independent labels for a reasonable monthly fee – or purchased […]
I bought my first CD player in 1987, using money I saved from my 16th birthday and working as a stock boy at the local Party Fair store. I could only afford to buy two discs to try out on my new purchase, owing to the fact that new CDs cost about $15.99, roughly $37 in 2021 […]
Back in October 2019 I published a response to the breathless news reported across the tech, music and popular press that “vinyl outsold CDs” for the very first time. While true in terms of raw dollars, as I demonstrated, it wasn’t true in terms of volume. More than twice the number of CD albums were sold than vinyl […]
On this most unusual of Thanksgiving weeks, we are honored to speak with Alice Brock, the woman who provided much inspiration for Arlo Guthrie’s inadvertent Thanksgiving Day radio staple, “Alice’s Restaurant.” Brock shares with us not only some insight into the 18-minute anti-war epic; but also stories about her life and holiday traditions. For 2020, […]
