Podcast appearances and mentions of Sam Goody

It's been a while since Pom Tea & Earl Grey spilled the tea, but the ladies are back!On this episode, 'Today's Version of Consumerism', we get nostalgic over shopping malls, buying gifts during the holidays, the classic Black Friday deals, as well the stores we used to frequent - Nordstrom, Sam Goody, Bloomingdales, and more. We also spilled the tea on the fast fashion online boutiques, SHEIN and Fashion Nova, and how the quality of clothes has deteriorated over time. In addition, we touched on the rise of the influencer and how they impact the shopping experience, certain products, and how people make shopping decisions. Join us as we chat about so much more! If you want to tap more into the tea, click here: https://linktr.ee/thetearoompod.Facebook: bit.ly/TheTeaRoomFBX: bit.ly/TheTeaRoomTWRInstagram: bit.ly/TheTeaRoomIGKeep Sipping to hear more!

On this episode of Bounced From The Roadhouse:Special Guests in 4B:Not a Vest GuyApple SettlementCrocodile DundeeCall AnthonyLast Sam GoodyGood News World PopulationPee Wee Herman DocumentaryAvoid Working with RelativesHoliday LightsHighschool BaseballCostner and LopezQuestions? Comments? Leave us a message! 605-343-6161Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and some stars Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay and Shua look back at all the Stuff they Enjoyed in 2024 and what might be something to look forward to next year on Enjoy Stuff.   As we say goodbye to the year, we try to remember to the long long ago and revisit some of the great stuff we    News The Ghostbusters are getting an animated movie on Netflix Now you can visit a Transformers store The last 2 Sam Goody stores have finally closed their doors   Check out our TeePublic store for some enjoyable swag and all the latest fashion trends What we're Enjoying Jay is having a great time with the third and final season of Marvel's What If…? on Disney+. Great tales in the Marvel multiverse with your favorite character and even voiced by many of the original actors from the live action movies and series. Shua has been getting very retro by listening to the great Satchamo himself, Louis Armstrong. He was an amazing jazz talent with a legacy that will endure forever.      Sci-Fi Saturdays This week on Sci-Fi Saturdays Jay writes about the 2009 reboot of Star Trek with Chris Pine, Zach Quinto, and a variety of talented actors and actresses that give their interpretations of the beloved characters. It divided fans a bit, but there were great things in this, the first of three movies. Read his article on RetroZap.com.  And make sure to play around with the interactive map on MCULocationScout.com. Plus, you can tune in to SHIELD: Case Files where Jay and Shua talk about great stuff in the MCU. Enjoy Looking Back!  2024 brought such a plethora of things to Enjoy. As we say goodbye to the year, we look back on a bunch of the things that we remember. Or some of the things that we forgot. Believe it or not, January feels like a distant memory. We also look forward to what might come in the new year. Come with us on a journey of the year on Enjoy Stuff.  What were some of your favorite things from 2024? First person that emails me with the subject line, “Goodbye yellow brick road” will get a special mention on the show.  Let us know. Come talk to us in the Discord channel or send us an email to EnjoyStuff@RetroZap.com 

On this segment of Top Ten Tuesday, we talk about a letter I got from a struggling restaurant and places that have gone out -not for a walk or date- of business. MooreSubstance@gmail.com

In this episode of Talking Smack 415, Jamie the Great and I chat with music exec and friend from high school, Jaime Feldman. ( yes two James' at once!) We have a lot to catch up on,  about 32 years! We chat about Jaime Feldman's: Nontraditional career path from Sam Goody associate in the Echelon and Cherry Hill malls all the way to LA music executiveHaving grit, being focused,  and taking advantage of opportunities Advice for those who want to enter the music industry And not to name drop but we touch on his friendship with Steven Tyler, Bonnie Raitt and Ziggy Marley to name a few! And of course we get back to two q's: How can Bangs or Botox go viral? How can Jamie the Great and I get paid for just being us? Hop in your car, head to the beach, and tune in! PS- Please share with all your friends and family from Jersey and LA and anyone interested in a career in music.  

As I was scrolling through Spotify looking for music to play, I realized just how much I missed the record stores. While I do have everything I want to listen to available all the time online, the joy of searching isn't the same. There was something magical about the record store. The big box stores like Tower Music, Peaches, or Tracks were magical places. Even the mall stores like Camelot Music, Sam Goody, and Record Bar were places you could spend hours browsing. I love the convenience of the online music services, but... Click Here To Subscribe Apple PodcastsSpotifyAmazon MusicGoogle PodcastsTuneIniHeartRadioPandoraDeezerBlubrryBullhornCastBoxCastrofyyd.deGaanaiVooxListen NotesmyTuner RadioOvercastOwlTailPlayer.fmPocketCastsPodbayPodbeanPodcast AddictPodcast IndexPodcast RepublicPodchaserPodfanPodtailRadio PublicRadio.comReason.fmRSSRadioVurblWe.foYandex jQuery(document).ready(function($) { 'use strict'; $('#podcast-subscribe-button-13292 .podcast-subscribe-button.modal-65efefd90d44c').on("click", function() { $("#secondline-psb-subs-modal.modal-65efefd90d44c.modal.secondline-modal-65efefd90d44c").modal({ fadeDuration: 250, closeText: '', }); return false; }); });

[00:00:00] Tommy Thomas: Our guest today is Philanthropeneur Terry Esau. Terry spent most of his career writing and producing music for TV commercials. Target, McDonald's, Pepsi, Harley-Davidson, Honda, Dairy Queen, Golden Grahams, and everything in between. He worked with celebrities like Amy Grant, Jim Henson, Alice Cooper and Prince. After writing over a thousand commercial scoring films and writing for TV shows, he decided to take a break from the music business. And tried his hand at writing words. He's the author of three books and one novel.  Terry is a certified bike-a-holic. In 2010, he started a nonprofit organization called Free Bicycles for Kidz and has given away over 150,000 bicycles to kids in need. He holds the Guinness World Record for most bikes collected in one day, nearly 10,000, in Minneapolis. Free Bikes for Kidz is now active in 20 cities with a goal of being in a hundred cities and a million bikes given away in the next five years. Recently, Terry cofounded the new nonprofit Free Guitars for Kids.  They partner with music industry giants such as Gibson and Fender and other music leaders to put guitars in the hands of deserving young people. Before we get too deep into your music and professional career, take me back to your childhood or your upbringing. What was that like for you? [00:01:35] Terry Esau:  I grew up in a tiny little town of 2,000 people called Mountain Lake, where there's no mountain and a man-made lake in southern Minnesota. So yeah, small town. I don't know. It was a typical small-town upbringing, just hanging out, riding my bike everywhere after school and I had a paper route because I got paid to ride my bike. My brother and I would build ramps and we'd collect neighborhood kids and have them lie down on the street and we'd see how many kids we could jump over. [00:02:15] Tommy Thomas: Y'all must be pretty good salesmen to get somebody to do that. [00:02:17] Terry Esau:  Yeah we usually made it. So it was that, and then I went to college at a school here in Minneapolis, Christian Liberal Arts School, Northwestern. Got a music education degree, which technically I've never used. But I used the music aspect of it for the rest of my career, so we can talk about that when you're ready. [00:02:45] Tommy Thomas: How did you get into music?  What was your first instrument? [00:02:47] Terry Esau:  I got a guitar when I was, I don't know how old, probably in sixth or seventh grade, through Sears Roebuck. A Silver Tone guitar. It was not a great guitar, but it was all I needed and I played trumpet in in middle school and high school band. And then I just continued on that. When I got to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was interested in music and I played in a few bands and stuff like that. So, I continued in the music degree and then, through a kind of interesting circumstances, I ended up discovering what my career would be in music, but it had nothing to do with music education. [00:03:35] Tommy Thomas: What's something that people might be surprised to know about you? [00:03:41] Terry Esau: Other than riding my bike across the country, I got to mix one of my songs with Prince. I did a Target Christmas campaign with Amy Grant. I did a Sam Goody campaign with Alice Cooper. I got to do some Sesame Street music with Jim Henson.  And then my nonprofits.  I started two nonprofits that have given away 150,000 bicycles and now we're doing the same thing with guitars. So yeah, I've gotten three books published. I have a very strange career trajectory. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. [00:04:27] Tommy Thomas: How did you get into making music for a living? When did you realize that, wow, I could make a living doing this? [00:04:31] Terry Esau: So here's an interesting story. My first day in college, my first day in music theory class, our professor said here's your assignment. Go home, write a jingle about milk, and come back tomorrow and perform it for the class. So, I did that. Never thought anything of it. Until three years later when I was completely out of money. So, I decided to take a year off of college and work. And I was teaching guitar lessons in a music store. Almost went insane. I had 55 lessons a week and all I did all day long was teach junior high boys how to play Smoke on the Water. Do you remember that song? [00:05:15] Tommy Thomas: That's a limited horizon. [00:05:16] Terry Esau: Yeah, but then I just, I walked in and quit one day, and I just said, I can't do this one more day. And I remembered back to that first assignment in music theory class, and I thought, huh. I wonder if anybody would pay me to do that. It's a long story, but I ended up in the jingle business, working, writing and producing music for TV commercials, mostly.  [00:05:45] Tommy Thomas: Do you remember your first big jingle? [00:05:49] Terry Esau: My first jingle was for a little flower shop called Whiting's Flowers. I wouldn't call that a big jingle by any means. I don't remember what my first big one was. Like I said, I've done jingles for McDonald's and Pepsi and Harley's and Hondas and Target and General Mills cereals and I've probably done over a thousand commercials, wow. It's a strange career. [00:06:19] Tommy Thomas: Have you had any mentors in your life? [00:06:23] Terry Esau: I've had a lot of mentors. One of the guys who really helped get me started, his name was Dick Wilson and he was he was probably in his late forties or fifties when I was in my twenties. I don't know if he saw potential in me or what, but he took me under his wing and he started giving me work and he was like the jingle king of Minneapolis in the 1940s and 50s, and that was when jingles were the deal. He took me under his wing and believed in me and convinced other ad agency people to believe in me. I'm not sure if you can make it in that business without somebody who's there who already believes in you a little bit. Yeah, so he was certainly a mentor. [00:07:21] Tommy Thomas: Anybody at the school, at the college? [00:07:25] Terry Esau: My theory professor, Maxine Woodbridge Postgate, it's funny because we had a love hate relationship. I think she recognized that I had potential, but she was very conservative, and she was a great composer of choral music, but she believed in following the musical rules very strictly. And I seem to have a bent to want to break the rules. I remember she called me in one day after it was a final composition I did for, I don't remember if it was music theory 101, or the second year theory class. And we had to compose something and then bring in musicians and perform it. So we did it. And the next day she called me in front of the music theory class, and she said, I just want you all to know that what Terry did was not music. And I'm giving him an F for that project. It was a little too avant garde for her. It was a little, like some of the more modern classical music, where it's a little atonal and experimental and she just goes, no. She had a very narrow definition of what music was supposed to be. Yet, she would keep trying to help me and give me opportunities because she believed in me. But she really wanted to make me into a composer like she was. And I've done some of that in my later years. I've composed some choral music that's gotten published. But I believe in all kinds of music, and that was the beauty about being in the jingle business. One day I would have to compose something that was operatic, and the next day was country western, and the next was rock and roll. You do all kinds of music. If you listen to enough TV commercials that have music, you're going to hear all kinds of music, right? [00:09:34] Tommy Thomas: What have you done relative to mentoring others? What does that look like in your life? [00:09:38] Terry Esau: I actually do a lot of that. I guess a lot of the mentoring that I do I don't see it as career mentoring. I see it as personal growth and development and spiritual mentoring. Because I feel I have some career paths in the music business, in the nonprofit business, in the book publishing business. So, I have experience there. So, if people want to talk about that, I'm obviously happy to do that. But I think it's more important that if you're mentoring young people, it's like, how do you get them to grow up to be people of integrity and character and generosity and kindness and compassion? And those are characteristics that will serve you through your life and make the world a better place. So, I meet with, especially a lot of young men who are in their twenties, maybe thirties. As I get older, it's like the young men are older too. Yes, they are. And my wife sometimes says to me, she goes, you're mentoring so many of these young guys. And I go, but you don't understand they're mentoring me too. I don't think mentoring is ever, well, mentoring shouldn't be a one-way street. It should be a two-way thing. I feel like I'm learning as much from the people I'm mentoring as the people, as they're getting from me. [00:11:15] Tommy Thomas: It's been said that probably most of us learn most from our failures or mistakes.  If that's the truth, why are most of us so afraid to fail? [00:11:27] Terry Esau: You know what, I've never, I don't think I've ever been too afraid to fail. But I've always believed that you should fail quickly, and you should learn from your failures. I always look at it this way, if you've never failed, you've probably never tried. Or you've never taken on something that was a little bigger than you. If you only attempt things that you know you can accomplish, I don't think that's a high enough degree of risk worthy of living a passionate life. So I've had plenty of failures. I've gotten three books published, but I have about four other books that I've started or even finished and haven't been published. You could look at those as failures or you could look at it as I learned something from them. And sometimes, my writing is part of how I process life and come to understand what I think and believe. So even if a book doesn't get published, it's served in my personal growth, right? [00:12:43] Tommy Thomas: What's the biggest risk you've ever taken? [00:12:53] Terry Esau: I would say when I quit the music business. I didn't really know what I was going to do. I'm actually doing a TED talk this summer and the title is the sharp elbow of restlessness. Some people say when God closes a door, he opens a window.  There's all these cliches. I feel like before doors are even closed for me; I start to feel restless. And restlessness is something I can't ignore, because often it's when I start to feel like I'm lacking in purpose. That's when I start to feel restless and without purpose, I always feel restless. So, in my music career, after 25 years, I could not ignore this feeling that I feel like this chapter of my life is supposed to be over. And I didn't know what I was going to go into. I didn't know what the next chapter was, but I felt very, I don't know. I felt very certain and willing to take a risk that I need to walk away from this and discover what is next. So, I did that and that was a pretty big risk, I think, at that time. Because I'm in my late 40s, probably peak earning career. And I just walked away. I sold my recording studio. And that led to my getting my first book published. Which then turned into a speaking career. So again, all of those things were a risk because I didn't know what I was going into. It was a risk because I've never made the kind of money doing all of these new things that I do that I did in the music career. I was risking some financial opportunity, but sometimes having purpose in your life and meaning pays bigger dividends than finances, right? [00:15:15] Tommy Thomas: Yeah, tell us more about the TED Talk. How does one get invited to give a TED Talk? [00:15:21] Terry Esau: So anybody can apply to be a TED speaker. Okay. But it had never occurred to me to even think about that. But I got an email one day from a guy who's the head of the acquisitions team that searches for speakers. And I got an email and I was scanning it and I was just about to click delete because I thought it was just another one of those scam things, hey, send us 200 and we'll put your name in this book of great entrepreneurs or whatever. I've seen so many of those things that I just delete them. But this guy, he said, hey, could you meet me for coffee? So, I'm going oh, so he's local and he actually wants to get together in person. So, then I read a little more and I go, he's part of the TED organization. I've always respected and enjoyed watching TED talks. So I went and met with him, had coffee and he goes, yeah we like what you've been doing in your career. And we think you might have an inspiring story to tell. So here I am next on August 12th. I'm doing a TED talk at Orchestra Hall here in Minneapolis.  [00:16:42] Tommy Thomas: Wow, congratulations. We'll have to look on that and see when it gets on the schedule. [00:16:47] Terry Esau: Yeah, they upload those things to YouTube and you can search them. And yeah, so I'm basically talking about the thing I've been telling you about is that how restlessness should not necessarily be viewed as a negative thing. I say you might want to look at restlessness as like a light on the dashboard of your life saying, hey, it might be time for you to change, to try something new, take a risk, so it's happened to me multiple times in my careers and so far I believe that restlessness is something I need to pay attention to because it's always led me into something really interesting. [00:17:34] Tommy Thomas: I know you've started two nonprofits, Free Bikes for Kids and Free Guitars for Kids. Take us into the early days of those. I get questions often from people who say, why don't you do a podcast on how to start a nonprofit? Tell us about the early days. [00:17:51] Terry Esau: Once again, I never intended to start a nonprofit. I started a hobby. I actually got a call from a friend and he said, hey there's this kid in our neighborhood who doesn't have a bicycle, his parents can't afford one and it was December, so Christmas is coming and so I just got together with some of my buddies and said, hey, why don't we collect bicycles this December, fix them up and we'll give them to kids who don't have a bicycle and can't afford one. And so that first year we gave away 250 bikes. And we all said, that was fun. Let's do it again next year. And that year we gave away 750 and the next year it was 1500. And that's when I said, okay, this has gone beyond the realm of hobby. This is like a second job for me. How about if we form a nonprofit, put together a board of directors, I'll go find a corporate sponsor. And we did. And that year we gave away 5,000 bikes. Sometimes you just, you follow your nose, and you do something that you think, oh, this, there's a need here. There are millions of kids in the U.S. who don't have a bicycle, can't afford one. Millions of kids who are unhealthy, diabetes, obesity. They're spending all their time in front of a screen. I thought, there are probably millions of bicycles sitting in garages that have been outgrown or aren't being used. What if we collect those, fix 'em up? So now we're in 22 cities. We've given away 150,000 bicycles. We're now partnering with Target. So Target is giving us all of their return bikes, 30 to 40,000 bikes every year. And now we have a goal of being in a hundred cities and giving away a million bikes by the year 2030. I don't know, I think we might be able to do it. Huh? [00:19:47] Tommy Thomas: Yeah. You said you formed a board, so what did that early board look like and how did it view itself? [00:19:56] Terry Esau: They always say there are two kinds of boards, like a working board or a governance board. Usually when you start something from scratch it's generally a working board, right? Yeah. So, most of that early board was made up of people who were my friends, who I would go out and ride my bike with. And they loved bicycles, and they thought every kid should have a bicycle too. So, the board was mainly made up of people who were passionate about it and wanted to actually volunteer and help make it happen. Then, over the course of several years, as the organization started to grow and blossom, now the board must transition from a working board and start becoming more of a governance board, to give direction and oversight to the organization as it gets bigger. But I think, if you're starting a nonprofit from scratch, you gotta have people who believe in the mission and are willing to invest some sweat equity in it, right? It's hard though, I will say that. It's hard to start. It's hard to start a nonprofit from scratch, because you're inventing everything. Yeah, it's just flat out a lot of work. [00:21:22] Tommy Thomas: So when you started Free Guitars for Kids, I guess you had a few learning lessons under your belt.  How has that one gone? [00:21:31] Terry Esau: It's interesting. So yeah, it was like, okay we figured out how to do this with bicycles. So, what if we just translate that to guitars? Because we go, I bet there are millions of guitars sitting in people's homes collecting dust that never come out of their case too. So, we were going, okay we'll start this and we'll get some celebrities to do a pro bono concert and we'll say, you can't buy a ticket to the concert. The only way to get in is you have to bring a guitar to donate. And we thought, oh, that's a great idea. Then you go, okay, now we have to get celebrities to do this. And then where are we going to put the guitars and who's going to help us restring them? And then we ended up going, okay it's not exactly apples to apples comparison with bikes and with guitars. So, we went out and we started talking with Fender and Gibson, guitar manufacturers, and said, would you want to partner with us? Would you want to help us make sure that they're under resourced kids who get a guitar? And they were like yeah, we'd like to be part of that. So now we're finding we're getting people who are donating dollars. And they're helping us fund and Gibson and Fender are either giving us screaming deals on guitars. And sometimes like they just gave us 200 free guitars. Gibson did, which we gave away in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. And last week we gave away 150 some guitars in Alaska. And now we're going to be doing it in Las Vegas. Going to be doing an event with a TV show down in Austin, Texas. In September, November, I can't remember. But yeah, so we learned a few things. So, with Free Bikes for Kids, there's the Mothership nonprofit, and then all the cities are like, they're independent nonprofits. It's like a franchise model. So when we started Free Guitars for Kids, I go, I don't want to do that franchise model. It's just complicated. Yeah. And it doesn't make as much sense with the guitar thing anyhow. So it's just one nonprofit. But we're starting what we're calling our sounding boards in various cities. So we're getting people together. Right now, we're just doing it in music cities. We have a sounding board in Nashville and one here in Minneapolis and Portland and, we'll be doing it in Chicago and LA and Austin and New York and wherever else. And those sounding boards, they're not board members, but they're advocates in the city who are going to help us put on events and give guitars away in those cities. We're continuing to learn and like you said, we've realized with free bikes for kids, we made some mistakes and we're trying to remedy those and then with free guitars, we're trying to not make any of those mistakes and I'm sure we will, but whenever you try something big, you make mistakes, right? It's not mistakes. Those things don't bother me that much. I figured everybody makes mistakes. We just keep trying, keep doing better, and yeah, we're making kids happy and healthy. Good. [00:25:01] Tommy Thomas: If you had deep pockets, and you were on a nonprofit version of Shark Tank, and you had people like yourself presenting their case for nonprofit funding, what questions have you got to have solid answers for before you open your checkbook? [00:25:23] Terry Esau: First of all, whatever you're pitching, it has to solve a problem and there has to be a resource to help solve that problem. Like for us, it was like, here's the problem. Kids in America are unhealthy, they're obese, there's poverty, so they can't afford a bicycle. Can help solve some of their health issues, not just physical health issues, but mental health issues, right? I call my bike my carbon fiber therapist because, you're a cyclist. It's like I get on my bike, and I go for a ride. I could be having a bad day, but by the time I get done with my ride, all that stress has just been washed away. Yeah. So I'm Shark Tank. I think you'd have to go. What's the problem? What's the solution? And then on top of that you have to go what's your strategy to bring the solution to the problem? What are the logistics? What are the resources that you need? People who give money to causes they really have to sell them on the fact that you are going to change the world in some small way, at least that's in the nonprofit world. In the for profit world, then you have to prove to them, hey, you can make your money back on this investment. For us, we say, yeah, you're not making money back on us, but you should feel really good about what you're doing to change the lives of children. [00:27:06] Tommy Thomas: What's the best piece of advice anybody ever gave you? [00:27:11] Terry Esau: One thing I would say is persistence is greater than talent. There are a lot of talented people in the world who don't accomplish anything. And there are a lot of people who are marginally talented who accomplish great things because they just don't give up. Here's something my dad said to me when he was on his deathbed at 92. He pointed to himself, and he goes, Terry, up here, I'm 92. And then he pointed at his head, and he goes, in here, I'm 17. And I think that was true of my dad. Some people get old and they go, I've got nothing to offer. They get grumpy and they get ornery and, get off my lawn. I think what my dad was saying is, if you want to stay young, first of all you can stay young mentally. You can't do that physically, but you can stay young mentally. And I think you do that primarily by staying a curious person. Curious people continue to learn all the way through their life into their old age. So I think in some way, my dad was saying, don't settle, stay curious. Because life is too interesting to just go into autopilot mode, keep seeking for the adventure of life, keep learning, keep growing. My dad never said those words, but I think in some sort of way, I think that's what he was saying. [00:29:02] Tommy Thomas: If you could go back in time and tell a younger version of yourself one thing, what would you tell? [00:29:08] Terry Esau: Oh, what would I tell myself?  I think I would say don't be afraid of failing. Failure is not the worst thing that can happen to you. It's not trying is the worst thing. I don't think I was ever too afraid of failing. But I think I worried a little bit more when I was younger. What do people think of us? Or if I do this, what will people think? That's one of the great beauties of getting older. I don't really care that much anymore. This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what I think, this is how I'm choosing to live my life. You can disagree with it, and you have every right to, and I won't judge you for it, but I'm not going to let your view of me change what I think or how I choose to live my life and I think our culture has a lot of that going on, with social media and stuff, it's the comparison thing, yeah. I think comparison is not a very useful concept, because everybody compares up, nobody compares down. Like, I've talked to my family about this a few times. Look at so and so, they just went on this vacation, and they just bought this or they bought that and go, yeah, you're comparing up. Now let's compare down. We have so much more than so many other people. So I think in America, maybe it's part of a characteristic of capitalism. You have to have more and you have to have better. And so we always compare up. And I think if we compared down a little bit more often, we would have more gratitude, we would be more grateful for what it is that we do have. We don't have as much as that guy who's the CEO of some Fortune 500 company, but we live better than most of the people in the world, right? [00:31:23] Tommy Thomas: I want to thank Terry for taking time to be with us from what is obviously a very busy schedule. John Somerville, who was our guest for episodes 109 and 110 suggested Terry as a guest. I had no idea of the treat we were in for. Thank you for joining us today. If you are a first-time listener, I hope you will subscribe and become a regular. You can find links to all the episodes at our website: www.jobfitmatters.com/podcast. If there are topics you'd like for me to explore my email address is tthomas@jobfitmatters.com.   Word of mouth has been identified as the most valuable form of marketing. Surveys tell us that consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all other forms of advertising. If you've heard something today that's worth passing on, please share it with others. You're already helping me make something special for the next generation of nonprofit leaders. I'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, stay the course on our journey to help make the nonprofit sector more effective and sustainable. Links & Resources JobfitMatters Website Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas The Perfect Search – What every board needs to know about hiring their next CEO Be the Surprise – Spontaneous Elements of Faith Blue Collar God / White Collar God Free Bikes for Kidz  Free Guitars for Kids TEDx Talks - Harnessing the power of restlessness | Terry Esau | TEDxMinneapolis   Connect tthomas@jobfitmatters.com Follow Tommy on LinkedIn  

Episode 141: Hanging out at the Mall was every kid's dream weekend in the '80s and 90's. Going to the food court, window shopping at KB Toys, trying to figure out what Sam Goody sold, eating pretzels or playing arcade games. There was no better place to hang out than the Mall. Bonus Tip:  What is your favorite dipping sauce for a hot pretzel? Thank you for listening and taking this journey with us. Please follow us on social media for great Top Dad tips, tricks, jokes, and hacks. TopDadpod.comWant to help the show?The best way to help the Top Dad podcast is to share our podcasting gold with your friends and family or consider leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and following us on Spotify.Listen to Top Dad for free wherever you listen to podcasts or go to TopDadpod.com for all our socials and contact information.  

The media commentary on hip-hop's decline is stronger than ever. Especially since it took six months for a rap album to top the Billboard 200 in 2023, and no rap song has topped the Hot 100 yet..Is hip-hop slipping? Or is there more to this story? is slipping or others are merely catching up?To break it all down, I'm joined by The Wall Street Journal's Neil Shah, who has written about this extensively. 0:40 Our take on hip-hop's “decline”4:51 Upcoming albums that may top the charts8:48 How Billboard charts work17:40 Hip-hop over indexed when streaming took off18:30 Was hip-hop held back in the past?20:26 Implications of chart performance22:55 Gaming the system with album bundles 32:49 Are album equivalent units the best way to measure success?35:13 Hip Hop's market share in 5 years45:16 Music recycling IP vs. developing new oneListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Neil Shah, @NeilShahWSJThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmEnjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapitalTrapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital's free memo.TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Neil Shah: While it looks like hip hop is suffering a little bit right now, or in this cooling period, maybe it's tentacles have stretched out So much, it's influences so total that it's actually become the bedrock of a lot of pop music. [00:00:12] Dan Runcie Intro Audio: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:40] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: This episode is about the state of hip hop, which has been quite the topic over the past year. So it was right around this time in 2022, when we started to see articles and stories and reports pop up about hip hop's decline in market share. This is specifically looking at the US listening consumption over time for hip hop artists that were producing tracks.And after a record number of years of growth in hip hop is eventually becoming the most listened to genre of music in the 2010s. We started to see that growth slow down relative to other genres. And there's a number of reasons for this, a number of reasons that are unfair, a number of reasons that require a little bit more digging into and to break it all down.I was joined by Neil Shah from the wall street journal. He's written about this himself. Him and I've talked about this both on and offline, and we decided to bring it together to talk about all the various factors. What does this mean for the music industry? What does it mean for the artist in the industry in terms of the budgets that they get?And is this even fair when we think about all of the factors in place with regards to streaming, where audiences grow, whether hip hop artists and their fans are more likely to be early adopters versus other genres, some of the rules that Billboard and other entities make that influence how these charts get factored in vinyl and a whole lot more. So let's dive into the state of hip hop.[00:02:05] Dan Runcie: All right. We're back for another episode this time. Neil Shah from the wall street journal makes his return. Welcome back.[00:02:11] Neil Shah: Thanks for having me.[00:02:12] Dan Runcie: And today we're going to talk about a topic. Both you and I have written about, thought about and has come to a head this past year. And that's the state of hip hop and where it lies relative to other genres right now.I'm sure many of you have seen the stats dating back as early as last year. When many outlets really started to talk more about hip hop's market share of its overall listening relative to other genres, which genres are growing at faster rates than others, which are declining. And now we're in this place in 2023.We're still as of the end of June, almost six months through the year, not one rap album has topped the Billboard top 200. And I'm pretty sure that no rap song has topped the Billboard hot 100 either. So Neil, what do you make of all of this?[00:03:04] Neil Shah: It's pretty striking that rap has not topped either of these charts, the Hot 100 or the Billboard 200. To put it into some context, in 2019, 17 rap albums Hit number one on the Billboard 200. 17. In 2020, another 17 did. basically last year, we started to see a slowdown on this front where there were fewer number one hits on these two charts in rap and hip hop and R& and then now this year, we have this striking reality that rap has been absent in this way, which I believe it, we haven't seen something like this. Since about 1993. So yeah, think it's generating lots of discussion and varied opinions. Hip hop has long had ups and downs, you know, in the 21st century, there are plenty of lulls, there are plenty of hot periods, and we could be in another lull. But my gut sense at the end of the day is that this does constitute a fairly significant slowing compared to how hot this genre was running, I mean, just a few years ago. I think it's a marked slowdown. And while one can quibble with the fact of not having a number one, because that can easily change, you know what I mean?Like as soon as Travis Scott puts out Utopia, as soon as Drake puts out For All the Dogs, the picture can change slightly. But even all that quibbling aside, I do feel like it's pretty striking that there is a slowdown.[00:04:51] Dan Runcie: Right, and that's a good point, because we could look at the more specific pieces of it. And yeah, if J. Cole, if Travis Scott dropped Utopia, if any of these things happen in the spring, we may not be having the same conversation from a top headline. Oh, let's react to this thing. But even like you said, you named 17 albums from a couple of years ago.So we're talking one every three weeks, essentially that hit that target, if not more, and we're now 24 weeks into the year and we haven't had any. So there's still a pretty big shift, even if you account for the superstar releases. And if we're looking at the artists that are planning to release albums this year, I was looking through at some of the artists that have.Big albums coming out, and these are the only ones that I thought are certified locks to hit number 1 on the billboard. You have Drake's new album, as you mentioned, Travis Scott's Utopia, J. Cole's The Fall Off, if he drops it this year, Lil Wayne, I think there's another Carter coming, Lil Uzi Vert, who I believe is dropping pretty soon, so he could potentially be the 1st, and then after that, And I hate to say this, but maybe Cardi B.I still think that she's pretty strong, but we'll see it. I say maybe more. So we'll see if she drops an album. And I say maybe to Nicki Minaj too, while I have a bit more confidence in her dropping an album, her last album went number two, second to Travis Scott back in 2018, but it's also been a long time.And some of the other artists who are a few more fan favorites, like Pusha T or A$AP Rocky Rick Ross, even Chance the rapper. Great artist. But it's been a while since any of those artists, if ever have topped the billboard. 200 for album charts. I know Ross and others have in the past, but, so there's a lot of fragmentation.There were, there's still are artists have a shot, beloved albums, but they're not reaching this particular milestone of how people view mainstream success.Yeah, the [00:06:46] Neil Shah: question of who's a lock for number one in the rap community has gotten a little bit more complicated than maybe a few years ago. Some of these people may not be a lock. [00:06:58] Dan Runcie: Do you think anyone I named isn't a lock.[00:07:00] Neil Shah: Drake is obviously a lock. Travis, I would think would be a lock. Vert comes out on Friday, that's a pretty large artist and a highly anticipated album, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm not entirely sure that that would be number one. I'm not sure about Nikki. I would think Cardi, who I believe has been having 2023 in the frame, I would think that Cardi B would be number one.It's just a little bit more complicated than especially with projects from the likes of Pusha T and whatnot. Yeah, there's definitely not a guarantee that even these stars and superstars will perform the way they did. Of course, that's up to the vicissitudes of do they have a hot single or not?How much mindshare are they capturing, you know, these things change from year to year. All things considered, it does feel like, you know, things. I'd be worried about the downside of people being a little bit weaker. We just had Gunna, for example. Gunna, you know, came out with an album. It's been doing pretty well.his mentor Young Thug actually also just released an album. There's a new Metro Boomin version of it that I think came out today or yesterday. But look Gunna back in 2022, last year, hit number one. [00:08:19] Dan Runcie: Outsold the Weeknd [00:08:20] Neil Shah: and what happened this year with this album they're gonna just put out, it hit number three. And even more than that, just the EAU unit figure, the equivalent album units, 85K, 85, 000 is decent, but not the strongest showing. So, I think there is a question about when these stars come back, just how well will they do as the surrounding environment for them is, creating what we're talking about,[00:08:48] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think there's a few factors here, and I do want to call them out. Billboard, who does reflect the charts, they released a article, 5 Reasons Why a rap album has yet to top the charts and there are 5 reasons are I'll read them here. The 1st is a lack of stars essentially in a fragments in a fragmented landscape.There's so many artists that don't necessarily need mainstream success that billboard relied on. And I think that could be true to an extent. You have their 2nd, 1 here, which is growth for hip hop itself is only up 6. 3% compared to country and Latin, which are growing much faster. I have some thoughts on that, but that was their 2nd point.They made the 3rd, which is related to Gunna here. They talked about guns, violence, drug abuse and courtroom legal battles as well that have slowed down or halted the production of many promising stars. Whether you look at XXXTentacion, Juice WRLD, Pop Smoke, and then you look at Gunna and Thug and others that have been battling legal challenges as well.The fourth one they mentioned is just stagnation. At the charts, which I think may be a bigger thing where if you look at the charts this year, at least for the billboard 200, it's been SZA, it's been Morgan Wallen and a little bit of Miley Cyrus. And that's pretty much been it for most of the year. So it's not even the way that it was in the pre pandemic years where every week there was a new album that seemed to have its glory moment.It's the same artists that are staying at the top. And in some ways, it almost feels a little bit like a throwback to days before streaming when we saw a little bit more stagnation there. And then their 5th reason is not enough dance music because they talked about albums like Renaissance or Drake's Honestly, Nevermind, Dua Lipa and Future Nostalgia and how they feel like post pandemic people want to get out there and how a lot of hip hop music has been a much more slow chill, especially in the streaming era.And I think that each of those are valid points, but I think there's a few other things that weren't mentioned in billboards article that they themselves as the entity that decides these things has a big influence. We mentioned several of those Pre pandemic years. 1 of the biggest things is how billboard itself. Change the rules and album bundles is a big thing. Ironically, they're actually going to be coming back with album bundles in a few months, but this was their way to be able to help preserve the sale of the album and have artists combine their album with a merch item, whether it's a T shirt or some other type of item.But like anything, people started to game the system and people felt like it wasn't necessarily about album sales. It was more about people trying to sell these items. And I think we saw that most to extreme degree with what Travis Scott did with Astroworld, where he literally had an e commerce machine that was running, in perpetuity to help make sure that album almost doubled in its expectations of what people thought we just hadn't seen that much of a outpaced growth, but he saw the way the system was and we'd into it.So I think that's one thing. That's a big factor, a second thing that I look at is just what we consider hip hop on these charts, because of course, billboard itself is it's reporting things based on us listenership. But we know that Latin music is very popular as well. Just considering how well bad bunny did on the charts.But as you and I've talked about, bad bunny is labeled as Latin. He's not labeled as the actual genre that he performs. He's more categorized based on the region he's from. And for all intents and purposes, he considers himself a rapper. He considers himself a hip hop artist. So if hip hop was given some of that region agnostic glory that pop music or others get, maybe we would see, maybe we would even be having this conversation and we think about the global aspect of it.So those are two things. There's a few more, but I wanted to get your thoughts on those.[00:12:44] Neil Shah: Yeah. So let's start with that last one, what if hip hop is suffering from its own success, hip hop has had booms. For decades now, but what we saw in this back half of the 2010s was something fairly special and now we're at this juncture right now and so it just raises the question of like it looks like we're in a cooling period for hip hop, but hip hop is It's tentacles are reaching into, I mean, almost all of the other genres that are capturing the imagination of music fans right now.I mean, often Morgan Wall in the country star sings with rap like cadences. one reason why [00:13:25] Dan Runcie: Hip hop sounding beats too.[00:13:27] Neil Shah: Yeah, even the tracks hip hop. Some of the bedrock, some of the sonic structures of Morgan Wallen's music are inherently, deeply hip hop. One reason why BTS and a new crop of Kpop stars have thrived so much, especially in the U.S., is their hip hop fluid. You can go down the list. I mean, the regional Mexican music craze that's going on right now. there's a ton of hip hop there, reggaeton, Afro beats. and then of course, Latin music and figures like Bad Bunny, Who's rapping and due to billboard nomenclature is categorized as a Latin artist, so one could look at the phenomenon differently and think, actually, while it looks like hip hop is suffering a little bit right now, or in this cooling period, maybe it's tentacles have stretched out So much, it's influences so total that it's actually become the bedrock of a lot of pop music. And then while rap stars are not thriving the way they did, say, between 2016 and 2019, in particular, because that's the period we're coming down off of, one could argue that it's. In all of these other places.And in fact, in this age of, hip hopping everywhere, of everyone sing rapping, essentially the boundaries between quote unquote core hip hop, what Billboard would categorize as hip hop for the purpose of the charts, and a lot of these other genres is getting very fuzzy. So, one party could look at the phenomenon before us and think, weakness, in hip hop, another way of looking at it would be an increased fuzziness between hip hop and these neighboring genres. And so that that could be, that could be a major factor here. and yet at the same time, you know, something I think about a lot. what is the right way to think about this? And I'm really of 2 minds, like, I'm kind of in a conflicted space where on 1 hand, I don't know whether hip hop's influence is what we're watching is this kind of dominance on a new level, hip hop being a victim of its own success and essentially being everywhere or whether, you know, there really is some kind of transitional period afoot, you know, 1 thing to keep in mind is just how hot the 2010s and it particularly the back half was just think about how much era defining music was made in this period, incorporating R&B to Beyonce, Rihanna, Kanye West. The hubbub over Life of pablo, Drake views, you know, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar.I'm just talking about the top level. We're not even talking about the medium tier of excellent rappers and R&B stars beneath that Childish Gambino. There was a lot going on during this period. And so, despite, some of the other factors that we're talking about and that we'll talk about, I feel like that's what you gotta compare it to.And so, to my mind, and I'm getting to actually a 2nd point in the billboard article. it does feel like we're help where we've come from a unipolar hip hop dominated universe using the strictest definition of hip hop to something. That's more multipolar and really. That can be a function of time and development, i.e. hip hop's success. Another good point that I think the Billboard article raised was just, you know, as a genre becomes so dominant, how much room is left? Once you're king of the mountain, how much growth is there left in the shoe? I mean, mathematically, your growth is going to, slow down. I come across this when I think about vinyl sales, you know, for years now, vinyl has been hot, but naturally, mathematically, as your base gets bigger, and we're talking about lots and lots of sales, your growth rates slow down.So, like, this is just kind of an analogy, but as hip hop gets so dominant, there's something natural about not just a genre having slower periods in a cyclical fashion, which is a slightly separate thing, but there's also something natural about the genre at this point actually just I'm losing some steam for purely mathematical reasons.[00:17:40] Dan Runcie: I'm glad you mentioned the back half of the last decade as being a high point for hip hop, because here's some important stats that influence this. Right in the middle of the 2010s is when we saw this shift is when streaming started to take off. Apple Music launches Spotify really kicks into gear. Of course, they launched in the US in 2011, but things really came into focus in 2014 and then in November, 2014.That's when the billboard 200 starts counting streams and they've altered the formula a little bit, but it's roughly been the same where it's been anywhere from around 1, 250 to 1, 500 or even more if it's a free ad supported stream. But that's when they started counting streams at that particular point, Spotify had 15 million paid users and 60 million overall.And then, four years later by 2018, they have 96 million paid users. And so if we go back to that point, so this is obviously when Travis Scott was releasing Astroworld, when Drake released God's Plan, as you mentioned, all these hip hop albums are doing extremely well, but there was a large. Index on hip hop fans.And as we've seen when technology and time again, hip hop fans as a genre do tend to over index and their early adopters with new technology. We saw that with Spotify and the various streaming services, especially where their user base was. And you also saw that as well with social media with Twitter and places like that.Where were the genres that people were talking about most on these platforms? It was hip hop. So there was this run of hip hop getting this lead. That other genres didn't have him because it over indexed early. You saw this outsized performance, especially as record sales, traditional, pure album sales started to dip a bit, but since then, you're now looking in this post quarantine phase and Spotify's growth is, paid subscriber amount is more than doubled since 2018, it's now over 200 million paid subscribers. And most of that growth came less from hip hop fans, but more from everyone else. So as we look and see the growth of whether it's Latin music, music in Africa, music in Asia, even country music within the US, you're looking at the growth of Spotify and the growth of all these streaming services and how that impacts charts and performance.So even though hip hop listening is still growing. In the way that we've seen it record labels in the industry often do report things as a zero sum game in a lot of ways. So because of that, even though the growth is slowing down, it's still growing. It's just not growing as fast as these other genres that are now having their late 2000 late 2010s hip hop moment[00:20:26] Neil Shah: Totally would. so yeah, when I looked into this topic last fall. Basically, fall was upon us in 2022, and it looked like hip hop's chart performance was relatively weak, so I wanted to look into this topic at that point. One of the interviews I did was actually with the head of the data tracker, Luminate, and this is definitely one thing that they noted, which is hip hop fans.This is an important point, hip hop fans, were early adopters for streaming. So they over indexed and kind of led the way during an earlier stage of streaming adoption in precisely in the middle of the 2010s. And so, yes, you're right that you're, seeing, a shift here as the base of the streaming universe essentially becomes more varied. And especially during the pandemic, we saw these significant jumps with country and Latin music, partly that's a Morgan Wall in effect. Partly the Latin music numbers are juiced by Bad Bunny, these gargantuan artists in terms of their numbers, but it's a broader phenomenon of these genres. And their fans being a bigger part of the streaming pie and as a result, partly because of that hip hop share of streaming, not overall music consumption, but hip hop market share of us streaming is yes, like period after period, year after year is dipping as we now have a, actually a fuller picture. A more varied streaming audience.so that's definitely a major factor and it's you know, part of why country and Latin music in particular have gotten the lifted that they've got of late. One thing to keep in mind throughout all of this is that while we're talking about, hip hop slowing, at least according to these chart metrics and streaming market shares and whatnot, it's always worth mentioning or noting that it's market share still outstrips these other genres by a wide margin, not just Latin and country, which, you know, Latin's numbers in the billboard math are, have always been weirdly low, frankly. They seem lower than they should be, but they're fairly low. I mean, we're talking like, right? Six, seven, eight percent, just neighborhood ballpark in terms of market share of U. S. consumption compared to hip hop, which is still outpacing.[00:22:46] Dan Runcie: In the high 20s, Yeah.[00:22:48] Neil Shah: Right. So it's just worth keeping in mind how much of a distance there still is between hip hop and some of these other genres.[00:22:56] Dan Runcie: And this dynamic as well made me think about other times, even before streaming where distribution and means have impacted which genres were more popular. And in a lot of ways, I've often thought that streaming's ability to lower the entry barriers and to eliminate the gatekeepers, not completely eliminate, but to lessen their power is what enabled hip hop artists and artists from other genres to realize their power.And it made me think back to times in the CD era. And I remember growing up when we think about the peak of the CD era, this is something I still remember to this day. Cause I was in school at the time. I think about three albums that came out right around the same time. You have two hip hop albums. So you have DMX is, and then there was X this December, 1999.And then a couple months later you have NSYNC. They have their no strings attached album, which was still up until Adele's album was the highest first week sale. I think it was just under 3 million. I used to the US and then a couple months after that, you have Eminem drops, Marshall Mathers LP, and roughly from a high level, I believe that NSYNC, as I mentioned to just under 3 million in its first week.Marshall Mathers LP did just under 2 and DMX did a few hundred thousand under 1 million. And just calling those 3, 2, 1 from that perspective, all those artists are pretty big. I don't know if I buy that Eminem was that much less popular than NSYNC at the time, but I think part of the reason was, A, you had these parental advisory stickers on them, which essentially acted like a rated R thing where, okay, it's making you pause when you go to the register.And too, because I was in school. I remember parents of NSYNC fans that were taking their kids out of school to go line up on Tuesday to go to Sam Goody or Strawberries, wherever, buy the album, and then come back in time for C period to start, right? That didn't happen with the parents of Eminem fans, and that did not happen with the parents of DMX fans.So all of these things that may seem like natural commerce are structural things in play when we think back about that, and even to just how the nineties were in general with. Time Warner and all these big companies and the government and the Clinton administration trying to come down on hip hop. We finally now saw it reach its potential.And now when things are starting to dip, everyone now wants to pull it back.[00:25:17] Neil Shah: Totally. So, like, even as late as the late 90s and the early 2000s, there's this cultural penalty on hip hop music that is kind of artificially suppressing sales. I mean, you still see this in the live music industry to this day, whether it's festivals like Rolling Loud or New York City music venues where rappers often have a tougher time. It's a little harder to put on an arena rap show. It's unfortunate, but partly it's because the insurance rates are higher and it's more costly to put on the show. Why is that? So even to this day, whether on the business side or culturally, there are things that can affect sales, and in streams and whatnot, you're mentioning kind of the, you know, the late 90s, I think back to the early 90s, in a way, the way in which hip hop over indexed, or kind of was buoyed by technology in the form of streaming in the middle of the 2010s, it was like a revenge for 1991 and what obtained in the prior years when rap albums were very popular and were actually selling briskly, but they were underreported along with country also too, they were actually underreported in the pre digitized sound scan era. So there again, you moved from a period when for these cultural or business factors, one genre was kind of artificially held lower, and other genres look like they were, dominating the mindshare of the country.But then lo and behold, we entered the period of SoundScan and suddenly the whole country is listening to NWA, who knew? And so it's always seemed to me like while hip hop may have over indexed in like, you know, 2015 and 2018, it was kind of like almost like payback for 1989 or whatever, but yeah, so like these shifts, you got to take with a grain of salt because, you know, they're constructed a billboard and the industry does the best it can.And it's constantly retooling, how it approaches things. You noted earlier the shifting position on album bundles. It's interesting that they're allowing it back this summer, but now with safeguards, so you don't pull a Travis Scott, presumably. So, you know, it's a work in progress, always, all of these metrics.So you, when you're thinking about these debates or discussions, you do need to take it with a grain of salt. The average person on the street, maybe a rap fan, maybe a rock fan, maybe a post genre music fan. They may not care about the ins and outs of genres going up and down. Journalists may care about it and obviously people in the music industry do. but you know. It is relevant to the business, because it does affect how the business operates and what I mean by that is, you know, at record labels, your job is basically to, sign acts and pursue the hot thing and make money and some, so some of these cultural discussions about how genres are doing definitely have an impact on how the business operates and at the end of the day, the way, you know, the way the music that we hear now, I think of, you know, in earlier periods when hip hop experienced a lull, I don't think this will happen this time, but in earlier periods when hip hop experienced a lull, you know, the boy band era that you mentioned, I think, like around NSYNC and around Britney Spears time, you did see the slight lull in urban music have an impact on A&R budgets. There was a very much a shifting wind in terms of like, you know, money in some cases withdrawn from, like urban A&R budgets and, diverted elsewhere. you know, much like any business does, like diverting resources to where things feel like they're hotter. So my point being, some of these discussions, while the average music fan, may not care as much, they have real world implications.[00:29:16] Dan Runcie: That's the part that frustrates me because a lot of this, as you mentioned, it's chatter for us, we're in this space. We talk to the people, or if you're someone that's a super fan on Twitter, you're Reddit as well. They're probably active, but they have huge. Implications I can't help, but to think about how many of the decisions that are being made about.Which artists to give a particular budget to how much to spend on their music videos, how much to do on all these things. A&R, as you mentioned, they may see some type of cutbacks, some type of impact there. And the other piece of this, that's a bit frustrating is that in lieu of album bundles and bundling with merchandise, which is something that a hip hop, a lot of hip hop artists lead into what we saw on the flip side was artists then combining it with or not even combining, but selling physical albums like vinyl and all the boom that we've seen there. The challenge with vinyl though, is that there has been a limited supply, given the supplies train, the supply chain constraints and some of the materials there. So the record labels do have discretion over who gets allocation for the limited vinyl supply they have and who doesn't and that then creates much more decision making and much more King making essentially on who gets to have the full allotment.And when we see artists, whether it's Harry Styles or Taylor Swift, get all of the. Allotment that's there and you see other artists, whether it's a title, the creator, even a Beyonce that are waiting several weeks, sometimes even months to get theirs. And these are superstar artists in their own right.That are still waiting for it. And when you think deeper about it, half of the people that buy vinyl don't even listen to it. So what is it really? Is it a merch item or is it actually an album[00:31:07] Neil Shah: totally. It's a great example of a Intra business, real world implication of some of these discussions, a record label having to determine. Okay, we got relationships with X, Y, and Z plants in Nashville and in the Czech Republic and, this is the space we got, which artists are we going to prioritize?It matters, I mean, they're making these decisions and it can help certain artists and hurt others. And then if they don't have their physical ready while they're putting out their album, effectively, whoever doesn't have their physical ducks in a row is effectively penalized in terms of their chart placement.So it's very real. one thing that's been going on, You know, we may get on Travis Scott and, his ilk's case for gaming the system with these bundles in that. Earlier micro era, but, you know, 1 thing that's been going on with the pop stars and especially with the K pop stars are all these collectible, collectible CDs and whatnot, which definitely are giving placement to these artists, especially in K pop that they wouldn't otherwise have.So, in this era, when billboard got rid of those bundles, you're seeing, you know, something different going on with Kpop. It basically dominating the charts, or at least the top 10, using all these collectible CDs that then basically drop off. If you look carefully at the streaming numbers for a lot of the K pop artists that hit number 2, number 3, or number 1, the streaming numbers are not very strong.I mean, The lion's share, almost the entire consumption is these collectible CDs, which are, actually de facto merch. So, you got another phenomenon, very similar to rap's phenomenon, where de facto merch is just gaming the charts.[00:32:49] Dan Runcie: We're going to continue to see this, but I am very interested to see how this year's changes will impact things because even if you look at. I don't even think it was Travis Scott's thing that brought it to a head. I'm sure that was in the back of people's minds, but I think it was right after DJ Khaled dropped his album the same day as Tyler the Creator dropped, the album that had earthquake on it, Igor, that's the name of it. We started to see more of it there because obviously Khaled got penalized for energy drinks or whatever he had tried to bundle his albums with, but at the end of the day, they want to bundle it with things that aren't restricted in the same way that others did. So even though in the moment, it was definitely an eye roll type of thing.Now, I'm like, okay, at least there was some type of control and autonomy there that the artists did have. But so much of this preservation of figuring out and having the powers that be tweak and determine the right Metric for album equivalent units, and then even the whole thought about how you have to listen to a song 1250 times on a paid streaming service for that to count as 1 full album sale. You can't even listen to a full album at once a day to then count as that. If you were to do the math there.Right.It really makes you think about the real dynamics at play, because we know for years that the major record labels themselves have wanted to preserve the aspect of an album. And a lot of it does seem like it's this another aspect of this underlying tug of war between them and the DSPs, the streaming services that do want to report on streams and do use that as the primary benchmark of success.And now we're backing into this album equivalent unit metric that has now become normalized that we would never do in any other industry where it's not like Netflix is trying to show DVD equivalent units as a metric of success.[00:34:42] Neil Shah: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, Billboard is continually trying to get these things right. But, you know, it is, that is precisely what the pop stars and the Kpop stars are taking advantage of the fact that the physical albums, have much greater weight than the streams, which right there just, privileges certain genres then hurts, others, you know, like physical sales are not what in hip hop or not, but they are another genre. So, I'm sure they see it as a work in progress to kind of get these things right.[00:35:13] Dan Runcie: Right, and I do acknowledge the work there in many ways. It is a very difficult task. You have a number of competing factors. You're trying to make essentially an advanced metric become the industry standard. And it is going to be an evolving conversation and likely will look different as streaming services continue to gain traction as you mentioned, if we do see a vinyl slowdown at some point, how that may shift things and there will be this continual movement here.Where do you think things are in five years from now, specifically with hip hop? Do you think that the market share continues to slide? Do you think that another genre does become number one?[00:35:50] Neil Shah: That's a great question, it feels like we're in a transitional period right now where lots of genres are thriving at the same time. People talk about music being post genre so much that it's almost become a cliché to, you know, for publicity materials to describe an artist as being genre less, kind of elicits eye rolls at this point.Every artist is post genre at that point. It actually would be more striking if artists stuck to genres, ala Beyonce with her dance music album, which I thought took the opposite road of, focusing on the genre, which was actually refreshing. but so we're in a transitional moment. and so, I mean, the short answer to your question is that it's hard to see where this goes in five years.But, you know, I would imagine that some of the cooling off of hip hop does level off and then maybe we're in a period for a while where, what currently obtains kind of sticks around. I mean, it's entirely possible that the 2000, the rest of the 2000. Twenties could be kind of a transitional, confusing period, barring some, culture shifting huge superstar in one of the genres that somehow changes everything, even in our highly fragmented music landscape. Typically some of the engines for different types of musics going up or down have relied on huge stars changing the game. Whether it's hip hop, you know, hip hop had certain weaknesses in the early 2000s. And, for example, Kanye West, helped revive rap also broadened its audience, broadened rap's audience in a very significant way. Something that Drake then, continued effectively soccer mom-izing hip hop, you know, like anyone can listen to one dance. I mean, it's not even rap, as an example, and increasingly rappers were singing. So, in the past, when genres have had lulls and then come back to life, it's usually been on the back of these pivotal stars.Well, the reason why it's so hard to really project, like, what we're going to do and what things are going to look like in five years is because music, as you know, like, we're losing the ability for such stars. Even if they're very big to really shift the culture, Morgan Wallen is a massively big star right now and yet much of the country, you know, doesn't listen to Morgan Wallen, you know, doesn't like him for various reasons, et cetera, you know, NBA Young Boy is a massively big artist, especially on YouTube.And yet, most people are not familiar with him. I mean, to give you a better example, even when an artist like Cardi B or Ice Spice has huge hits that, you know, hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, much of the country does not know that song the way they may have known, You know, a Cyndi Lauper song in another era or an Adele song.So we're in an environment where increasingly, it's so fragmented that it's hard for stars to really dominate in the way that they used to. And so that may also affect whether we see Kurt Cobain like shifts where, you know, where everything changes and then we recognize, Oh, the landscape is different.There's plenty going on in hip hop, whether commercially, you know, an act like Suicide Boys is doing great on the live music circuit. They get almost no media attention, but, in terms of the live music circuit, they can sell concert tickets. there's plenty going on also from a, critically acclaimed point of view, you know, artists like DoJi, you know, are making waves. It's not that like, you know, Youngboy's doing this thing. We've had work from like Lil Durk. I mean, Metro Boomin is having a great year. Ice Spice has been an exception in terms of being a big breakout star, there's plenty of stuff happening, but it's really rare for that stuff to really dominate, you saw, you know, these two examples are kind of related, but two moments that have been kind of monocultural with the capacity to shift things is obviously like Taylor Swift in this Era's tour, which is something that a lot of people talk about.And then, of course, her getting a platform to ice spice, which was just very interesting and exciting because, wow, this is the biggest platform and it's being given to ice spice. What will happen? Will Ice Spice be able to develop into the kind of star that could, carry on Poppa Smoke's legacy in a different way and indeed populize Drill or will Drill and a lot of these, you know, vibrant rap stars that are on kind of a lower level, will they kind of stay there in this more, in this fragmented kind of multicolored, universe? I think that's like a key question, you know, even Taylor Swift, not to go into Taylor Swift tangent, but, you know, there's been debate, there's been discussion of like, oh, we do have monoculture.There's Taylor Swift, even Taylor Swift only captures a certain part of the American audience. I mean, if you go to a Taylor Swift show, you know, it's not that racially diverse. I'm just putting it like that. not a Wwift hater. I'm just pointing out the fact, you know, so, it's tough to have the monocultural forces that one used to have to create these ships.[00:41:01] Dan Runcie: Right, because I know you mentioned the points earlier about whether or not most people are really hearing Morgan Wallen or they're really hearing NBA Young Boy. And part of that probably applies to these generational superstars to even just with where they are now. You compare a song like Taylor Swift for the antihero compared to Cyndi Lauper time after time or any of these other songs that they did, it probably is less mind share there, but the other point you mentioned, there still are these little moments and these other things that happen that are still noteworthy, even if they're not the big thing.I think that the big thing, whether that's having this huge album that sells 1, 000, 000 in its 1st week or 500, 000 units in its 1st week, given the way that media is going, I still think that is something that does become more and more subject to this power law dynamic, to some extent, where I do think it's still even five years from now will probably be very difficult for an artist not named Drake to be able to bet money and say, yes, oh yeah. That artist will could sell over 500, 000 in the first week. Even Drake hasn't necessarily a hundred percent done that. I mean, he did it with certified lover boy most recently, but, the other two albums he had before this, the joint one with 21 Savage or the honestly, nevermind he did it. So, but he still was able to at least top the charts there.So I do think that. We'll still see success. We'll still see these moments, but almost in the same way that in Hollywood, where I think it's probably pretty unlikely at this point that there's going to be a billion dollar grossing movie. And it's like, Oh, wow, Huh, that's an original story or original concept.Never heard of that one. It's almost always sequel or based on some type of existing IP. And in many ways, Taylor, Drake, Beyonce, Adele are the closest thing you have to existing contemporary IP and music. These are the biggest bets you have, and you do have a few acts here or there that have definitely come into their own SZA's SOS album has clearly done extremely well. It's been great to see her continue to break. Strides and do, and I think there's plenty of stats that show just with the performance of control over the years that there's a lot that is indicating there, but still, even with where SZA is now, there's still a gap between the other artists I mentioned.So, there's levels to this for sure. We'll see growth there, but I still think that we're going to see the most continued bets and the more the budgets as well go towards the Drake's and the Taylor's because that's where the safest bet is for the money spent.[00:43:32] Neil Shah: So it would be fascinating if this period remains more confusing than it usually would and more transitional, partly because ala Hollywood. We, as a culture, rely on this safe, riskless IP instead of, doing the artist development to really help some artists, you know, achieve, get to that next level, you know, it's striking, these artists you're mentioning, Taylor, Drake, they come from a different era. They come from an era that was of the fulcrum, not even the fulcrum, they proceed the streaming era. and they benefited from the branding power of an industry that has changed, dramatically and they remain right now are, you know, some of our biggest stars and it doesn't feel like a hangover yet.These artists are still doing respected work. Drake's numbers are weakening substantially album by album, but, yeah, it will be interesting if, as you're noting, we kind of rely on these folks IP, like, you know, maybe Drake should rerecord all of it. Maybe I wouldn't mind it if Drake rerecorded Take Care For No Reason.Maybe it's so hard to make another Take Care, another masterpiece. Maybe he should just re record it. The point being, some of these stars could linger with us longer than they would because of this effect where, in such an industry that's so fragmented, these are the riskless parties to do business with, whether you're a record label, whether you're a concert promoter, this is where the safety and money is at.And so they could have a longer, you know, there's a perennial question about when Drake will fall off, but maybe some of these artists won't fall off, in this next stretch, but stay in this weaker state as, you know, this other stuff continues to bubble,[00:45:16] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's almost in the same way where Tom Cruise is now in his 60s. I don't see him stopping Mission Impossible anytime soon. As serious as he's been doing since he was in his early 30s. Denzel's about to drop the Equalizer 3. The man turned 70 next year.[00:45:31] Neil Shah: Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford. [00:45:33] Dan Runcie: Yeah, he's 80.[00:45:35] Neil Shah: So, this can be bemoaned. people bemoan this in the Hollywood context, the recycling of IP instead of the development of new stuff. but it's an open question. You just, you never know, you know, there's plenty of vibrant rap being made.There's an entire rage movement that Playboi Carti and other artists have helped inspire, you know, there's just like Ice Spice to my mind follows a little bit. Sonically in the heels of pop spoken certain ways. There are inheritors of the SoundCloud rap era that sadly waned with the passing of, you know, stars like X and Juice WRLD and whatnot.There's stuff going on. You just, you never know, like, music business is a hard one to predict. You can't even predict that confusion will reign because, you know, it's a topsy turvy business and things change.[00:46:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. Well, Neil, this was fun. before we close things out, anything you want to plug or let the audience know that you're working on?[00:46:34] Neil Shah: No, I don't think so. Anything you suggest, I don't think there's anything I'd want to plug.[00:46:38] Dan Runcie: Okay. Well, we'll make sure that we link to your most recent Taylor Swift piece in this one, just with the breakdown of the economics. They're not related to this conversation, but a fascinating book in deep dive, obviously considering all the conversations needed to happen to give people a breakdown, not just into that top line number, but the profit margin of a tour of this scale.[00:46:59] Neil Shah: yeah, with the Taylor piece, I'm happy with it. And I was basically trying to do something that's just hard to do. Artists don't talk about their costs and what their deals involved with promoters and booking agents. So very hard to actually ascertain profit.And so what I was trying to do there was just. and it talked to a lot of people about what's reasonable for a superstar and then what's reasonable to assume about the breakdown when it comes to an unusual superstar. So that was kind of, that story, I guess, you know, related to this topic is just, you know, yeah, my attempt to kind of get my head around. It wasn't that article. I did, I think, in October of last year. and so, yeah, this is like an important discussion. and when you want to have in a measured way, you know, like, it's like, another not colleague, but a good guy at Billboard Elias did also a piece, following on Kyle's piece, right?Kind of actually talking to executives about how worried, you know, they are about this stuff. So, yeah, this stuff is hard to predict. So, but yeah, if anything, you could, flag that old piece if you want.[00:48:01] Dan Runcie: Okay, great. No, we'll do Neilm Thanks again. It's been a pleasure. [00:48:05] Dan Runcie Outro Audio: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend, copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast.Go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast that helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Summer Craig is starting off strong this year by bringing back five fantastic beers from California's Bay Area (and beyond) for us to fawn over and attempt to recreate those vacation vibes. We learn the backstories of these breweries and their unique approaches and cover other beer-ish topics like the follies of berry beers, aggressive bread, trad saisons, and the royal need for hop names. Also, Craig has discovered a new traveling superpower and parlor trick; Ryan has picked a winner in an East Coast vs. West Coast IPA battle; and we flip through the Sam Goody poster stand for a while. It's better than Semi-OK. Beers Reviewed Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing [Santa Cruz] - Hello Pretty (Organic blonde ale w/ strawberries) Wondrous Brewing Company [Emeryville] - Rote Augen (Franconian-style Rotbier) HenHouse Brewing Company [Santa Rosa] - Saison (Saison w/ black pepper and coriander) Fox Tale Fermentation Project [San Jose] - No Más (Gose w/ Persian lime, pink pepper leaf, and lacto-fermented honey) Ghost Town Brewing [Oakland] - Hammer Smashed EXP 586 (IPA)  

What's the role of a music video today? In the 1980s, music videos flipped the industry thanks to MTV. Videos helped artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna become cultural icons. Record labels spent millions on music videos to promote their CD sales. Everyone was winning.Music videos don't hold the same power today in the streaming era. The budgets are smaller, but they still get made. To break it all down, I was joined by MIDiA Research analyst Tati Cirisano. Here's what we covered:0:52 What is the role of a music video today?2:15 MTV's role in music videos7:46 Comparisons to TikTok11:27 Music video budgets peaked in mid-90s14:30 Napster changed everything17:27 Music videos as career launchpads18:50 YouTube revitalizes music videos25:44 Range of video budgets 31:04 Big dollars going to documentaries and short films32:53 Rise of lyric videos41:42Does YouTube have a music video formula?44:09Measuring ROI of music videos in 2023Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Tati Cirisano, @tatianacirisanoThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmEnjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapitalTrapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital's free memo.TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Tati Cirisano: There's an argument to be made that MTV like almost invented the music video or almost like made music videos a thing because having that audience there and having that like cultural impact is what led to bigger budgets for music videos so I almost feel like MTV gets credit for like kind of inventing the music video. [00:00:19] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:47] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: This episode is all about music videos and what their value prop is in the industry today. Back in the MTV era, the role of a music video was clear. This was your four minute opportunity to sell the hell out of your artist and for your label to promote its artist. Yet fans bought into the lifestyle, the identity, the persona of this person, and get them to go to Sam Goody, go to Tower Records and buy the albums.It was a marketing channel and it was a marketing channel that the record labels were continuing to put money into, and as the effectiveness continued to grow, they put more and more. Into that and that budget exploded. By the time we got to the mid to late 90s, we saw music video budgets hitting millions of dollars, and artists were doing out of this world things in these videos.But we slowly started to see those budgets slash. Went at the introduction of Napster and the CD era started to decline and the money was no longer flowing the way that it once was. But we started to see music videos take a new turn in the YouTube era. And now in the TikTok era, what is the ROI of a music video?What role do they serve in today's industry? And to break it down, we're enjoying by Tati Cirisano, an analyst at MIDia Research. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times, and this topic was right up her alley. So we talked a bit about that and more. Hope you enjoy this episode. Here's our breakdown on the role of music videos in today's industry.[00:02:16] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we are going to take a trip down memory lane to the wonderful World of Music videos, how this art form has evolved over the years. And I'm joined by Tati Cirisano from MIDiA Research, Tati welcome. [00:02:28] Tati Cirisano: Thank you. Good to beback once again. [00:02:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. Can I start with a story? You mind if I start with a story with this one?  So, a couple weeks ago I was catching up with, CEO from one of the major record labels. This is someone that if you're probably listening to this household, if you're probably listening to this podcast, you probably know, and they run a label that is also a household name, and they were telling me about a conversation they had with an artist who is also a household name and how this artist wanted to have a million dollar plus seven plus figure, multi-million dollar music video budget because they wanted to make this big splash with what they were doing. And the CEO was like, no, I'm not giving you that. Like, what do you think this is? And for context, this is a artist who hasn't had a big hit since George Bush's first term. Let me say that roughly, just to give some context here. So,So it's been some time, but I also was a bit surprised because this is someone who seemed like they were up with the times in tech, and I remember asking the label exec, I was like, what's the deal? I thought this artist was with this. You see the movies they're making here, there, and this, that, and the third.And he was like, Hey. You would be surprised sometimes the egos get the best of these people and this is what they want. And that was a big inspiration for this conversation because I know you and I have talked about things like Spotify versus YouTube. YouTube, of course, having such a big focus in music videos and it's role.But that's what made me think it would be a great time to take a trip down memory lane and just revisit music videos themselves and. Going back to 1981, I feel like we could start music videos well before that. That obviously was there, but I think that was the origin place for a lot of what became known as the Modern Music Video and MTV itself.What's your take on how impactful MTV was? Because there was definitely a big shift of any music videos we saw before and any music videos we saw after.[00:04:36] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, I mean, you're right that like we could start this even further. Back in history, there were artists like the Beatles were making music films in like the 60s. David Bowie did the same but there wasn't really a place to showcase them the way that MTV, like, the one that MTV created. So I feel like it's not just that really iconic, amazing music videos, like those of, like Michael Jackson and, others made MTV a thing.I feel like there's an argument to be made that MTV like almost invented the music video or almost like made music videos a thing because having that audience there and having that like cultural impact is what led to bigger budgets for music videos and labels kind of focusing on this as an art form and a promotional piece.And that also led to more interesting creative videos. So I almost feel like MTV gets credit for like kind of inventing the video, the music video. [00:05:30] Dan Runcie: And inventing the video as a distinct art form that can live on its own in distinction from the music itself, because you mentioned The Beatles, you mentioned some of those other artists from that time. Music videos almost felt more like a utility. They were a commodity. Let's put the camera up while you're recording the tune, and maybe we'll add in some things.Maybe they'll add in some B-roll. And that's what it very much existed as for years. But then MTV takes it and makes it this unique thing. And we saw from the early days, whether it was Duran Duran, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Madonna, they were some of the early people that really made it their own thing.And you saw more of those movies and that's where MTV being able to capture the eyeballs there, the growth of cable as well, and them becoming one of the more popular channels there. You see this platform having this type of impact, you invest more dollars into it, and this becomes a much stronger marketing channel, which then commanded and justified them putting more and more money over time into these videos.[00:06:35] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, and speaking of Madonna, I think it also made music a lot more visual where music videos kind of opened this pathway for artists to become not just music icons, but kind of like style and fashion and cultural icons. there's so many videos that. Are just kind of like etched into everyone's brains and so many iconic outfits like people still dress up as, Britney Spears and the Baby One More Time Video and like all these other iconic ones. I think it, started making music more of a visual thing. And in turn, that also helped drive fandom around artists. Cuz if there's one thing I've learned in all the studying of, fandom that I've done and how it develops, it's pretty much always about context.It's always maybe listening to a song makes you a fan or doesn't make you a fan. It makes you a listener of the artist. But it's only once you know more about, who they are and like what their style is and what their aesthetic is and all these other things that you become a true fan. I think a lot of fandom was formed by sitting around the TV with friends and like watching a video for the first time on MTV.It was just a more captivating way to get to know an artist and have that context around them. [00:07:47] Dan Runcie: It's a big point, and that's something I definitely related with too. Growing up in that era, you were able to see and interact with those artists. If I had just heard these artists on the radio, it would've been a very different relationship. But I know that for a lot of people, that's how they gravitated to music.That's how they captured this, and that wasn't the way that it, I grew up for me, whether it was watching them on MTV, watching them on BET, That was the experience, and especially as things started to take off in the CD era, we saw more artists having success with it. We also started to see more pushback as well.I think it was around the early 90s, even the late eighties, this was around the time MTV was really kicking into gear. And the sales and numbers, everything was just up and to the right from a growth perspective. But we started to hear more critiques, some of the more traditionalists in the music industry started to say things like, these music videos are turning artists into one trick ponies.It's no longer about the music anymore. It's about making, Music video. And that's clearly resonating with some of the critiques. We now hear about TikTok as well. But it makes me think about the patterns that music often follows and when there is a new art form that does allow some type of growth, there's critiques, but those critiques also do stem from bit of this.If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And we've seen this time and time again where a lot of those artists that had. Had critiques about MTV, whether it was Mariah Carey in the very early days, or even groups like REM, they would go on to make some of the most iconic music videos from the 90s as well.And I think we've seen the same with whether it's streaming or TikTok music videos was one of the things that I remember as having a bit of that cyclical pattern.[00:09:32] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, and there's so many trends in music videos that I feel like now we're play, we're seeing play out on TikTok or have already seen like there was sort of the dance, video craze of like, single ladies and crank that and PSY with Gangnam style.There were all these music videos that were about getting everyone to do a dance. And that was the way, that was like the promotional thing of if you got people to do that, then they would do it at the club when the song came on, they would do it in public. It would sort of become this bigger moment. And then that was kind of the first phase of TikTok when it started to rise in the 2020 when in early 2020 was like all dance videos.and even. I remember there were some videos that people, I know we haven't gotten to YouTube yet, but when YouTube came into the equation, people were uploading their own versions of videos and now that's like a pretty common thing. But yeah, it's interesting how all this stuff is cyclical and I think like video to the stuff about, the criticisms and like being one trick ponies and that kind of thing.I think that video has kind of, with music, always been about creating a cultural moment, aside from it just being another art form that I think artists delight in taking part in. Cause it's just another way to be creative. But I think it's, it's, about creating a cultural moment and creating a cultural moment in this day and age has morphed into this concept of virality, but it's always been about the same thing.Like viral in the 90s was, people wanting to be Britney Spears in that music video I was just talking about, and it kind of like being, this thing everyone was talking about for months. The same thing is happening now on TikTok. It's just happening faster. so yeah, I think that a lot of this stuff is cyclical and those criticisms, the point is that it's a promotional tool, so of course it's gonna lead to kind of like flash in the pan moments.So, Yeah, I have complicated feelings about those criticisms, I guess.[00:11:28] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I do too. I understand and I think that what we saw in the next decade, especially with some of those artists that came around and ended up leaning in, said a lot about where it is. And not every artist needed to do the MTV thing. Not every artist needed to lean into it all the way. Granted, I do think that most artists had music videos to an extent, but there was clearly a wave of where things were going.And right around the mid to late 90s, We saw the peak, at least from a budget perspective, of how much money was being put into music videos. And when you're talking about creating moments and in the pre-internet era, there wasn't necessarily as much virality, but the thing that got people locked in was how visually stunning or something that you've seen that's never been seen before.It's almost this bigger was better era. And then we get to points where in the mid 90s, Both Madonna and Michael and Janet Jackson are having music videos that aren't just one or 2 million. That screen music video was rumored to be around five to 7 million depending on the source you look at, in 1995 dollars, and that's that black and white video.They're shape shifting and all this stuff. And we continued to see this over the next couple of years. Of course, hype Williams and everything that he did from music videos was always unique, is always futuristic and with all of the elements that he had there. But it took a lot of money to make those music videos the same way with NSYNC and all those no strings attached music videos.Those were multimillion dollar music videos too. And it brings me back to even the things that they would spend money on. I'm thinking about, Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson, they had that once. It's gonna be a music video where you have the silver liquid that's like coming over. Both of them and Busta Rhymes took guitar lessons.Apparently that's what MTV's making the video thing had said in its, little popup that comes to the music video. But all of those things [00:13:24] Tati Cirisano: I missed those popups. [00:13:26] Dan Runcie: I know it was such a fun era, right? It was. It was such a, I guess a lot of that's been now disrupted by what we see on YouTube, which I know we'll get into in a minute, but that was such a moment.I think it spoke to, why people were willing to put in money at the time with just where things were with the era that was the marketing channel. Music videos were seen purely as an expense to be able to sell more CDs the same way that touring at the time was seen as an opportunity to try and sell more CDs.And the artists that sold the most often got the biggest budgets. And at the time, bigger was all often seen as better, especially when it came to the contemporary Pop X and that whole ecosystem of music, video culture, and everything around it made that take off the way it did.[00:14:13] Tati Cirisano: no, absolutely. I think the promotional power was worth it at the time. and like you said, you could justify spending that much on a music video if you were gonna make it back in CD sales if you were one of these superstars. So it made a lot of sense at the time. And then came master.[00:14:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that changed everything because and there was a fair amount of overlap there just with the way things were because so much of the industry was still focused where it was, I look at even the music video economy where there was a cyclical nature where because of the demand, The programs themselves or the channels themselves started launching programs dedicated to showcasing music videos, whether it was 106 and Park or TRL.They had different shows throughout the day, but all of them were some unique flavor of just trying to show you more music videos. And that's what was cool about it. You were able to have this whole ecosystem there, but then as you mentioned, Napster comes in, changes everything. The dollars are no longer flowing, and it.Is harder to justify spending millions of dollars on a music video if you can't confirm that that artist is gonna be able to do that. I think in a lot of ways, the peak was, we talked about them before in sync, Britney Spears, Nsync being able to sell, I think it was nearly 3 million units of an album the first week that it comes out.Like people skipping school in order to go buy, no strings attached. That just didn't happen any more to that level. I mean, we eventually saw examples like Adele and even this Taylor Swift album, but it wasn't the same way that it was then, and it shifted everything and I think it eventually Led to lower budgets.We still saw a lot of creativity. I still remember watching tons of music videos, especially in the mid to, especially in the mid two thousands. But it was definitely a different vibe cuz it was this pre and post Napster, but pre YouTube era where the budgets were still somewhat strong, but it wasn't quite what it was before.[00:16:13] Tati Cirisano: and there was this whole ecosystem before that, like, it's, kind of stunning me to remember how many different roles there were. Like music directors I feel like got a lot more shine because there were the VMAs and all these kind of things dedicated to them. But then there were the VJs of the time.and there were kind of like the. dancers and the other like characters in these videos, which kickstarted a lot of actors and actresses careers. Just being in these music videos, there was this idea of like the video vixen, which is a term I absolutely cringe to the n degree at, but like that was a role, like there was such an ecosystem around it. You're totally right and then it really so much since then. [00:16:54] Dan Runcie: When you think of the term video vixen, who's the first person that comes to mind?[00:16:58] Tati Cirisano: I think of people like Eva Mendez in the Miami video with Will Smith, I think of Scarlet Johansen. which one was she in? It was like some, [00:17:09] Dan Runcie: Justin Timberlake, what goes around comes around.[00:17:11] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, there were so many, I don't know. Alicia Silverstone I know was in a couple of music videos. Kim Kardashian was in Fallout boy, thanks for the Memories, which was a bit later and like she was already famous. But like that remembering that blows my mind. Like there were just so many of these examples. I don't know. [00:17:27] Dan Runcie: Yeah, there's a few that comes to mind. I think about someone like Vida Guerrera, like she was always in a bunch of them. Even male video vixen's too. I'm thinking [00:17:37] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. [00:17:38] Dan Runcie: Beckford and, Toni Braxton's Unbreak my heart, in that one. And then Tyrese and, what music video is that was that angel of mine with Monica.So you definitely had 'em back and forth. Even the artists themselves sometimes ended up being vixens and other ones. Terrence Howard was in a bunch of 'em. But I think that this too, it talks about just how music was a launchpad, right? You mentioned the VJs earlier. So many of these VJs started as those types of personalities, but then they went on to go do other things.I mean, Carson Daley is a media personality now doing his own thing. He got his roots in TRL. I feel like, aJ from 106 and Park still does media things suspense. Terrence Jay definitely does as well. So you see those, but you also saw it on the music video side too, where directors like Spike Jones is now doing, you know, Hollywood movies. Look at the Daniels, they directed turn down for what? the little John's music video, and then they just directed and won an Oscar for Best Picture and best Director with everything everywhere, all at once. So music continues to be a launchpad in [00:18:45] Tati Cirisano: What a pivot. Turn Down for What to Everything Everywhere All At Once.[00:18:50] Dan Runcie: Yeah, never would've guessed that one, never would've guessed that one. And I think with that, we should probably start now talking about the YouTube era because things took another turn here. You mentioned a little bit of this earlier where user-generated videos started to take off, but I think the success of YouTube started to tell people that, Hey, The things that are going viral and getting attention.It isn't just using the most amount of money possible to see outta this world stuff. As cool as it was to see Hype Williams creating action figures of Missy Elliot running around in space, we don't necessarily need to see that much out of this world to do it. It can be Soulja boy doing his type of dance and then having all this other user generated content on Crank that Batman, crank, that Spider-Man, crank that whoever, and we saw that time and time again.So I think YouTube, and this was before any of the licensing deals came. The fact that crank that blew up became the number one single in the country stuck out in a way. And I think that led to another evolution of what people were willing to spend money on and how they thought about the promotion of music videos as well.[00:19:59] Tati Cirisano: Totally like remember the okay go music video with the treadmills. Like remember how cool we all thought that was? I mean, I'll speak for myself, but like it's like funny to think about now. That was such a big deal. That they made this like really low budget video, just kind of like running around on treadmills.And I think that's the other thing that's interesting about YouTube is, so pre MTV, there was like not really any place to showcase music videos. Then there was this channel for it, but it was really limited to the major label signed artists. And then you got to YouTube where there wasn't any gatekeeping around music videos anymore.Anything could be uploaded and anything could be played. And there was just less of that gatekeeping. But then the flip side of that is it also means that it's a lot harder to stand out. And so YouTube has, kind of made any one of those videos a bit less impactful for that reason. Over time, I think, and that gets back to like the fragmentation that, you know, I love to talk about.[00:20:57] Dan Runcie: It's fascinating because I think that each time something goes viral or each time something breaks out on YouTube, You do get a lot of copycat behavior. You see a moment where things are happening. It isn't always rational, but that's kind of the beauty of it. And then you go on to something else. I was looking at things talking about the 10 year anniversary of Harlem Shake, of that whole video wave where people were doing all those crazy dances.The music then stops, and then a couple years later we saw Black Beatles and that saw reach a whole nother level because of the freeze challenge thing that people were doing. And that was a whole nother culture with it because again, we started to see less flashiness of them trying to do particular things.But once the licensing came, music videos then became revenue generating tools. On their own and it was no longer necessarily just about trying to have a song get retired on the charts, whether it was on a 106 and Park and TRL there became the subculture of how can we get this music video to hit this?Number of streams or this hit this number of views. And I know we start to see this now more where most of the services are publicly sharing how many streams and views their songs and music videos have. But I feel like we started to see this on YouTube first, and a lot of the chatter that you would once see started to live in the comments section.And you started to see these subcultures of fans that would gravitate and connect to songs in that way. And I felt like that was something that was unique.[00:22:29] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, and there were a lot music videos, over the past, like five years, over the past 10 years, like the single ladies video and like Childish Gambino with this is America. And even like more recently, like the Kendrick Lamar video with like the AI generated faces, I forget which song that [00:22:46] Dan Runcie: Oh yeah, the hard part five.[00:22:47] Tati Cirisano: Yes. But you're totally right that rather than the go, the virality of a music video. Just being about driving streams. they also, those videos also became revenue generated themselves. So going viral on YouTube, having a video that everybody was gonna be anxious to watch, was a big deal for that.And there, I feel like there were kind of less so today, but like pre TikTok in like 2016 to like 2020. It kind of feels like there was a bit of a mini revival of like, Music videos being this bigger promotional tool, like, do you remember all the promotion around the Thank you Next video for Ariana Grande?That was nuts, like, we were all waiting weeks for that video to come out and there was so much, conversation about it and so many clips and so many interviews in the press and I feel like there was kind of a moment before TikTok came around when music videos were once again, kind of this really big promotional tool and way to kind of break through the noise and generate revenue.[00:23:47] Dan Runcie: With Thank you, next. That was the one where they spoofed mean girls, right?[00:23:51] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, and like a bunch of other of those types of movies, like there was like a clueless scene in it. I feel like there [00:23:57] Dan Runcie: Oh yeah, yeah. [00:23:57] Tati Cirisano: I feel like there were a bunch, maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I think they, they did that with like a bunch of different, like 90s and two thousands movies. And there were so many cameos. There were so many cameos. [00:24:08] Dan Runcie: Oh yeah, that's right. It did. It did. And I think a few of those music videos, you mentioned Salish Gambino as well. He's clearly someone that I think is calculated and knows what he's doing from a communication perspective, but with that video, it wasn't even necessarily about how much money was spent on this or something. It was more so here's this timely thing and there was a shock value that was linked to it, and I know that music videos have always had a bit of, have always had shock value, especially since the MTV area era think specifically about an artist like Madonna and then even Britney later on that leaned into this.But we started to see artists lean, lean into it even more from a. political standpoint, making statements and trying to say things that they wouldn't otherwise have said. And even thinking about artists like Joyner Lucas who had someone that was wearing a Make America Great again hat in their music video to then show that as some type of hypothetical conversation of what it could be like to talk to people that may think differently.I may be misremembering parts of the music video, but we started to see more of that integrate where. That then stems from how flexible this art form can be. You can have a music video like wp, which I do think was one of the more recent, you know, TikTok era music videos that created a moment. You could have them have these standalone things as well. [00:25:29] Tati Cirisano: Mm-hmm. That's exactly what I mean with how music videos give you so much more context like it's just another way for the artist to tell their story and express themselves. It's just another avenue for that, and there's so many different ways to do that. It is such a flexible art form. [00:25:44] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. I have a few stats here that I think would be helpful just for some context setting. As we mentioned earlier, we talked about music video budgets in the late 90s and even the early two thousands where, top artists getting million dollars plus for their music video wasn't uncommon.But here, let me share some numbers. Cardi B had shared some self-reported public numbers of things she spent on music videos just over the years. This was from two years ago, so I'm sure she's done stuff then. But Bodak Yellow, that was the music videos that they had done. That one in Dubai, that was $15,000.Granted, she was much smaller at the time. People likely weren't charging her as much, but she did that for just $15,000 and then, Bar Cardi, that was $150,000. The money music video, which did look like a pretty elaborate and not cheap music video. That was 400,000, please Me. The one that she did with Bruno Mars, that was 900,000 and then WAP was a million dollars.But those are two artists coming together, and that was also another expensive looking music video with a bunch of cameos as well. So even WAP, something that I would consider on the highest degree. Of what, major record label might be willing to spend. Even that was just a million dollars or compared to how much more they were willing to spend a couple decades before.[00:27:02] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, yeah, I mean that, that kind of doesn't surprise me. Like I feel like the ROI for music videos has just gone down a lot and it just doesn't make sense to spend much more than that on a music video. Like you can still make a splash, it can still be, a good promotional tool. And a way to, generate more revenue, but they don't tend to last as long as they used to, and it's just really hard to get people's attention on one thing these days.I think short form is also being prioritized or that's kind of the sense that I'm getting and yeah, it doesn't totally surprise me, does it? What do you think about those numbers? [00:27:44] Dan Runcie: It doesn't surprise me either because of where so much music is consumed and how things go viral. But it is a bit interesting when I think about music videos as a visual art form and what tracks and what resonates compared to other forms of entertainment where I do feel like we've continued to see bigger and bigger com, bigger and better, at least from the money that's put into these productions for major film studios, for instance, what they're putting into superhero films, what they put into Fast and Furious films, or even what James Cameron had put into Avatar. Spending 300 million, not even on the marketing, just on the budget for these movies isn't even unheard of now. So there's clearly an attraction of doing that, even if it is one of these tent pole franchise movies, even for some of the things that have gone straight to video.But that didn't necessarily happen in the same way in music videos. It started to pull. We obviously know that the industry was hit harder than others, so it pulled back. But even as the industry continued to grow, and I think, I mean, I know now the numbers unadjusted for inflation have the highest, at least revenue on the recorded side.Bigger hasn't necessarily translated to better in that perspective. Even if you look at video games, the graphics, all the things that are stunning are the things that we continue to see. And granted in, video games, we've seen a few outliers, like when Nintendo, we blew up. Clearly that wasn't a graphics thing, but they were tapping into something that Xbox and PlayStation weren't at the time.But in music videos, the bigger, better graphics of artists doing crazy things just didn't resonate in the same way, the only music video I can think of is, Ed Sheeran, what's that music video he did? I think he's kind of floating around and stuff and moving. I think it's bad habits. But one of those, I think that's probably the most recent one, but even that one I don't think is like that expensive of a music video, but we just haven't seen better.I'm thinking back to in the 90s. Yeah, I mentioned the Hype Williams music videos or even, you know, Backstreet Boys like moving around in space and larger than life. We just haven't seen that translate in that same way in music videos. [00:29:51] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. Well the other thing that you just that just made me think of when you mentioned film is how do I put this? Like album promo cycles these days are so much less premeditated, right? It's more about putting songs out and seeing how people react, and then deciding which ones to push forward as a single, then deciding what to put music, video resources behind.So I think that the other difference with music versus something like film and TV is things are just getting decided on the fly. Like a song goes viral and then you're like, okay, now we're gonna make a video for this song, but you wouldn't decide that until you saw how the songs were performing. So I think that that's a big, big factor in it as well. But we've also seen some good, like low but lower budget music videos. Like I loved the Ice Spice Pink Panther for boys a Liar. And it was literally just them like hanging out on a fire escape. And I was like, this is perfect. So I think we've also seen like some good lower budget ones come out of this as well.But yeah, definitely doesn't feel like the same, you know, spending all this money on like these crazy graphics and like whatever it is, has as much of an impact or is, as worth it as it might be in film. [00:31:04] Dan Runcie: I feel like we've seen a few outliers here or there in music. Kanye West's music videos, especially in that, let's say 2007 to 2015, 16 range, it seemed like there was still a good amount of money that was being put into those. And even some of the extended ones that, that short form video, the short form film version of Runaway, still felt like a pretty expensive music video.And I'm pretty sure Hype Williams directed that. But I also wonder is. Is the definition of what we consider music video, and the expansion of that. Also shifting what people are putting money into and how it's categorized. And by that I'm talking about some of these documentaries that have come out and what bucket we put those in.I look at something like when Taylor Swift had recorded those pond sessions after the folklore evermore albums had come out. She essentially did an entire visual album of her at this pond or wherever. She wasn't that like Cottage and Sells and sold that to Disney, and then Disney then streams and puts that out and it's an hour or two hours or however long it is.Beyonce is recording her Coachella performance and then sells that to Netflix, and then Netflix puts that out. And you're essentially watching an alternate version of a Beyonce music video that is just over this two hour or two hour 15 minutes, however long it is. But when I think about that, I think about these visual albums and just how so many of them have spanned in, had different forms and ways they've gone about it. Is that where some of these more expensive projects are going? Is that where some of the more expensive dollars are going when looking at video as it relates to music, as opposed to just this music video bucket that we may have put it in?[00:32:53] Tati Cirisano: I think so, and I think I would also put in that category like the more. Like the short films that our music videos. And that's something that artists have been doing forever. But I mean, like, I don't know, like the Taylor Swift All Too Well video and even like, I feel like the SZA Kill Bill video was like longer than the song and like had, a lot of artists are starting to add more of a story and create more of like a short film. And I think part of that is a way to like just stand out from all the other music videos and actually grab people's attention because you are really telling a story, you're taking it to the next level. And even having parts where like the song isn't even playing, and I think you're probably right, that more of the budget that used to go to music videos, Is now going more sparingly to a few of those types of projects for the bigger artists. Whereas, l ike for what was traditionally a music video is now becoming lyric videos or sort of like these animated videos that I've seen come up that are so much cheaper to produce and often also involve AI generation, which is, an area that I feel like we haven't really touched on in all of the discourse about AI and music is like AI for music videos.And maybe that will end up lowering the cost to making these really fantastic crazy concepts that we used to see that used to cost 7 million. And now, well you can click a button. So I don't know, maybe we'll see like a reversal of what, of everything we're talking about, of like music videos kind of shrinking and instead becoming bigger. But yeah, I think you're right.[00:34:28] Dan Runcie: The point that you mentioned about music videos and just the storytelling, adding in the short film piece of it. I don't know if he was the first, but Michael Jackson Thriller is the one that comes to mind there, just with how that became this extended film. But again, not everyone was getting that much budgeter opportunity to do that in that way.Michael Jackson had built up the track record in order to make that happen, and then as you see, we continue to see that now with Taylor and others. I'm glad you mentioned the piece around lyric videos and AI, because lyric videos have long been the low-hanging fruit. Of YouTube, especially for artists.Yes, it's great to have your own music video, but sometimes people don't want that. They just wanna be able to have it there playing and Sure from a purely practical perspective, you could tell yourself. They can go listen to that and Spotify or they can just go listen to the audio version. That's what they want, but not necessarily.There are creative and unique things that you can do with music videos. It doesn't always have to be the text scrolling across the same way it would on a karaoke screen or something like that. Artists have had unique ways to go about it, and AI music videos isn't even necessarily something I necessarily thought of, but what's holding it back? You look at the same way that the images went viral of the Pope in, you know, wearing the bomber jacket or whatever it was. The same thing can happen with the music video. And when I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking again about like how we started this conversation around where some of the critiques are that people have had with music videos when they first came out. Some of the critiques, we hear now about this more user generated era of music, videos and content as well. The path and the journey. It seems that once music gets too derivative in some ways, two things happen. One, it expands and grows the pie for the overall industry, which is good because we wanna be able to see the impact in music.We wanna be able to see it grow. That's always gonna naturally attract detractors that wanna see the thing in the pure form, but nothing stopping them from seeing the thing in the pure form. But we do wanna be able to see the growth in evolution there. And AI is the next version of this where, what is the core piece that you have, whether it's the artist and the music that the rights holders have the control and ownership of, but whether it's music, video, or just other ways to do it, what are the ways that that can be unlocked? And if that can be done in a great way, that's where the potential comes.That's where you unlock all of the opportunity in the industry. And who knows, like you said, it doesn't even need to be as expensive as it was, but you're giving people the opportunity to do something unique. [00:37:06] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, and speaking of the SZA one, I don't know if this is something that she planned or if it's just something she's encouraged, but there's a whole culture on TikTok of fans making their own SZA music videos. Not copying the ones that have already been created, but making their own. And she'll repost them and comments on them and like talk about the ones that are her favorites. And that whole thing is really fascinating to me. And it even like brings me back to the lyric videos because the whole reason that the music industry started to realize, oh, we should release these music videos, was because fans were already making them and it was just revenue that the industry wasn't, and eyeballs that the industry wasn't capturing.So lyric videos were just a way to kind of formalize that, and I think we're seeing that in so many ways on TikTok with sped up songs that fans uploaded and then record labels formalized. So I don't really know where I'm going with this with music videos, but I feel like there's a connection there of like, How, video could potentially enter more of that. I mean, music videos could potentially enter more of that, UGC space. But the other thing I wanted to bring up before I forget, is that I did grab some stats from our research at MIDia about, both of those things. So just for context here. 59% of global consumers use YouTube to watch music videos weekly. And then we had another question where we asked how do you engage with music artists beyond listening to their music? And 35% of consumers said they watch lyric videos. and that's from our Q4 22 consumer survey and our Q1 23 respectively. So, both arepretty high. [00:38:41] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I would say so. I wonder for some artists, the numbers that they've had for the music videos and lyric videos are probably closer than they think, right? And sometimes a lot of it just depends on what you're in the mood for. Sometimes, there's just so many more opportunities to have a passive thing in the background, and sometimes I've done it myself without even thinking, I think what is the user experience that then causes me to go to a lyric video, even when I know the music video is there. And most of the time it's when I wanna have the thing in the background. Maybe I'll go to it, but I don't necessarily wanna stare at the screen for the next few minutes and it makes perfect sense and there's so many more use cases for that.So I wouldn't be surprised if for certain artists, they both serve a purpose, but they might actually be making more from the respective lyric song. And I think when you just think about it overall, the Lyric song does enable you to have your entire album up on the streaming services guy, I guess you could technically have a few versions where I've seen some artists have the music video, they have the lyric video, and then they just have the still with the cover art of the album there.So you have three different options and that could all be, revenue that goes back to the artist and the rights solar.[00:39:53] Tati Cirisano: Mm-hmm. There's also this interesting idea of like how all these things kind of play together. Like going back to the episode that we did on, that was about YouTube and, kind of contrasting these short form video platforms and how YouTube's whole pitch is that they're able to unite long form and short form so that, you know, there isn't that gap where people watch a TikTok video about, and then they don't actually go in and learn more about the artists. So, I don't know. I think there's something interesting there with YouTube being the main place where people watch music videos. The only, like the main place, I won't say the only. And also having the short form video platform. So I think that is a really strong proposition to be able to kind of marry the two. [00:40:35] Dan Runcie: Here's a question for you similar to that I actually don't know the answer to this myself, but thinking about how like audio and music itself, we see how music has adapted over time based on the mode and the medium that it is, whether it's CDs and streaming. And then we see the impact of TikTok and everything else.And music videos we've seen similar where we knew what a an MTV era music video looked like, especially if it was a music video that's trying to be on TRL. There's almost a certain formula that you saw to it. And we also see now what a TikTok video can look like where you see the types of dances and you see the way that the music video is made almost in a way to make it easily be replicated, whether it's a Drake, Lizzo, Doja Cat, Cardi B, plenty people have done this.Do you think this exists as well with YouTube? Was there a certain type of music video that stands out to you, is Yes. This is a YouTube music video. This is a music video that personifies the YouTube era of music videos.[00:41:38] Tati Cirisano: I love that question. that's a really good question.[00:41:42] Dan Runcie: As I'm thinking about it, there's one person that did come to mind. NBA Young Boy is a person that I do think speaks to the YouTube era of music videos because he approaches this the same way that. Someone like Mr. Beast approaches videos. There is a formula there, he has his hook, he has the things.There is a bit of the storytelling dynamic of what he is trying to do, or the challenge that they're trying to overcome, and then they do the thing. But it's definitely told in this way that has the hook and the elements that you naturally see. In YouTube and the way that the font for the name of the music video scrolls up, that is very much the formula.How quick it is for the beat to start. All those types of things, I think speak a lot to the YouTube era.[00:42:27] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, I also think, I'm thinking of artists who have sort of played into meme culture with their videos, like Drake has kind of done that. Remember how meme'd the Hotline Bling video was like. Even like the video for, what's that song you have with Justin Bieber? Pop Star was like, kind of playing into like the stereotypes about them in a way.Like I think artists like them who have sort of played into internet culture in their videos are maybe part of that YouTube era. Charli XCX, the boys video felt very YouTube, Yeah, I would say things like that. And then also videos that invited user participation, like the dance video craze, where it was kind of intended to get you to make your own version.And that was kind of like the early TikTok was being YouTube. So, yeah, that's a great question. [00:43:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think we saw some of this with Instagram as well, because I think about Drake in my Feelings. That was another one where there was clearly a Instagramable place where he's saying, please repeat this, because TikTok really wasn't blowing up the way that it was then, but he clearly made this video leading into that.And if anything, I think that the video came after we saw the viral instagram clips of, what was that guy? Shaggy that was doing the dances for that music video and then Danny Le as well. So there were a few people that had done that.[00:43:55] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, no, the correlation is so fascinating. I could do a whole nother podcast on how Drake lyrics invented Instagram captions, but we'll save that.[00:44:09] Dan Runcie: And no, we will definitely table that one. And I think as. Yeah. No. I have a few thoughts on that one, but as I think about this, I feel like a good way to, to close this one out is thinking about the ROI of these videos. And there's a number of ways to look at it, but with the way that a video is now, what do you think the best way is to measure the ROI?Because of course there's the hard dollars that the video could generate, the impact, but what's your take on that? [00:44:36] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, aside from the things like, aside from the things that are just like hard views and streams, I think it's also about cultural impact, which is kind of impossible to measure. it's about UGC, like how many videos was. I don't know, how many people kind of created their own version or did the dance in the music video, wherever it is.I guess that kind of depends on the video, but I think there's like some element of like creations related to the video that are part of it. and then did anyone dress up for Halloween as that music video? That's the biggest measure of cultural impact.[00:45:18] Dan Runcie: Like Lil Nas X dressing up as Ice Spice [00:45:21] Tati Cirisano: Yes. Yes. And I'm sure there were people that dressed up as Drake in the hotline bling video. the scene that that came out. So, look at Halloween costume sales, all you label executives. No, I don't know it's a really hard question to answer, but I think it's, mix of those and it's increasingly about, how fans are kind of like recreating their own versions of things. [00:45:42] Dan Runcie: Because there's a clear need to, water creates something that creates shock value, but you can't do those moments automatically cuz sometimes randomly it's gun just being gunna and then, Rihanna dresses up like him for her Halloween costume in like multiple settings and stuff, and it's like, oh, okay.I guess this is a thing. Like I don't think he knew that he was putting a fit out there, but you can't always guarantee that that's what's gonna come out, right? You have artists like Da Baby that I think have always tried to do stunty things to get cloud out there, but I don't know if, I've never necessarily seen people try to dress up like him for Halloween in that way.But that's a good one, and I think at first I was like thinking you're saying it in jest, but it's a hundred percent true. Like how are you able to capture zeitgeist? And I think that checking Instagram tags especially, or hashtags or just trending topics Twitter can tell you. Yeah. definitely. [00:46:36] Tati Cirisano: Well, many gift uses did you get of a clip from the music video?[00:46:41] Dan Runcie: Exactly. Or are people creating gifts of you in some type of way? [00:46:45] Tati Cirisano: Exactly. [00:46:46] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Well, Tati, this was fun. We have a couple of topics that I know we'll dig into eventually on this, but before we let you go, what are some things that you're digging into? What should the travel listeners stay looking out for?[00:46:59] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, that's a good question, let me think. So many things. I mean, we have a new report at MIDia that'll be out next month, for clients that's about live music consumers. We did a big survey, with bands in town asking people about their attitudes towards ticket prices and all sorts of things like that. So if you're listening and you're client of ours, look out for that. If you're not and you're interested in it, feel free to reach out. but yeah, that's the thing that I'm working on a lot right now and very excited about. [00:47:27] Dan Runcie: Nice. All right. We'll stay looking out for that. Thank you. [00:47:31] Tati Cirisano: Awesome. Thanks Dan.[00:47:32] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead.Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Imagine working in the largest, most prestigious record store in Manhattan in the 1980's. Now imagine doing that twice. Today's guest, Billy DePasquale started his record retail career at the largest record store in Manhattan, Sam Goody in Rockefeller Center, in September of 1980. Tower Records wouldn't land in Manhattan for another 3 years. One event that stands out during his time at Sam Goody is the day after John Lennon was murdered and the lines to get into the store to buy John Lennon and Beatles records.Billy worked at a small local chain called The Record Factory on 8th Street in the Village. A co-worker told him about an upcoming store about to open. When the co-worker got a job at the brand new Tower Records at 4th & Broadway, she spoke for him. Billy interviewed and got the job. From there he spent years at both the Village store and later at Lincoln Center.Eventually Billy was hired by WEA Distribution in New York where he started working as an inventory person and then worked up to Sales Director for the Northeast Region. After Tower closed in 2006, Billy left WEA in May of 2007.Throughout our interview Billy talks about the camaraderie among the staff of #125 including very late nights at The Cactus Cafe with Keith Richards and Patti Hansen tucked into a table aside from the partying Tower revelers, the working relationships he forged in those early years, the differences between Tower Records and other music accounts and a whole lot more.

Settle in with your half-priced Easter candy and join us on The Victory Couch. In this episode, we think back to our earliest music memories, share about and discuss our journey being parents of a child with food allergies, rank the top 8 most popular cookies in America, and discuss what the younger generations are doing better than us. Show notes:       Q and A episode input survey: https://forms.gle/Yc3o96upoxz7aPgt7 About Disney future episode input survey: https://forms.gle/6T1mejApUeUEBL9eA SUBSCRIBE to The Victory Couch e-mail list by visiting https://www.thevictorycouch.com/ and click SUBSCRIBE at the top of your screen. Leave us a voice message through Spotify for Podcasters: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thevictorycouch/message Connect with us on Instagram @thevictorycouch, Facebook, victorycouchpodcast@gmail.com, or www.thevictorycouch.com Reviews welcome https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-victory-couch/id1628820081   Reese's Eggs https://www.hersheyland.com/products/reeses-milk-chocolate-peanut-butter-eggs-1-2-oz-6-pack.html Which songs would you say define your childhood (ages 10 or younger)? Amy Grant https://amygrant.com/music/ Sam Goody https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Goody Richard Marx https://richardmarx.com/music/ Michael Bolton https://michaelbolton.com/ Boys II Men https://boyziimen.com/ Garth Brooks https://www.garthbrooks.com/ John Michael Montgomery https://johnmichael.com/ The Little Mermaid Soundtrack https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097757/soundtrack/ Star-lite Roller Skating Center I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Whitney Houston https://open.spotify.com/track/2tUBqZG2AbRi7Q0BIrVrEj?si=10be5f9928a049af Livin' On A Prayer Bon Jovi https://open.spotify.com/artist/58lV9VcRSjABbAbfWS6skp Thriller by Michael Jackson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V90AmXnguw Beat It by Michael Jackson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftCalx6_pYA Take On Me by a-ha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC2TWAmw2FM What have you learned being the parent of child with food allergies? Food allergy research & education https://www.foodallergy.org/ Hershey's Ice Cream https://www.hersheyicecream.com/ Crazy bread from Little Caesars https://littlecaesars.com The BugaBees Friends with Food Allergies https://www.amazon.com/Bugabees-Friends-Food-Allergies/dp/1592982794 Out of the top 8 cookies consumed by Americans can you rank your favorite? (sugar, chocolate chip, no-bake, Girl Scout, macaroons, peanut butter cookie, Oreo, oatmeal raisin) What do you think the younger generations are doing better than ours? Xennials  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/20/xennials-millennials-generation-x-microgeneration/2369230002/ Toms https://www.toms.com/ Couch crumbs: the temperature is not appropriate for the season, the laundry is very out of control Prop your feet up: Lawson is now no longer allergic to eggs, travel soccer weekend, reading the Bible more Chick-Fil-A sauces https://www.chick-fil-a.com/sauces-dressings (retract: Honey Mustard from CFA DOES NOT contain egg) The Bible Recap Podcast http://www.thebiblerecap.com/podcast     --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thevictorycouch/message

The  1970's was the decade where Tom and Bert went from High School grads to College Students as they were moving on from the Woodstock  days of Sex, drugs and Rock n Roll in the late 1960's. With the Vietnam war raging on and the shootings at Kent State, America was in turmoil. Many new and up and coming music acts came onto the scene in a HUGE way and the guys go through their lists of what they considered the top Music Acts of the '70's.From Elton John and Billy Joel to Queen, The Eagles and 3 Dog Nite the guys cover an iconic decade of amazing music!The guys discuss or should we say "disgust" Rod Stewart and Tom's account about a girl that was hired at Sam Goody (where they were working) and her love of Rod Stewart that ended up being , well, a bit crazy.  Bert goes through his story of one of his favorite bands, Chicago, and the Jersey Shore party times when they were still young and single and having WAY too much fun.Tom  covers the "Post" Beatles as one of his music acts and the impact of the Fab Four's solo careers AFTER they broke up and the guys discuss why they were the greatest and most influential band EVER  in their opinion. The guys talk about Carole King, Carly Simon and James Taylor, the Bee Gee's and Jim Croce and pass on their honorable mentions as they close out the podcast. Thanks again for listening and please rate, review and leave comments. We appreciate your input!

This episode contains: We're three podcasters who are probably not playing jump rope right now. Steven talks about the Nightmare on Elm Street films. They are… not good. Remember the Sam Goody in the mall in Santa Maria? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Ben had some poetry drama; Conflict with another poet. What?!?!? How?!?! Is Ben party to the silencing of women throughout history? He doesn't intend to! Should we rewrite our tagline? It's a show about science and… big questions? The bridge on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is SO WELL LIT. Steven finished A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers. So good. It's the End of Days, JTRO: The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend e-books like a library. Ben can't remember the name of the film “The FP.” Publishers have sued The Internet Archive for being a digital library. Save the library! The Internet Archive allows borrowing a book for an hour. It led to Ben purchasing those books. Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, music, websites, and more. How can you help http://archive.org/ ? http://blog.archive.org/2020/06/14/how-can-you-help-the-internet-archive/ The Live Music Archive is incredible: https://archive.org/details/etree  Let your local library know what books you want! That's how they know how to spend funds. The best part about Hyperstudio is me! https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit  Little Glass Slippers: Scientists finally figure out why the water bear is nearly indestructible. Steven brings an article from the before times of 2017. We were so young then. Tardigrades can be dried out for decades, then come back to life with water. Amazing! Water bear don't care! Instead of dying when drying out, tardigrades turn themselves into glass! Our website is terrible. We're sorry. Join our Patreon! http://patreon.com/sciencefactionpodcast https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/scientists-finally-figure-out-why-the-water-bear-is-nearly-unstoppable/  Big Question: Is the prime directive actually ethical? What is the prime directive? Don't interfere with the development of a young species. Can we work together as a species to create harmony and warp drives? Aliens haven't contacted us because we're monkeys with nuclear weapons. In our talk about the prime directive, we talk a lot about The Orville and The Bobiverse. Remember when Wesley was sentenced to death for stepping on flowers? Devon schools us on Star Trek history and the prime directive.   Patreon-only pre-pod: The Ben Lawless story: Nothing is different, but everything has changed. Will Steven ever learn how to use Notion? Not this week! We make a pact to watch Extrapolations on Apple TV+ for next week's show. Is it possible to make climate change exciting?  Can the end of everything be kinda jazzed up somehow? #ClimateChange We apologize for interrupting Devon's writing music with recording a podcast. Hey Steven, cancel your showtime subscription after the trial! We can't remember what we talked about in our podcasts.

Off the Railz podcast is back with a new look! Mike tells about his holistic retreat and experience, Razzy asks which profession is more important, Rich visits a Sam Goody, plus much more! Thanks for listening, enjoy, and God bless! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/offtherailz/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/offtherailz/support

Off the Railz podcast is back with a new look! Mike tells about his holistic retreat, Razzy asks which profession is most important, Rich visits a Sam Goody, plus much more! God bless, thanks for watching, and enjoy! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/offtherailz/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/offtherailz/support

The Last of Us Commentary for Episode 7, "Left Behind" presents a lot of questions. Was there a Sam Goody in Rhode Island? What kind of Nachos are, in fact, Macho? Most importantly, could a mall be a bunker? All that and more with Warren and Jack on this week's commentary. Download now! Check out The Last of Us II Commentary - S1E6 "Kin" Binge Media's Commentary for The Last of Us S1E7 If you like what we do at Binge Media, head over to Patreon.com/BingeMedia to sign up for The Full Binge!  $5 a month gets you the second half of The BingeCast, film commentaries, movie tournaments and more!  Support Binge Media! Leave a voicemail for The BingeCast at 708-406-9546 Subscribe to The Full Binge on Patreon Follow Binge Media on Facebook Join the Binge Media Facebook Group Follow Binge Media on Instagram Go to ParkScents.com and use the discount code BINGE20 at checkout for 20% off your entire order Additional music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

Great conversation with  Gary Gebler - Owner of Trax on Wax. Our talk was about meeting Peter Gabriel, the vinyl revolution, the greatest vinyl record of all time and what makes a great record store experience!Gary has been working in the retail music world since 1974: district manager for Sam Goody, Vice President of Record and Tape Traders in Towson, MD * Opened Trax on Wax in 2009 to get back to what made him get into the business in the first place ... talking to cool people about cool music ..... opening the store was going against every trend conceivable .... economic, digital, political... * Won numerous industry awards: Retailer of the Year 1996-2006 and Billboard Magazine award * Has helped launch the careers of many of today's performers * Trax on Wax is Baltimore's only "true" record store ... just Vinyl and Vinyl related products.Support the showIt's Rock 'n' Roll Fridays!FacebookYoutubeInstagramWebsite Got a Great Musical Story? Be a guest, email us: michael@michaeldmarketing.com

The recent news story about $5,000 concert tickets for Bruce Springsteen's latest tour reminded GamerDude of what buying tickets used to be like.  Long before computerized "dynamic pricing," GamerDude talks about waiting in line at the box office, or at the Ticketmaster office in Tower Records or Sam Goody. He remembers lining up hours before the box office opened, and then picking your seats off the seating chart. He also remembers the standardized pricing, and how you only paid scalpers if you had no alternative. GamerDude also remembers some other things that used to be a part of daily life. He talks about the gumball machines at the grocery store, and the machines with the little toys, collectibles and water-transfer tattoos. He also remembers the "horsey ride" at the exit of the store, and how it was a rare treat growing up. He also remembers when "multi-player video games" involved four people in a room, sharing a split screen, and how "screen cheating" was a thing. GamerDude also talks about how we've lost the ability to "disappear" for the day. When he was younger, a person could just check out for the day, go to the beach, and be unreachable. Nowadays, if you don't return a text within a few mintues, people consider you rude!

The Gents recount their experiences shopping back in the day. If you remember Child World, orange Julius, Music Smith, Sam Goody and all those other rip-off joints, then you're probably as old as us. Enjoyyyyyy.

The Gents recount their experiences shopping back in the day. If you remember Child World, orange Julius, Music Smith, Sam Goody and all those other rip-off joints, then you're probably as old as us. But don't worry, you got the music in you! Enjoyyyyyy. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/matt-dursin/support

The year 1992 was superb for both music and Canada. In baseball, the Toronto Blue Jays claimed Canada's first World Series title, while the premium trading card market started to set a new standard for decades to come. In music, dozens of exceptional releases from new and veteran acts filled the shelves of Musicland and Sam Goody.

We welcome our very special guest Curtis Stigers. Luckily (?) for us, we caught Curtis with a case of Covid and some time to kill at home. We talk about his wild journey through the music biz, his fascination with Randy as a songwriter, and the appeal of going back home to Idaho. Curtis and Dan have EXTREMELY different perspectives on "Real Emotional Girl", and by the end, Curtis convinces me that we are both right. Then the Wheel gets re-spun until we land on what Curtis wanted. When you've gone platinum, you can re-spin too. Thank you so much, Curtis. I had a great time. And listener, so will you. Check out Curtis' latest album, "This Life" at your local Sam Goody.

First up, BENNIFER IS ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!! AND BRIT BRIT IS PREGGO! Holy 2000s, Batman! Next we chat about altering your photos on IG, and then do some Shout Outs. Afterwards, we discuss rummaging through posters at FYE as kids and finish it up with Weirdness of the Week. PODCAST EPISODE SUMMARY-Bennifer! Britney! 2000s! Oh My!-Altering IG photos-Shout Outs-Posters at FYE-Weirdness of the Week Your hosts: The Millennial Prince (B Mo the Prince of TikTok fame) and The Badass Chick (radio's Loren Raye) chat about life, liberty and the pursuit of the 90s. Follow us on social! @bmotheprince + @lorenraye This episode is sponsored by Coast, the next-level wellness shot built for modern life, created by a cancer researcher. Visit www.coastdrink.com and use code “nonsense” to get 20% off. RECOMMENDED RESOURCESwww.bmotheprince.com@bmotheprince www.lorenraye.com@lorenraye www.coastdrink.com@coast_health

Dr. Sara Judy (PhD in U.S. poetry & religion) joins AvA to dive into the inner workings of blink-182.  

It's August 6th, 1998! Apparently the live remote at the West Valley Taekwondo College didn't go so well, but let's not regret the past! Today, we have a special guest! Maybe you know Alison Rosen from her writing in Rolling Stone, Vibe, SPIN, Elle, and more. Or from her stint as newsgirl and co-host of "The Adam Carolla Show", or awesome shows like "Upworthy Weekly", "Childish" with Greg Fitzsimmons, or her podcast "Alison Rosen is Your New Best Friend". But this is 1998 and Machine Bolt and El Farto just met her at Sam Goody in the mall and will later realize they're trying to hire her while she's still in High School. Hey, at least they've stopped trying to hire Wanda's baby! Listener calls, Crazy Sign Guy, The News, plus upcoming live remote alert, and The News! Epic! Brought to you by ScreenSack®

Happy Valley, Oregon is a town known for their pumpkin flavored martini's, and the crown jewel of the town - the Happy Cheeks theater located next to a burnt down Sam Goody's.Follow The Wrants ShowTwitter: https://Twitter.com/TheWrantsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thewrantsInstagram: https://Instagram.com/TheWrantsShowYouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC67j5A9ErgsTOP8fpxeZ3WgLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode one hundred and forty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Trouble Every Day" by the Mothers of Invention, and the early career of Frank Zappa. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Christmas Time is Here Again" by the Beatles. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources I'm away from home as I upload this and haven't been able to do a Mixcloud, but will hopefully edit a link in in a week or so if I remember. The main biography I consulted for this was Electric Don Quixote by Neil Slaven. Zappa's autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, is essential reading if you're a fan of his work. Information about Jimmy Carl Black's early life came from Black's autobiography, For Mother's Sake. Zappa's letter to Varese is from this blog, which also contains a lot of other useful information on Zappa. For information on the Watts uprising, I recommend Johnny Otis' Listen to the Lambs. And the original mix of Freak Out is currently available not on the CD issue of Freak Out itself, which is an eighties remix, but on this "documentary" set. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just a quick note before I begin -- there are a couple of passing references in this episode to rape and child abuse. I don't believe there's anything that should upset anyone, but if you're worried, you might want to read the transcript on the podcast website before or instead of listening. But also, this episode contains explicit, detailed, descriptions of racial violence carried out by the police against Black people, including against children. Some of it is so distressing that even reading the transcript might be a bit much for some people. Sometimes, in this podcast, we have to go back to another story we've already told. In most cases, that story is recent enough that I can just say, "remember last episode, when I said...", but to tell the story of the Mothers of Invention, I have to start with a story that I told sixty-nine episodes ago, in episode seventy-one, which came out nearly two years ago. In that episode, on "Willie and the Hand Jive", I briefly told the story of Little Julian Herrera at the start. I'm going to tell a slightly longer version of the story now. Some of the information at the start of this episode will be familiar from that and other episodes, but I'm not going to expect people to remember something from that long ago, given all that's happened since. The DJ Art Laboe is one of the few figures from the dawn of rock and roll who is still working. At ninety-six years old, he still promotes concerts, and hosts a syndicated radio show on which he plays "Oldies but Goodies", a phrase which could describe him as well as the music. It's a phrase he coined -- and trademarked -- back in the 1950s, when people in his audience would ask him to play records made a whole three or four years earlier, records they had listened to in their youth. Laboe pretty much single-handedly invented the rock and roll nostalgia market -- as well as being a DJ, he owned a record label, Original Sound, which put out a series of compilation albums, Oldies But Goodies, starting in 1959, which started to cement the first draft of the doo-wop canon. These were the first albums to compile together a set of older rock and roll hits and market them for nostalgia, and they were very much based on the tastes of his West Coast teenage listenership, featuring songs like "Earth Angel" by the Penguins: [Excerpt: The Penguins, "Earth Angel"] But also records that had a more limited geographic appeal, like "Heaven and Paradise" by Don Julian and the Meadowlarks: [Excerpt: Don Julian and the Meadowlarks, "Heaven and Paradise"] As well as being a DJ and record company owner, Laboe was the promoter and MC for regular teenage dances at El Monte Legion Stadium, at which Kip and the Flips, the band that featured Sandy Nelson and Bruce Johnston, would back local performers like the Penguins, Don and Dewey, or Ritchie Valens, as well as visiting headliners like Jerry Lee Lewis. El Monte stadium was originally chosen because it was outside the LA city limits -- at the time there were anti-rock-and-roll ordinances that meant that any teenage dance had to be approved by the LA Board of Education, but those didn't apply to that stadium -- but it also led to Laboe's audience becoming more racially diverse. The stadium was in East LA, which had a large Mexican-American population, and while Laboe's listenership had initially been very white, soon there were substantial numbers of Mexican-American and Black audience members. And it was at one of the El Monte shows that Johnny Otis discovered the person who everyone thought was going to become the first Chicano rock star, before even Ritchie Valens, in 1957, performing as one of the filler acts on Laboe's bill. He signed Little Julian Herrera, a performer who was considered a sensation in East LA at the time, though nobody really knew where he lived, or knew much about him other than that he was handsome, Chicano, and would often have a pint of whisky in his back pocket, even though he was under the legal drinking age. Otis signed Herrera to his label, Dig Records, and produced several records for him, including the record by which he's now best remembered, "Those Lonely Lonely Nights": [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera, "Those Lonely, Lonely, Nights"] After those didn't take off the way they were expected to, Herrera and his vocal group the Tigers moved to another label, one owned by Laboe, where they recorded "I Remember Linda": [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, "I Remember Linda"]  And then one day Johnny Otis got a knock on his door from the police. They were looking for Ron Gregory. Otis had never heard of Ron Gregory, and told them so. The police then showed him a picture. It turned out that Julian Herrera wasn't Mexican-American, and wasn't from East LA, but was from Massachusetts. He had run away from home a few years back, hitch-hiked across the country, and been taken in by a Mexican-American family, whose name he had adopted. And now he was wanted for rape. Herrera went to prison, and when he got out, he tried to make a comeback, but ended up sleeping rough in the basement of the stadium where he had once been discovered. He had to skip town because of some other legal problems, and headed to Tijuana, where he was last seen playing R&B gigs in 1963. Nobody knows what happened to him after that -- some say he was murdered, others that he's still alive, working in a petrol station under yet another name, but nobody has had a confirmed sighting of him since then. When he went to prison, the Tigers tried to continue for a while, but without their lead singer, they soon broke up. Ray Collins, who we heard singing the falsetto part in "I Remember Linda", went on to join many other doo-wop and R&B groups over the next few years, with little success. Then in summer 1963, he walked into a bar in Ponoma, and saw a bar band who were playing the old Hank Ballard and the Midnighters song "Work With Me Annie". As Collins later put it, “I figured that any band that played ‘Work With Me Annie' was all right,” and he asked if he could join them for a few songs. They agreed, and afterwards, Collins struck up a conversation with the guitarist, and told him about an idea he'd had for a song based on one of Steve Allen's catchphrases. The guitarist happened to be spending a lot of his time recording at an independent recording studio, and suggested that the two of them record the song together: [Excerpt: Baby Ray and the Ferns, "How's Your Bird?"] The guitarist in question was named Frank Zappa. Zappa was originally from Maryland, but had moved to California as a child with his conservative Italian-American family when his father, a defence contractor, had got a job in Monterey. The family had moved around California with his father's work, mostly living in various small towns in the Mojave desert seventy miles or so north of Los Angeles. Young Frank had an interest in science, especially chemistry, and especially things that exploded, but while he managed to figure out the ingredients for gunpowder, his family couldn't afford to buy him a chemistry set in his formative years -- they were so poor that his father regularly took part in medical experiments to get a bit of extra money to feed his kids -- and so the young man's interest was diverted away from science towards music. His first musical interest, and one that would show up in his music throughout his life, was the comedy music of Spike Jones, whose band combined virtuosic instrumental performances with sound effects: [Excerpt: Spike Jones and his City Slickers, "Cocktails for Two"] and parodies of popular classical music [Excerpt: Spike Jones and his City Slickers, "William Tell Overture"] Jones was a huge inspiration for almost every eccentric or bohemian of the 1940s and 50s -- Spike Milligan, for example, took the name Spike in tribute to him. And young Zappa wrote his first ever fan letter to Jones when he was five or six. As a child Zappa was also fascinated by the visual aesthetics of music -- he liked to draw musical notes on staves and see what they looked like. But his musical interests developed in two other ways once he entered his teens. The first was fairly typical for the musicians of his generation from LA we've looked at and will continue to look at, which is that he heard "Gee" by the Crows on the radio: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] He became an R&B obsessive at that moment, and would spend every moment he could listening to the Black radio stations, despite his parents' disapproval. He particularly enjoyed Huggy Boy's radio show broadcast from Dolphins of Hollywood, and also would religiously listen to Johnny Otis, and soon became a connoisseur of the kind of R&B and blues that Otis championed as a musician and DJ: [Excerpt: Zappa on the Late Show, “I hadn't been raised in an environment where there was a lot of music in the house. This couple that owned the chilli place, Opal and Chester, agreed to ask the man who serviced the jukebox to put in some of the song titles that I liked, because I promised that I would dutifully keep pumping quarters into this thing so that I could listen to them, and so I had the ability to eat good chilli and listen to 'Three Hours Past Midnight' by Johnny 'Guitar' Watson for most of my junior and senior year"] Johnny “Guitar” Watson, along with Guitar Slim, would become a formative influence on Zappa's guitar playing, and his playing on "Three Hours Past Midnight" is so similar to Zappa's later style that you could easily believe it *was* him: [Excerpt: Johnny "Guitar" Watson, "Three Hours Past Midnight"] But Zappa wasn't only listening to R&B. The way Zappa would always tell the story, he discovered the music that would set him apart from his contemporaries originally by reading an article in Look magazine. Now, because Zappa has obsessive fans who check every detail, people have done the research and found that there was no such article in that magazine, but he was telling the story close enough to the time period in which it happened that its broad strokes, at least, must be correct even if the details are wrong. What Zappa said was that the article was on Sam Goody, the record salesman, and talked about how Goody was so good at his job that he had even been able to sell a record of Ionisation by Edgard Varese, which just consisted of the worst and most horrible noises anyone had ever heard, just loud drumming noises and screeching sounds. He determined then that he needed to hear that album, but he had no idea how he would get hold of a copy. I'll now read an excerpt from Zappa's autobiography, because Zappa's phrasing makes the story much better: "Some time later, I was staying overnight with Dave Franken, a friend who lived in La Mesa, and we wound up going to the hi-fi place -- they were having a sale on R&B singles. After shuffling through the rack and finding a couple of Joe Huston records, I made my way toward the cash register and happened to glance at the LP bin. I noticed a strange-looking black-and-white album cover with a guy on it who had frizzy gray hair and looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that a mad scientist had finally made a record, so I picked it up -- and there it was, the record with "Ionisation" on it. The author of the Look article had gotten it slightly wrong -- the correct title was The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume I, including "Ionisation," among other pieces, on an obscure label called EMS (Elaine Music Store). The record number was 401.I returned the Joe Huston records and checked my pockets to see how much money I had -- I think it came to about $3.75. I'd never bought an album before, but I knew they must be expensive because mostly old people bought them. I asked the man at the cash register how much EMS 401 cost. "That gray one in the box?" he said. "$5.95." I'd been searching for that record for over a year and I wasn't about to give up. I told him I had $3.75. He thought about it for a minute, and said, "We've been using that record to demonstrate hi-fi's with -- but nobody ever buys one when we use it. I guess if you want it that bad you can have it for $3.75."" Zappa took the record home, and put it on on his mother's record player in the living room, the only one that could play LPs: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ionisation"] His mother told him he could never play that record in the living room again, so he took the record player into his bedroom, and it became his record player from that point on. Varese was a French composer who had, in his early career, been very influenced by Debussy. Debussy is now, of course, part of the classical canon, but in the early twentieth century he was regarded as radical, almost revolutionary, for his complete rewriting of the rules of conventional classical music tonality into a new conception based on chordal melodies, pedal points, and use of non-diatonic scales. Almost all of Varese's early work was destroyed in a fire, so we don't have evidence of the transition from Debussy's romantic-influenced impressionism to Varese's later style, but after he had moved to the US in 1915 he had become wildly more experimental. "Ionisation" is often claimed to be the first piece of Western classical music written only for percussion instruments. Varese was part of a wider movement of modernist composers -- for example he was the best man at Nicolas Slonimsky's wedding -- and had also set up the International Composers' Guild, whose manifesto influenced Zappa, though his libertarian politics led him to adapt it to a more individualistic rather than collective framing. The original manifesto read in part "Dying is the privilege of the weary. The present day composers refuse to die. They have realized the necessity of banding together and fighting for the right of each individual to secure a fair and free presentation of his work" In the twenties and thirties, Varese had written a large number of highly experimental pieces, including Ecuatorial, which was written for bass vocal, percussion, woodwind, and two Theremin cellos. These are not the same as the more familiar Theremin, created by the same inventor, and were, as their name suggests, Theremins that were played like a cello, with a fingerboard and bow. Only ten of these were ever made, specifically for performances of Varese's work, and he later rewrote the work to use ondes martenot instead of Theremin cellos, which is how the work is normally heard now: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ecuatorial"] But Varese had spent much of the thirties, forties, and early fifties working on two pieces that were never finished, based on science fiction ideas -- L'Astronome, which was meant to be about communication with people from the star Sirius, and Espace, which was originally intended to be performed simultaneously by choirs in Beijing, Moscow, Paris, and New York. Neither of these ideas came to fruition, and so Varese had not released any new work, other than one small piece, Étude pour espace, an excerpt from the  larger work, in Zappa's lifetime. Zappa followed up his interest in Varese's music with his music teacher, one of the few people in the young man's life who encouraged him in his unusual interests. That teacher, Mr Kavelman, introduced Zappa to the work of other composers, like Webern, but would also let him know why he liked particular R&B records. For example, Zappa played Mr. Kavelman "Angel in My Life" by the Jewels, and asked what it was that made him particularly like it: [Excerpt: The Jewels, "Angel in My Life"] The teacher's answer was that it was the parallel fourths that made the record particularly appealing. Young Frank was such a big fan of Varese that for his fifteenth birthday, he actually asked if he could make a long-distance phone call to speak to Varese. He didn't know where Varese lived, but figured that it must be in Greenwich Village because that was where composers lived, and he turned out to be right. He didn't get through on his birthday -- he got Varese's wife, who told him the composer was in Europe -- but he did eventually get to speak to him, and was incredibly excited when Varese told him that not only had he just written a new piece for the first time in years, but that it was called Deserts, and was about deserts -- just like the Mojave Desert where Zappa lived: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Deserts"] As he later wrote, “When you're 15 and living in the Mojave Desert, and you find out that the World's Greatest Composer (who also looks like a mad scientist) is working in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory on a song about your hometown (so to speak), you can get pretty excited.” A year later, Zappa actually wrote to Varese, a long letter which included him telling the story about how he'd found his work in the first place, hoping to meet up with him when Zappa travelled to the East Coast to see family. I'll read out a few extracts, but the whole thing is fascinating for what it says about Zappa the precocious adolescent, and I'll link to a blog post with it in the show notes. "Dear Sir: Perhaps you might remember me from my stupid phone call last January, if not, my name again is Frank Zappa Jr. I am 16 years old… that might explain partly my disturbing you last winter. After I had struggled through Mr. Finklestein's notes on the back cover (I really did struggle too, for at the time I had had no training in music other than practice at drum rudiments) I became more and more interested in you and your music. I began to go to the library and take out books on modern composers and modern music, to learn all I could about Edgard Varese. It got to be my best subject (your life) and I began writing my reports and term papers on you at school. At one time when my history teacher asked us to write on an American that has really done something for the U.S.A. I wrote on you and the Pan American Composers League and the New Symphony. I failed. The teacher had never heard of you and said I made the whole thing up. Silly but true. That was my Sophomore year in high school. Throughout my life all the talents and abilities that God has left me with have been self developed, and when the time came for Frank to learn how to read and write music, Frank taught himself that too. I picked it all up from the library. I have been composing for two years now, utilizing a strict twelve-tone technique, producing effects that are reminiscent of Anton Webern. During those two years I have written two short woodwind quartets and a short symphony for winds, brass and percussion. I plan to go on and be a composer after college and I could really use the counsel of a veteran such as you. If you would allow me to visit with you for even a few hours it would be greatly appreciated. It may sound strange but I think I have something to offer you in the way of new ideas. One is an elaboration on the principle of Ruth Seeger's contrapuntal dynamics and the other is an extension of the twelve-tone technique which I call the inversion square. It enables one to compose harmonically constructed pantonal music in logical patterns and progressions while still abandoning tonality. Varese sent a brief reply, saying that he was going to be away for a few months, but would like to meet Zappa on his return. The two never met, but Zappa kept the letter from Varese framed on his wall for the rest of his life. Zappa soon bought a couple more albums, a version of "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky: [Excerpt: Igor Stravinsky, "The Rite of Spring"] And a record of pieces by Webern, including his Symphony opus 21: [Excerpt: Anton Webern, "Symphony op. 21"] (Incidentally, with the classical music here, I'm not seeking out the precise performances Zappa was listening to, just using whichever recordings I happen to have copies of). Zappa was also reading Slonimsky's works of musicology, like the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. As well as this "serious music" though, Zappa was also developing as an R&B musician.  He later said of the Webern album, "I loved that record, but it was about as different from Stravinsky and Varèse as you could get. I didn't know anything about twelve-tone music then, but I liked the way it sounded. Since I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels (who had a song out then called "Angel in My Life"), or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music." He had started as a drummer with a group called the Blackouts, an integrated group with white, Latino, and Black members, who played R&B tracks like "Directly From My Heart to You", the song Johnny Otis had produced for Little Richard: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Directly From My Heart to You"] But after eighteen months or so, he quit the group and stopped playing drums. Instead, he switched to guitar, with a style influenced by Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Guitar Slim. His first guitar had action so bad that he didn't learn to play chords, and moved straight on to playing lead lines with his younger brother Bobby playing rhythm. He also started hanging around with two other teenage bohemians -- Euclid Sherwood, who was nicknamed Motorhead, and Don Vliet, who called himself Don Van Vliet. Vliet was a truly strange character, even more so than Zappa, but they shared a love for the blues, and Vliet was becoming a fairly good blues singer, though he hadn't yet perfected the Howlin' Wolf imitation that would become his stock-in-trade in later years. But the surviving recording of Vliet singing with the Zappa brothers on guitar, singing a silly parody blues about being flushed down the toilet of the kind that many teenage boys would write, shows the promise that the two men had: [Excerpt: Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, "Lost in a Whirlpool"] Zappa was also getting the chance to hear his more serious music performed. He'd had the high school band play a couple of his pieces, but he also got the chance to write film music -- his English teacher, Don Cerveris, had decided to go off and seek his fortune as a film scriptwriter, and got Zappa hired to write the music for a cheap Western he'd written, Run Home Slow. The film was beset with problems -- it started filming in 1959 but didn't get finished and released until 1965 -- but the music Zappa wrote for it did eventually get recorded and used on the soundtrack: [Excerpt: Frank Zappa, "Run Home Slow Theme"] In 1962, he got to write the music for another film, The World's Greatest Sinner, and he also wrote a theme song for that, which got released as the B-side of "How's Your Bird?", the record he made with Ray Collins: [Excerpt: Baby Ray and the Ferns, "The World's Greatest Sinner"] Zappa was able to make these records because by the early sixties, as well as playing guitar in bar bands, he was working as an assistant for a man named Paul Buff. Paul Buff had worked as an engineer for a guided missile manufacturer, but had decided that he didn't want to do that any more, and instead had opened up the first independent multi-track recording studio on the West Coast, PAL Studios, using equipment he'd designed and built himself, including a five-track tape recorder. Buff engineered a huge number of surf instrumentals there, including "Wipe Out" by the Surfaris: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Wipe Out"] Zappa had first got to know Buff when he had come to Buff's studio with some session musicians in 1961, to record some jazz pieces he'd written, including this piece which at the time was in the style of Dave Brubeck but would later become a staple of Zappa's repertoire reorchestrated in a  rock style. [Excerpt: The PAL Studio Band, "Never on Sunday"] Buff really just wanted to make records entirely by himself, so he'd taught himself to play the rudiments of guitar, bass, drums, piano, and alto saxophone, so he could create records alone. He would listen to every big hit record, figure out what the hooks were on the record, and write his own knock-off of those. An example is "Tijuana Surf" by the Hollywood Persuaders, which is actually Buff on all instruments, and which according to Zappa went to number one in Mexico (though I've not found an independent source to confirm that chart placing, so perhaps take it with a pinch of salt): [Excerpt: The Hollywood Persuaders, "Tijuana Surf"] The B-side to that, "Grunion Run", was written by Zappa, who also plays guitar on that side: [Excerpt: The Hollywood Persuaders, "Grunion Run"] Zappa, Buff, Ray Collins, and a couple of associates would record all sorts of material at PAL -- comedy material like "Hey Nelda", under the name "Ned and Nelda" -- a parody of "Hey Paula" by Paul and Paula: [Excerpt: Ned and Nelda, "Hey Nelda"] Doo-wop parodies like "Masked Grandma": [Excerpt: The PAL Studio Band, "Masked Grandma"] R&B: [Excerpt: The PAL Studio Band, "Why Don't You Do Me Right?"] and more. Then Buff or Zappa would visit one of the local independent label owners and try to sell them the master -- Art Laboe at Original Sound released several of the singles, as did Bob Keane at Donna Records and Del-Fi. The "How's Your Bird" single also got Zappa his first national media exposure, as he went on the Steve Allen show, where he demonstrated to Allen how to make music using a bicycle and a prerecorded electronic tape, in an appearance that Zappa would parody five years later on the Monkees' TV show: [Excerpt: Steve Allen and Frank Zappa, "Cyclophony"] But possibly the record that made the most impact at the time was "Memories of El Monte", a song that Zappa and Collins wrote together about Art Laboe's dances at El Monte Stadium, incorporating excerpts of several of the songs that would be played there, and named after a compilation Laboe had put out, which had included “I Remember Linda” by Little Julian and the Tigers. They got Cleve Duncan of the Penguins to sing lead, and the record came out as by the Penguins, on Original Sound: [Excerpt: The Penguins, "Memories of El Monte"] By this point, though, Pal studios was losing money, and Buff took up the offer of a job working for Laboe full time, as an engineer at Original Sound. He would later become best known for inventing the kepex, an early noise gate which engineer Alan Parsons used on a bass drum to create the "heartbeat" that opens Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon: [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Speak to Me"] That invention would possibly be Buff's most lasting contribution to music, as by the early eighties, the drum sound on every single pop record was recorded using a noise gate. Buff sold the studio to Zappa, who renamed it Studio Z and moved in -- he was going through a divorce and had nowhere else to live. The studio had no shower, and Zappa had to just use a sink to wash, and he was surviving mostly off food scrounged by his resourceful friend Motorhead Sherwood. By this point, Zappa had also joined a band called the Soots, consisting of Don Van Vliet, Alex St. Clair and Vic Mortenson, and they recorded several tracks at Studio Z, which they tried to get released on Dot Records, including a cover version of Little Richard's “Slippin' and Slidin'”, and a song called “Tiger Roach” whose lyrics were mostly random phrases culled from a Green Lantern comic: [Excerpt: The Soots, "Tiger Roach"] Zappa also started writing what was intended as the first ever rock opera, "I Was a Teenage Maltshop", and attempts were made to record parts of it with Vliet, Mortenson, and Motorhead Sherwood: [Excerpt: Frank Zappa, "I Was a Teenage Maltshop"] Zappa was also planning to turn Studio Z into a film studio. He obtained some used film equipment, and started planning a science fiction film to feature Vliet, titled "Captain Beefheart Meets the Grunt People". The title was inspired by an uncle of Vliet's, who lived with Vliet and his girlfriend, and used to urinate with the door open so he could expose himself to Vliet's girlfriend, saying as he did so "Look at that! Looks just like a big beef heart!" Unfortunately, the film would not get very far. Zappa was approached by a used-car salesman who said that he and his friends were having a stag party. As Zappa owned a film studio, could he make them a pornographic film to show at the party? Zappa told him that a film wouldn't be possible, but as he needed the money, would an audio tape be acceptable? The used-car salesman said that it would, and gave him a list of sex acts he and his friends would like to hear. Zappa and a friend, Lorraine Belcher, went into the studio and made a few grunting noises and sound effects. The used-car salesman turned out actually to be an undercover policeman, who was better known in the area for his entrapment of gay men, but had decided to branch out. Zappa and Belcher were arrested -- Zappa's father bailed him out, and Zappa got an advance from Art Laboe to pay Belcher's bail. Luckily "Grunion Run" and "Memories of El Monte" were doing well enough that Laboe could give Zappa a $1500 advance. When the case finally came to trial, the judge laughed at the tape and wanted to throw the whole case out, but the prosecutor insisted on fighting, and Zappa got ten days in prison, and most of his tapes were impounded, never to be returned. He fell behind with his rent, and Studio Z was demolished. And then Ray Collins called him, asking if he wanted to join a bar band: [Excerpt: The Mothers, "Hitch-Hike"] The Soul Giants were formed by a bass player named Roy Estrada. Now, Estrada is unfortunately someone who will come up in the story a fair bit over the next year or so, as he played on several of the most important records to come out of LA in the sixties and early seventies. He is also someone about whom there's fairly little biographical information -- he's not been interviewed much, compared to pretty much everyone else, and it's easy to understand why when you realise that he's currently half-way through a twenty-five year sentence for child molestation -- his third such conviction. He won't get out of prison until he's ninety-three. He's one of the most despicable people who will turn up in this podcast, and frankly I'm quite glad I don't know more about him as a person. He was, though, a good bass player and falsetto singer, and he had released a single on King Records, an instrumental titled "Jungle Dreams": [Excerpt, Roy Estrada and the Rocketeers, "Jungle Dreams"] The other member of the rhythm section, Jimmy Carl Black, was an American Indian (that's the term he always used about himself until his death, and so that's the term I'll use about him too) from Texas. Black had grown up in El Paso as a fan of Western Swing music, especially Bob Wills, but had become an R&B fan after discovering Wolfman Jack's radio show and hearing the music of Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. Like every young man from El Paso, he would travel to Juarez as a teenager to get drunk, see sex shows, and raise hell. It was also there that he saw his first live blues music, watching Long John Hunter, the same man who inspired the Bobby Fuller Four, and he would always claim Hunter as the man whose shows taught him how to play the blues. Black had decided he wanted to become a musician when he'd seen Elvis perform live. In Black's memory, this was a gig where Elvis was an unknown support act for Faron Young and Wanda Jackson, but he was almost certainly slightly misremembering -- it's most likely that what he saw was Elvis' show in El Paso on the eleventh of April 1956, where Young and Jackson were also on the bill, but supporting Elvis who was headlining. Either way, Black had decided that he wanted to make girls react to him the same way they reacted to Elvis, and he started playing in various country and R&B bands. His first record was with a group called the Keys, and unfortunately I haven't been able to track down a copy (it was reissued on a CD in the nineties, but the CD itself is now out of print and sells for sixty pounds) but he did rerecord the song with a later group he led, the Mannish Boys: [Excerpt: Jimmy Carl Black and the Mannish Boys, "Stretch Pants"] He spent a couple of years in the Air Force, but continued playing music during that time, including in a band called The Exceptions which featured Peter Cetera later of the band Chicago, on bass. After a brief time working as lineman in Wichita, he moved his family to California, where he got a job teaching drums at a music shop in Anaheim, where the bass teacher was Jim Fielder, who would later play bass in Blood, Sweat, and Tears. One of Fielder's friends, Tim Buckley, used to hang around in the shop as well, and Black was at first irritated by him coming in and playing the guitars and not buying anything, but eventually became impressed by his music. Black would later introduce Buckley to Herb Cohen, who would become Buckley's manager, starting his professional career. When Roy Estrada came into the shop, he and Black struck up a friendship, and Estrada asked Black to join his band The Soul Giants, whose lineup became Estrada, Black, a sax player named Davey Coronado, a guitarist called Larry and a singer called Dave. The group got a residency at the Broadside club in Ponoma, playing "Woolly Bully" and "Louie Louie" and other garage-band staples. But then Larry and Dave got drafted, and the group got in two men called Ray -- Ray Collins on vocals, and Ray Hunt on guitar. This worked for a little while, but Ray Hunt was, by all accounts, not a great guitar player -- he would play wrong chords, and also he was fundamentally a surf player while the Soul Giants were an R&B group. Eventually, Collins and Hunt got into a fistfight, and Collins suggested that they get in his friend Frank instead. For a while, the Soul Giants continued playing "Midnight Hour" and "Louie Louie", but then Zappa suggested that they start playing some of his original material as well. Davy Coronado refused to play original material, because he thought, correctly, that it would lose the band gigs, but the rest of the band sided with the man who had quickly become their new leader. Coronado moved back to Texas, and on Mother's Day 1965 the Soul Giants changed their name to the Mothers. They got in Henry Vestine on second guitar, and started playing Zappa's originals, as well as changing the lyrics to some of the hits they were playing: [Excerpt: The Mothers, "Plastic People"] Zappa had started associating with the freak crowd in Hollywood centred around Vito and Franzoni, after being introduced by Don Cerveris, his old teacher turned screenwriter, to an artist called Mark Cheka, who Zappa invited to manage the group. Cheka in turn brought in his friend Herb Cohen, who managed several folk acts including the Modern Folk Quartet and Judy Henske, and who like Zappa had once been arrested on obscenity charges, in Cohen's case for promoting gigs by the comedian Lenny Bruce. Cohen first saw the Mothers when they were recording their appearance in an exploitation film called Mondo Hollywood. They were playing in a party scene, using equipment borrowed from Jim Guercio, a session musician who would briefly join the Mothers, but who is now best known for having been Chicago's manager and producing hit records for them and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. In the crowd were Vito and Franzoni, Bryan Maclean, Ram Dass, the Harvard psychologist who had collaborated with Timothy Leary in controversial LSD experiments that had led to both losing their jobs, and other stalwarts of the Sunset Strip scene. Cohen got the group bookings at the Whisky A-Go-Go and The Trip, two of the premier LA nightclubs, and Zappa would also sit in with other bands playing at those venues, like the Grass Roots, a band featuring Bryan Maclean and Arthur Lee which would soon change its name to Love. At this time Zappa and Henry Vestine lived together, next door to a singer named Victoria Winston, who at the time was in a duo called Summer's Children with Curt Boettcher: [Excerpt: Summer's Children, "Milk and Honey"] Winston, like Zappa, was a fan of Edgard Varese, and actually asked Zappa to write songs for Summer's Children, but one of the partners involved in their production company disliked Zappa's material and the collaboration went no further. Zappa at this point was trying to incorporate more ideas from modal jazz into his music. He was particularly impressed by Eric Dolphy's 1964 album "Out to Lunch": [Excerpt: Eric Dolphy, "Hat and Beard"] But he was also writing more about social issues, and in particular he had written a song called "The Watts Riots Song", which would later be renamed "Trouble Every Day": [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Trouble Every Day"] Now, the Watts Uprising was one of the most important events in Black American history, and it feels quite wrong that I'm covering it in an episode about a band made up of white, Latino, and American Indian people rather than a record made by Black people, but I couldn't find any way to fit it in anywhere else. As you will remember me saying in the episode on "I Fought the Law", the LA police under Chief William Parker were essentially a criminal gang by any other name -- they were incompetent, violent, and institutionally racist, and terrorised Black people. The Black people of LA were also feeling particularly aggrieved in the summer of 1965, as a law banning segregation in housing had been overturned by a ballot proposition in November 1964, sponsored by the real estate industry and passed by an overwhelming majority of white voters in what Martin Luther King called "one of the most shameful developments in our nation's history", and which Edmund Brown, the Democratic governor said was like "another hate binge which began more than 30 years ago in a Munich beer hall". Then on Wednesday, August 11, 1965, the police pulled over a Black man, Marquette Frye, for drunk driving. He had been driving his mother's car, and she lived nearby, and she came out to shout at him about drinking and driving. The mother, Rena Price, was hit by one of the policemen; Frye then physically attacked one of the police for hitting his mother, one of the police pulled out a gun, a crowd gathered, the police became violent against the crowd, a rumour spread that they had kicked a pregnant woman, and the resulting protests were exacerbated by the police carrying out what Chief Parker described as a "paramiltary" response. The National Guard were called in, huge swathes of south central LA were cordoned off by the police with signs saying things like "turn left or get shot". Black residents started setting fire to and looting local white-owned businesses that had been exploiting Black workers and customers, though this looting was very much confined to individuals who were known to have made the situation worse. Eventually it took six days for the uprising to be put down, at a cost of thirty-four deaths, 1032 injuries, and 3438 arrests. Of the deaths, twenty-three were Black civilians murdered by the police, and zero were police murdered by Black civilians (two police were killed by other police, in accidental shootings). The civil rights activist Bayard Rustin said of the uprising, "The whole point of the outbreak in Watts was that it marked the first major rebellion of Negroes against their own masochism and was carried on with the express purpose of asserting that they would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life." Frank Zappa's musical hero Johnny Otis would later publish the book Listen to the Lambs about the Watts rebellion, and in it he devotes more than thirty pages to eyewitness accounts from Black people. It's an absolutely invaluable resource. One of the people Otis interviews is Lily Ford, who is described by my copy of the book as being the "lead singer of the famous Roulettes". This is presumably an error made by the publishers, rather than Otis, because Ford was actually a singer with the Raelettes, as in Ray Charles' vocal group. She also recorded with Otis under the name "Lily of the Valley": [Excerpt: Lily of the Valley, "I Had a Sweet Dream"] Now, Ford's account deserves a large excerpt, but be warned, this is very, very difficult to hear. I gave a content warning at the beginning, but I'm going to give another one here. "A lot of our people were in the street, seeing if they could get free food and clothes and furniture, and some of them taking liquor too. But the white man was out for blood. Then three boys came down the street, laughing and talking. They were teenagers, about fifteen or sixteen years old. As they got right at the store they seemed to debate whether they would go inside. One boy started a couple of times to go. Finally he did. Now a cop car finally stops to investigate. Police got out of the car. Meanwhile, the other two boys had seen them coming and they ran. My brother-in-law and I were screaming and yelling for the boy to get out. He didn't hear us, or was too scared to move. He never had a chance. This young cop walked up to the broken window and looked in as the other one went round the back and fired some shots and I just knew he'd killed the other two boys, but I guess he missed. He came around front again. By now other police cars had come. The cop at the window aimed his gun. He stopped and looked back at a policeman sitting in a car. He aimed again. No shot. I tried to scream, but I was so horrified that nothing would come out of my throat. The third time he aimed he yelled, "Halt", and fired before the word was out of his mouth. Then he turned around and made a bull's-eye sign with his fingers to his partner. Just as though he had shot a tin can off a fence, not a human being. The cops stood around for ten or fifteen minutes without going inside to see if the kid was alive or dead. When the ambulance came, then they went in. They dragged him out like he was a sack of potatoes. Cops were everywhere now. So many cops for just one murder." [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Trouble Every Day"] There's a lot more of this sort of account in Otis' book, and it's all worth reading -- indeed, I would argue that it is *necessary* reading. And Otis keeps making a point which I quoted back in the episode on "Willie and the Hand Jive" but which I will quote again here -- “A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference”. (Just a reminder, the word “Negro” which Otis uses there was, in the mid-sixties, the term of choice used by Black people.) And it's this which inspired "The Watts Riot Song", which the Mothers were playing when Tom Wilson was brought into The Trip by Herb Cohen: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Trouble Every Day"] Wilson had just moved from Columbia, where he'd been producing Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel, to Verve, a subsidiary of MGM which was known for jazz records but was moving into rock and roll. Wilson was looking for a white blues band, and thought he'd found one. He signed the group without hearing any other songs. Henry Vestine quit the group between the signing and the first recording, to go and join an *actual* white blues band, Canned Heat, and over the next year the group's lineup would fluctuate quite a bit around the core of Zappa, Collins, Estrada, and Black, with members like Steve Mann, Jim Guercio, Jim Fielder, and Van Dyke Parks coming and going, often without any recordings being made of their performances. The lineup on what became the group's first album, Freak Out! was Zappa, Collins, Estrada, Black, and Elliot Ingber, the former guitarist with the Gamblers, who had joined the group shortly before the session and would leave within a few months. The first track the group recorded, "Any Way the Wind Blows", was straightforward enough: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Any Way the Wind Blows"] The second song, a "Satisfaction" knock-off called "Hungry Freaks Daddy", was also fine. But it was when the group performed their third song of the session, "Who Are The Brain Police?", that Tom Wilson realised that he didn't have a standard band on his hands: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Who Are the Brain Police?"] Luckily for everyone concerned, Tom Wilson was probably the single best producer in America to have discovered the Mothers. While he was at the time primarily known for his folk-rock productions, he had built his early career on Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra records, some of the freakiest jazz of the fifties and early sixties. He knew what needed to be done -- he needed a bigger budget. Far from being annoyed that he didn't have the white blues band he wanted, Wilson actively encouraged the group to go much, much further. He brought in Wrecking Crew members to augment the band (though one of them. Mac Rebennack, found the music so irritating he pretended he needed to go to the toilet, walked out, and never came back). He got orchestral musicians to play Zappa's scores, and allowed the group to rent hundreds of dollars of percussion instruments for the side-long track "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet", which features many Hollywood scenesters of the time, including Van Dyke Parks, Kim Fowley, future Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil, record executive David Anderle, songwriter P.F. Sloan, and cartoonist Terry Gilliam, all recording percussion parts and vocal noises: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet"] Such was Wilson's belief in the group that Freak Out! became only the second rock double album ever released -- exactly a week after the first, Blonde on Blonde, by Wilson's former associate Bob Dylan. The inner sleeve included a huge list of people who had influenced the record in one way or another, including people Zappa knew like Don Cerveris, Don Vliet, Paul Buff, Bob Keane, Nik Venet, and Art Laboe,  musicians who had influenced the group like Don & Dewey, Johnny Otis, Otis' sax players Preston Love and Big Jay McNeely, Eric Dolphy, Edgard Varese, Richard Berry, Johnny Guitar Watson, and Ravi Shankar, eccentric performers like Tiny Tim, DJs like Hunter Hancock and Huggy Boy, science fiction writers like Cordwainer Smith and Robert Sheckley, and scenesters like David Crosby, Vito, and Franzoni. The list of 179 people would provide a sort of guide for many listeners, who would seek out those names and find their ways into the realms of non-mainstream music, writing, and art over the next few decades. Zappa would always remain grateful to Wilson for taking his side in the record's production, saying "Wilson was sticking his neck out. He laid his job on the line by producing the album. MGM felt that they had spent too much money on the album". The one thing Wilson couldn't do, though, was persuade the label that the group's name could stay as it was. "The Mothers" was a euphemism, for a word I can't say if I want this podcast to keep its clean rating, a word that is often replaced in TV clean edits of films with "melon farmers", and MGM were convinced that the radio would never play any music by a band with that name -- not realising that that wouldn't be the reason this music wouldn't get played on the radio. The group needed to change their name. And so, out of necessity, they became the Mothers of Invention.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of all the great albums released in 1971, we visit this seminal year in music history to make our own Definitive, yes Definitive, compilation album (now available at Media Play and Sam Goody record stores nationwide).

This was originally slated to be a two part episode but the guys got excited and decided to discuss both episodes, ‘The Client Part one' and ‘What's Will Got to Do With It'. This week we learn the guys sold knives in college. Levi gives us insight on record advances and all that comes with the money. The guys spend time reminiscing on record stores and JET magazine. They also discuss the difficulties being artist.

Nick Cearley and Lauren Molina stop by to chat about their musical duo: The Skivvies where they perform with Broadway stars in their undies. We also chat about our first cds bought at Sam Goody, first kisses, what it was like to work with Patti LuPone and their top 5 artists they'd want to see in concert!  @TMurray06 @TheSkivvies To support this podcast and hear bonus interview with the Skivvies: www.patreon.com/TMurray06

We've come a long way from the days when we browsed the shelves of HMV and Sam Goody or asked the record store dude what albums to buy. Radio play and late night talk shows still connect artists to new fans, but these are quickly becoming the old way to find new stuff. Beatseeker explores the changing world of music discovery. While there are plenty of podcasts about new music, Beatseeker digs into the ways people find new artists and their songs - and the ways they find us. From record store gurus and the Hot 100 to today's high-tech playlist algorithms and viral TikToks, Hosted by Matt McButter & Mike Weider, Beatseeker is in development, launching in 2021. Join us each week for in-depth discussions with artists, technologists and industry insiders as we explore the past, present and future of music discovery.

Ah, the 90's.  The days of our youth!  A familiar decade, but an unfamiliar album.  How is it possible that we didn't pick this one up on CD at Sam Goody?  Make sure you have a blank Memorex cassette in your boombox so you can press record as soon as the podcast starts!

Our love for Jennifer Lopez might cost more than we expected it to, as our affinity for the age-defying diva is tested this week while revisiting her 20-year-old sophomore album, “J.Lo.” We do a deep dive into hits like “Love Don’t Cost a Thing”, “Play” and “I’m Real - Murder Remix” while going on tangents about J.Lo’s acting, Kings of Leon lead singer Caleb Followill’s voice, and the innocent days of going to Sam Goody to buy an album just to listen to one song. Anybody else miss that shit? Of course you do. That’s why you’re listening to our show! SUBSCRIBE on APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-it-still-good/id1515612993 FOLLOW on SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/7oIVovp0nftRALm2Cr47zL?si=pemjgEuvTkGaG_B40Fxj8A Website: http://stillgoodshow.com Instagram: @stillgoodshow

If it was 1997 you wouldn't be listening to this episode, but neither would the modern day folks who are stuck in the past, in Diana's TV show pitch this week. Join us in a different 2021, where Sears and Sam Goody are still the kings of the mall, and a cellphone require a briefcase and upper body strength to operate.

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Ever walk through a bookstore and not really know what you want, and while you're browsing you find a book that catches your interest enough to buy it? That same thing happened to me a lot when walking through Tower or Full Circle or Sam Goody. Usually I'd go into a store knowing exactly what I wanted, and needing to get it NOW or I'd start to itch. Sometimes I'd browse new shit and feel the urge to throw a curve ball into my collection. I've always been restless for the new, and never want to miss out on something that might change my way of thinking about music, or at least make me feel good listening to it. Some of those finds ended up becoming lifelong love affairs. Others were one-time fancies that I was so glad I took the time to discover. And a small handful of others were total duds that felt like wasted time & money – YES I take this music shit seriously

In our final episode of the malliday season, Baron Vaughn zooms in to talk Las Vegas malls and Steve Madden dress shoes. We cover animatronics shows, indoor fountains, casino arcades, casino movie theaters, working at Sam Goody in the age of Dido, Steve Madden's son Stevie Madden and lots more. Plus, a special Roger's Gardens Christmas edition of The Price is No Object. FOLLOW BARON: https://www.instagram.com/barvonblaq/ https://twitter.com/barvonblaq FOLLOW MALL TALK: https://www.instagram.com/malltalkpod  https://twitter.com/malltalkpod  JOIN THE MALL TALK PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/malltalkpod/ BUY MALL TALK MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/malltalkpodcast

It's Friday, so logic indicates that it is time for another FoTR! In this episode, I am joined by one of the most prolific members of the social media Beatles world, plus my first guest with a TikTok page, Caitlin Larkin! We cover a lot of ground in this relatively short (sort-of) interview, like the rite of passage of any Beatles fan of journeying over to Liverpool, the whereabouts of the original Magical Mystery Tour bus, a proverbial tour of the "secret" Beatles corridor at the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, temper tantrums at Sam Goody, dealing with price gouging at record stores, Funko Pops, buying CD box sets for almost the exclusive purpose of decoration, taking Beatles tours from other former FoTR guests, staying up late as a kid to watch "The Beatles Anthology", and the strange allure of a Beatles cease and desist! This episode is available to stream wherever good podcasts can be heard! Caitlin’s links:https://www.youtube.com/c/CaitlinLarkinhttps://twitter.com/caitlinlarkinhttps://www.facebook.com/WhatTheFluxPod/ Follow us elsewhere:https://www.instagram.com/fansontherunpodcasthttps://www.facebook.com/fansontherunpodcasthttps://twitter.com/fansontherunpodhttps://fansontherun.podbean.com/ 

The most popular question on the internet right now is... name a store to show us how old you are! (Sam Goody & Blockbuster anyone?) We also take a trip down memory lane, reminiscing about our first job, our first trip to the mall without our parents, and prom! Join us, and if you feel a little old afterwards... our bad :)

It's FoTR friday once again, celebrations all around! On this episode, I'm joined by the author of "Postcards From Liverpool: Beatles Moments & Memories", Mark Brickley, for an all out session of Beatle geekdom (you wouldn't expect any less from this show, wouldn't you?) Among the conversational places we upon on are the the Beatles' stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a chance interview with Jackie Lomax, the Beatles record collecting scene, the evolution between single releases by the Fabs, "the pinacle of rock music" on side two of Abbey Road, seeing Cream live in the late 60s, the uniqueness of The Byrds, the late Sam Goody and Tower Records chains, Pete Best's sharp tounge, and so, so much more! This episode is available to stream wherever good podcasts can be heard! Buy Mark's book "Postcards From Liverpool: Beatles Moments & Memories": http://www.postcardsfromliverpool.com/  Follow us elsewhere: https://www.instagram.com/fansontherunpodcast https://www.facebook.com/fansontherunpodcast https://twitter.com/fansontherunpod https://fansontherun.podbean.com/

In the early days of independent record stores, if you grew up in New Jersey's Middlesex, Union or Essex counties during the 1970s, 80s or 90s, chances are you shopped at Little Joe Records, Dot Records or J&J Records where you could find all of those good things you couldn't get at your local boring and predictable Sam Goody. Childhood friend Joe Gerulski joins the show for Episode 61 to share some great music-related stories and talk about growing up in the family-run business selling records in an age when records were still the biggest-selling musical format and rock music was still at peak popularity. We also get into the inevitable discussion that never really goes away for too long on our show...80s metal. A fun blast through the past that moves along much too quickly. Mike Derrico and Pat Ivanitski are your hosts.   As a rock and roll podcast, Rock Under Fire makes it a point not to focus on any one particular artist, band, or genre of music, but with that comes the reality that the show may not always appeal to everyone at the same time. The seven decades of rock and roll music along with its even longer history leaves an extremely broad canvas to create discussions on, drawing from different areas with each episode. So there is still always something for everyone.   In past episodes we've discussed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Prince, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Kiss, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, The Who, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, Doo Wop, The Beach Boys, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Steely Dan, The Strokes, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, The Doors, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Jimi Hendrix, Metallica, Guns n Roses, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Velvet Underground, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Cars, Cheap Trick, Heart, Dave Grohl, Jack White, digital streaming, the state of the music industry and record labels, the effect of rap and hip hop on rock, Neil Young, Talking Heads, Counting Crows, Boston, The Temptations, Bon Jovi, AC/DC, the Smithereens, Suzanne Vega, Van Halen, Rick Rubin, The Gun Club, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, The Mekons, UFO, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Chuck Klosterman, John Philip Sousa, Billy Joel, The Wipers, Iron Maiden, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Waits, Thin Lizzy, the Bee Gees, Mozart, Beethoven, Puccini, Bob Marley, 5 Seconds of Summer, Twenty One Pilots, Ed Sheeran, J Geils Band, Billy Miller, Chris Cornell, Turn Me On Dead Man, the Desert Trip concerts, aging rock stars, our favorite debut albums, soundtracks, music licensing, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, disco vs. rock, Ticketmaster, Tom Petty, and most overrated and underrated artists. We've also been joined by special guests such as, author and photographers Bob Gruen, STARZ guitarist Richie Ranno, Joe Long of the Four Seasons, Lydia Criss, author and pop culture critic Alice Echols, writer and director Michael Lee Nirenberg, original MTV VJ Nina Blackwood, author Robert Duncan and Judas Priest legend KK Downing.   https://derricountitled.com/ http://rockunderfire.com/ https://www.facebook.com/njcardsharks/ "Bad News" is written and performed by Live Animals of NJ

This installment of The High Expectations Podcast covers the college and pro football weekend, talks about postseason basketball and baseball, and ventures out of the sports world for a minute to review the newest hot album to drop. Thanks to all of our listeners and please support our sponsors! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whhe/support

Born in America and raised in Bahia Brazil... award winning writer, director R.L. Scott has to date produced seven feature films and a large number of shorts. Before the internet was invented, he began his journey as a filmmaker at age 15, writing, directing, shooting and choreographing action scenes (on Betamax) with his friends. His motivation for becoming a visual storyteller, was to show the world the beauty, intelligence, strength and uniqueness of his culture To date, R.L. has worked with the likes of such talent as Bill Cobbs, Costas Mandylor, Harry Lennix, Richard Gant, Sean Riggs, Victoria Rowell, Darrin Dewitt Henson, Karrueche Tran, Amin Joseph, Nicki Micheaux, Robert Miano, Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones, Alimi Ballard, R&B Superstar Mya and many others. His movies have been released theatrically in North America, Korea and Africa, as well as streaming on global platforms like Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, TV One, Playstation, Xbox and Sky... and even as far back as Blockbuster video, Hollywood video, Sam Goody, Tower Records and more. With his new feature film "Lazarus," R.L. has begun his quest to create "Wonder Studios" a new superhero universe, populated by vast and diverse heroes of every race and creed. “We learn about this and more on “Behind The Real”. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/aaron-d-king/support

Nostalgia is a popular topic on the Jittery Monkey and Positive Cynicism podcast networks. This episode of the Power Half Hour continues that trend. Greg and Chad look at mall culture and how technology has killed off the thrill of grabbing an Orange Julius and looking through rows of cassettes and CDs at Sam Goody’s. … Continue reading POWER HALF HOUR EP. 37: ROSE COLORED GLASSES → The post POWER HALF HOUR EP. 37: ROSE COLORED GLASSES appeared first on Jittery Monkey Podcasting Network.

Nostalgia is a popular topic on the Jittery Monkey and Positive Cynicism podcast networks. This episode of the Power Half Hour continues that trend. Greg and Chad look at mall culture and how technology has killed off the thrill of grabbing an Orange Julius and looking through rows of cassettes and CDs at Sam Goody’s. … Continue reading POWER HALF HOUR EP. 37: ROSE COLORED GLASSES → The post POWER HALF HOUR EP. 37: ROSE COLORED GLASSES appeared first on Greg and Chad's Power Half Hour.

Returning to various interests from my childhood, reading Stephen King's "Misery" at eight years old, the virtues of Rich Vreeland (a.k.a. Disasterpeace - the composer of our theme music), creativity as a tool to explore the taboo, the anachronism of individualism in art, the case for "Coriolanus" as Shakespeare's best B-side, looking for lighter fare in entertainment recently, the cognitive dissonance of @CartNarcs, and the cast of creative co-workers from one of my first jobs at Sam Goody (a defunct music retail store) in the mall. Music by Disasterpeace.

On this episode your hosts Jeff and Jeremy discuss the fourteenth Deathwish, Inc. release (DW012), which is the EP "Our Design" by Horror Show. We also discuss (among other things) our favorite video game consoles, power metal, and Sam Goody's. You can listen to the release here (https://horrowshow.bandcamp.com/). You can find out more information about the BLM movement and where to donate here (https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/). Social Media: Jeremy - @ironraygun (IG & Twitter) Jeff - @despitejeff (IG) / @carbombsermon (Twitter)

Hiram Calls Sam Goody

Hiram Calls Sam Goody

Hiram Calls Sam Goody

Has quarantine got you down? Well luckily VHQuest is still here for you! This month, we get together with Brice and Dave, two local Spokane questers out on the town. We got cozy and reminisce on the days of Sam Goody and Suncoast. Our cabin fever has us thinking back to the boobie traps of Home Alone, and the practicality behind them. Does anybody remember SelectaVision? Discovison? CEDs? Cuddle up in the pillow fort you've made for yourself and join us for another episode of VHQuest!

Join the crew as we talk to S.W.A.A.G1. Water - S.W.A.A.G.2. Switch - Lecrae & Zaytoven ft ShySpeaks3. Nothing Like That - Jered Sanders ft Dre Murray4. No Fear - Reconcile5. Can't Hear U - 1k Phew ft Aha Gazelle6. The Way - S.W.A.A.G.7. Only - Derek Minor8. Sometimes - Chris Darnell ft Sam Goody, Junior Churchill & Pastor Chandler Bailey9. R.I.C.H - Bizzle ft Kiddy BiznessFeature Feedback Song - Crown - Rocklee10. We Fight (Color Purple) - Datin ft 1k Phew & Wande11. No Ceilings - Wande12. Use This Gospel - Kanye West ft Clipse & Kenny G

Episode 86. Kyle tells a DMV horror story and Melissa remembers being 10 years old and accidentally buying a movie with boobs in it at a Sam Goody. No Time To Die has been pushed back to November for concerns of coronavirus spreading in crowded theaters worldwide. Thank goodness the Artemis Fowl movie hasn't been delayed again! A new trailer is out and we finally get a good look at the updated storyline and aesthetics of the movie compared to the book.The Whatnauts Captain's Log is a weekly podcast where we talk about some of the latest pop culture news, share stories from our daily lives, play games, or whatever else we can think of.Check out our other podcasts here, or wherever you get your podcasts. If video is more your thing, then check our YouTube channel. And if you like what we do, support us on Patreon to unlock early access to most of our podcasts as well as exclusive episodes and more. You can find us on Twitter and we would love to have you join us on our Discord server as well.

This week’s guest is Chris Hassan, who writes the X-Men Monday column at aiptcomics.com. He’s got a fun thing going on this week where he and some friends of the show are producing a bunch of content centered on those two all-timer mutants, Jean Grey and Emma Frost. Chris talks about that, interviewing Jonathan Hickman, dealing with Jott and Scemma shippers and the good old days when we all bought our physical media from Sam Goody.

[JON's PICK] The year is 1977 and Valentines day is right around the corner. You want to get your significant other a memorable gift that really tells them how you feel. Fleetwood Mac just released the follow-up to their wildly popular self titled album, which featured musical power couple Buckingham Nicks. It's called 'Rumours,' and you grab it from the Sam Goody without listening to it, because you like how romantic it is that the two people in a passionate relationship can write music and tour together. They seem like the perfect couple. You give the album to your significant other for Valentines Day, and after a week passes, you start to have some heavy conversations about your relationship and your compatibility, and ultimately you decide it's best that you "go your own way..." One of the greatest breakup albums of all time, 'Rumours' and the story surrounding it are legendary in rock music history. Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were at the end of their relationship and Christine and John McVie had gotten divorced, but they were all determined to power through it and made one of the most interesting and emotionally raw albums of the time. Join Brad, Dave, Jon A, and newcomer Scott Westley for a breakdown of the album and a little relationship advice... NEXT UP: (12-30-19) Sun Kil Moon - Benji "Dreams" with rough mix/vocals: https://youtu.be/6ZShvtyeUpk Miley Cyrus and Wayne Coyne Collaboration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus_%26_Her_Dead_Petz 89.9 WORT The Access Hour interview: https://soundcloud.com/wort-fm/brad-lebaron-revolover-audio Couch on the Couch: https://anchor.fm/couchonthecouch Other Links: https://linktr.ee/FlyoverStatePark --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/albumconcepthour/support

DOUBLE DOSE OF HALLOWEEN GOODNESS! This week, we're discussing our FAVORITE DEFUNCT RECORD STORES! Why? Because we've lost all semblance of creativity apparently! We got Tower Records! We got Borders! We got Sam Goody! We got embarrassing first date stories! We got embarrassing open mic stories! We got EVERYTHING! Please subscribe via Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher or pretty much anywhere fine podcasts are purveyed. Leave us a rating and review so we can use them to bribe famous people (NOT TOM CRUISE) on to our dumb podcast! Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/BodyCountCast Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/bodycountsandbeer/ Email us: bodycountsandbeer@gmail.com Let us know what you liked, what you hated, your favorite record store subgenre, your least favorite magazine, what movie to watch next or ANYTHING AT ALL!

Faith has been on our minds. We talk a lot about what bothers us, and faith has been high on that list. Not faith itself, but our own faith. We were brought up with a certain set of expectations, and we don't fit into those expectations at the moment. For most expectations, we don't care very much. But, faith is a big one. We want to live "right". We want to raise our kids in the "right" way. Inclusion and values are also important to us... So, we're kind of left out. We kind of talk about these feelings in this episode. We also sort of just drink beer and shoot the shit. Shoot shit with us! It's fun!(note: we pulled this episode originally, but decided to publish it anyway...)

Trick or Treat Radio comes to England, where they must seek an audience with Nimue, The Blood Queen. But their discussion will bring about the end of the world, a fate they desperately cannot avoid. On Episode 363 of Trick or Treat Radio we discuss Hellboy (2019) starring David Harbour, and directed by Neil Marshall! Theatrically, this film was pretty divisive, we dig down into the film and compare it to the source material and the Del Toro films. We also discuss our favorite pre-2008 comic book films, talk briefly about Season Three of Stranger Things and find out just what MZ does for chores? So grab a sundae at Scoops Ahoy, and use the right hand of doom to strap on for the world’s most dangerous podcast!Stuff we talk about: Stranger Things, David Harbour, Gaten Matarazzo, Snarky and Hutch, Millie Bobby Brown, Sauce and Blood, Winona Ryder, Resident Ego, Finn Wolfhard, Cold War, Sam Goody, Waldenbooks, Hopper P.I., Big Ups Smores, how long does it take to watch Stranger Things 3?, ‘Murica, Lloyd Dobler, Tales from the Podcast, sweaty shirt rorschach test, fur-lined slippers, Ravenshadow’s shipping habits, signed posters at Ravenshadow’s place, Johnny’s T-shirts, MZ’s chore list, MZ’s Tubi Update, Terriers, Donal Logue, AC In Your Eyes, Ron Swanson, Nick Offerman, Hellboy, Troy O’Leary, Neil Marshall, Next-Men, Mike Mignola, BPRD, Guillermo Del Toro, Tony Stark, Ron Perlman, Rick Pitino, Boston Celtics, the scorpion, Osiris Club, Milla Jovovich, Bebop, Trick or Treat Radio shaving tips, Baba Yaga, Ares loves secret doors, Dungeons and Dragons, “don’t get pissed”, Trespassers, Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Monster Party, Blade 1 & 2, David S. Goyer, Little Jack Horny, Superman II, Doctor Mordred, Christopher Reeves, Full Moon, Legion of Doom, Doom Patrol, Dick Tracy, Batman Returns, grapple hooks, Catwoman, Danny DeVito is gross, Deep Murder, Batman Forever, Spider-Man 2, Boar, MZ’s film script, Dane Under’s Australian Impressions, motion comics, Preacher, Lobster Johnson, Thomas Haden Church, From Hell, Sin City, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Orgasmo, Super Fuzz, The Crow, Tank Girl, Hero at Large, The Phantom, The Punisher, Meteor Man, Pootie Tang, Mystery Man, and Number Two is the New Number One.Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/trickortreatradioSend Email/Voicemail: mailto:podcast@trickortreatradio.comVisit our website: http://trickortreatradio.comUse our Amazon link: http://amzn.to/2CTdZzKFB Group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/trickortreatradioTwitter: http://twitter.com/TrickTreatRadioFacebook: http://facebook.com/TrickOrTreatRadioYouTube: http://youtube.com/TheDeaditesTVInstagram: http://instagram.com/TrickorTreatRadioSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/trickortreatradio)

It’s summer 1985 and Starcourt Mall just opened its air conditioned doors. In this episode, you’ll find out how the Stranger Things crew renovated a dilapidated mall, restoring it to its 1980's glory. But don’t be fooled by the shiny new Orange Julius and Sam Goody, this mall is hiding some major secrets.

On this episode of Talking Terror, the fearless fellas of horror podcasting are stepping back in time to the year 1981! Why would they want to do that? Well, since it's Summer and the weather is perfect for it. They've decided to go on a camping trip back to a decade that was brimming with slashers of all kinds. So while they set up their tents and try not burning down the woods while trying to make a campfire. Listen in as they discuss the 1981 summer time slasher; "Don't Go Into The Woods" directed by James Bryan. They know you don't have to add the word "alone" at the end of the title so feel free to mark it down on your Talking Terror movie cards at home. Remember, ten talking terror stamps gets you a five dollar gift card to Sam Goody! Listen to the boys of Talking Terror, the podcast that makes the pledge to make horror movies horrifying again! 

Subscribers! Be sure to go to the blog to read the description easier & check out links for this episode!Oh no, we're talking about one of those dreaded “isekai” shows?! Never fear, this is the 1995 fantasy OAV El-Hazard: The Magnificent World! Join me and Taiiku podcast's Chris as we try to explain why it's a tricky series to describe, how somehow an anime released in the 90s has one of the best dubs we've ever heard, and lament the fact that it's been out of print for a decade, because it deserves more love. Also in this episode: Maniacal Laughter! Tangents about the creative process! Shopping at Sam Goody! All with very minimal spoilers! Wow! Stream the episode above or [Direct Download]Subscribe on itunes | Stitcher | Google Play | Spotify Relevant links:The out of print El-Hazard: The Magnificent World DVD box on AmazonThe out of print El-Hazard: The Magnificent World single DVDs on AmazonJapanese-release Limited Edition El-Hazard: The Magnificent World Bluray Box (with English dub!) on CDJapanJapanese-release Regular El-Hazard: The Magnificent World bluray box (with English dub!) on CDJapanEl-Hazard: The Wanderers TV series on CrunchyrollThe original Jinnai & The Bugrom (aka Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot) AMV, as well as the 2008 “Remastered” Version (there's even a karaoke version!)Visit El-Hazard Online, one of the last fansites still standingVisit Chris at Taiiku PodcastSupport the work I do on this podcast by leaving me a tip on Ko-fi! Want to have your name read in the special thanks segment on the next episode? All you need to do is buy me 2 or more “coffees” on Ko-fi!As always, feel free to leave me your thoughts on this episode or ideas for future episodes here—or email me directly at AnimeNostalgiaPodcast@gmail.com.Thanks for listening!

This week, Reuben's old friend and Sam Goody coworker Shane Alsip joins the show to talk music, music, pride, and more music!  Shanegra-La-Di-Da   Download it now!    As always find us on: Instagram: Pop_Goulash_Reuben Email: PopGoulash42@gmail.com Voice Mail: 224-325-4235  

Paige and Emily are joined by comedian Greg Edwards to talk about classic mall music and entertainment superstore Sam Goody. Other topics include hooking up in the refrigerator section at Montgomery Ward, selling shoes to Missy Elliot, and attending a Lenny Kravitz signing.MALL TALK MERCH:https://www.teepublic.com/stores/malltalkpodcastFOLLOW GREG:https://twitter.com/GregtheGrouchhttps://www.instagram.com/gregcomedy/FOLLOW MALL TALK:https://www.instagram.com/malltalkpodhttps://twitter.com/malltalkpod MALL TALK IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST:http://foreverdogproductions.com/fdpn/podcasts/mall-talk

Its a warm September 22 in 1992 when a tween Tuesday Crew stepped out of Sam Goody with Redman's debut, "Whut? Thee Album". The Tuesday Crew sit and revisit Red's staple contribution to the culture and realize how much funk him and Erick Sermon really put in this album. So was this album really just titled "Whut?"

What does it mean? Dawn knows!

Look! It's Max! And he has blue hair like Milhouse. This is the last episode of season 1 and it begins a season of dramatic change for We Shot Mr. Burns. First, you may have noticed our 90s soft rock new podcast image. We're all yellow, yes, but the colors make me feel like I'm eight years old eating at a Hot Dog on a Stick at the mall marveling at all the teenagers buying rap CDs at Sam Goody. Maybe this cover image will get better someday. Who knows! It's far from cromulent. Listen to Some Enchanted Evening here.Buy Volume 2 of the Cockroach Conservatory here.  Become a Patron of the Cockroach Conservatory.  Buy Max's book, Carnivorous Lunar Activities.Buy Andrew's book, Invasion of the Weirdos. 

Tittens, we’re not going to lie to you. The boys are exhausted. Team Tiger Awesome has just wrapped production on Project Island and are currently sleeping it off. And though the boys may be back in town, and some would say let’s hear it for these very same boys, still others claim they will change from boyz to men at some point. Either way, it’s January and we’re talking about Boys of Summer here, so we’re re-airing one of our all-time favorites. www.patreon.com/TeamTigerAwesome Also, get your BRAND NEW TTA shirt and Mug @ https://teespring.com/stores/teamtigerawesome Talk to us: Twitter: @TTAwesome Instagram: Teamtigerawesome  Facebook.com/Teamtigerawesome Originally aired in April of 2017, here’s our podcast boss making up some legit great sounding bands. Clint's got some good-time 70's feel goodery and secret murder mystery. Mundy assembles an asexual new-pop gender-free Orlando group. Jericho brings an artistically pure East German sound that the listener really has to earn. And Truly let's his island lifestyle envy show with a Caribbean ska ensemble. Plus Bonus Tracks: We get all the terrible band names Jericho has played under in the past before ending up in hard rocking Fozzy and we try to answer did Mr. Blues Traveler actually play the Harmonica or was it just a fatty wheeze? Plus New Genres of Music to find at your abandoned Sam Goody that's now inhabited by rats and ghosts: -Camaro/Lake Rock -Straight Orlando Soul -Island Ska -East German Techno-metal

We really harp on this one. Hear all about Slim's slew of surprises, deodorant choices, Good Charlotte and Sam Goody, 90 Day Fiance, having a limited number of loads left, Chuck Berry, some submissions and so much more.   Get all your friends to subscribe and leave reviews on Apple Podcasts or we die   Call/text 402-7DAPPER (402-732-7737) with something seductive   www.thedapperdads.com for everything you could possibly want   www.twitter.com/dapperdads   www.instagram.com/dapperdadspodcast   www.facebook.com/dapperdadspodcast   dapperdadspodcast@gmail.com   http://bit.ly/dapdadspotify for our bi-weekly Spotify playlists every other Wednesday   Follow Drama - @braindeaddrama on everything (Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.)   Follow Slim - @fastfingerslim on Twitter, @fastfingerslimofficial on Instagram and @kinglouie323 on Snapchat

This week, Sean is joined in the Smithsonian by Nick Dittmeier. The two sit down over a few frosty low carb brews to discuss Nick Dittmeier & The Sawdusters, frozen milk not equaling a milkshake, their favorite segments of VH1's Behind The Music, Nick's musical background, compensation in Texas, their shared love for 80's rock biopics, questionable fast food, transitioning from heavy music to country and Americana, the recording process for The Sawdusters' upcoming album, Metallica's "Some Kind Of Monster" documentary, and the reason why Sam Goody went out of business. Later in the show, we listen to "Just My Job" from The Sawdusters, and discuss their time in A Suburban Blood Drive. You don't want to miss this episode of the Sean Vs. Wild Podcast!   Nick's Links: http://www.nickdittmeier.com http://www.facebook.com/nickdittmeiermusic http://nickdittmeier.bandcamp.com Twitter: @NickDittmeier IG: @TheSawdusters     Sean's Links: Site - http://www.seanvswild.com Itunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sean-vs.-wild/id1192530869 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6mOBU5U1RW679W3lVgRV21 Android - http://www.subscribeonandroid.com/seanvswild.com/rss Google Play - https://play.google.com/music/m/Iqdwyk4q6aqnzzqffdeoql2n7kq?t=Sean_Vs_Wild iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/show/263-sean-vs-wild/ Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/seanvswild Instagram - @SeanVsWildPodcast Twitter - @SeanVsWild TuneIn - http://tunein.com/radio/Sean-Vs-Wild-p1009380/ Audible - http://www.audibletrial.com/seanvswild   Today's podcast is sponsored by AUDIBLE. Audible is extending a 30 day free trial to the listeners of the Sean Vs. Wild podcast! Simply go to http://www.audibletrial.com/seanvswild , Sign up for your free 30 day trial, and then choose an audiobook from over 180,000 in their catalog. And when you do, the fine folks at Audible help me out with a little something to help keep the lights on in the Smithsonian. That's it. Quick. Simple. Now go enjoy your book!   Today's podcast is brought to you by AUDIOPHILE INK. You're going to want to use AUDIOPHILE INK for all your screenprinting needs. Shirts, hats, sweatshirts, hoodies, track shorts, underoos, Audiophile Ink can print em all.  Audiophile Ink is located in the heart of Louisville, KY. and ships to all 50 states. So whether you're in my neck of the woods, or you're across the country, Audiophile Ink has you covered. High Quality, Competitive Prices, printed on the brands you want, you're not going to find a better deal than Audiophile Ink! Check it out at http://www.audiophileink.com  

Let’s take a trip down memory lane this week and head to your favorite place as a kid: the mall. Where else could you see a movie, eat some questionable “pizza” at the food court, wash it down with a frozen “orange” drink and then blow the rest of your money at the arcade playing Street Fighter AND still have time left over before your mom picked you up? The mall experience is dying in America: today’s teens are spending all of their time cybershopping and playing Fortnight to do something productive like mill around Sam Goody’s for a couple of hours. It’s a shame, but that doesn’t mean we can’t wallow in nostalgia and remember all of the best – and worst – parts about a day at the mall.  SHOW NOTES The Food Court – Joint Choice IDing Malls in Films – Michael’s Choice Parking – Richard’s Choice The Mall as the Internet of Its Day – Michael’s Choice Claire’s Boutique – Richard’s Choice The Sadness of Dead Malls – Michael’s Choice Sam Goody’s – Richard’s Choice

Bill takes the weekend off, leaving the program in Brian's questionable hands. But he recruits solo artist, bandleader, and Yarnspinners Podcast maestro Brian Rothenbeck () to be the guest co-host. Together, the two Brians and special guest Jay Gogel (of The Adventuring Party) dig deep into Ben Folds Five's final album, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999, 550 Music). Brian recalls a sad breakup that echoes "Don't Change Your Plans," while Rothenbeck recounts his futile attempts to turn his old Sam Goody customers on to the music of The Promise Ring. Gogel breaks down the level of difficulty of some of Ben Folds' music while all three marvel at the writing contributions of drummer Darren Jessee and Moog-playing of bassist Robert Sledge. All this and more as we break this lost classic down track by track!

Carlos has a cold and Jon’s in a foul mood, time to join up with Ari and learn alllll about the Ingalls brood! Nose jobs, javelin, Hurley’s mayonnaise, butter shaving, Big Lots, Lids, Sam Goody, kid voices, and plowing are also discussed.  

Just tossed this together for the weekend quick. I've always been a huge Linkin Park fan since the day Hybrid Theory went on the shelves of the local Sam Goody that I worked for. Life changing record... I can't tell you how many hard times that album got me through. RIP Chester Bennington

The boss is back in the TTAHole and we're on our best behavior even while Jericho insists on ranking us. Who will create the best band? The Stakes are high and winner take all! Will it be: -Clint with his good-time 70's feel goodery and secret murder mystery? -Mundy with his assembled asexual new-pop gender-free Orlando group? -Jericho- with his high-barrier to entry but artistically pure East German sound assemblers? -Or Truly with his island life-style trombone Caribbean ska ensemble? Bonus Tracks: We get all the terrible band names Jericho has played under in the past before ending up in hard rocking Fozzy and we try to answer did Mr. Blues Traveler actually play the Harmonica or was it just a fatty wheeze? New Genres of Music to find at your abandoned Sam Goody that's now inhabited by rats and ghosts: -Camaro/Lake Rock -Straight Orlando Soul -Island Ska -East German Techno-metal We choose it- da -- music! And we also choose it- da GetBarkBox.com/Tiger for a free month of awesome dog treats! And don't forget if you draw some awesome album art of any of these bands and send it to @TTAWESOME and @IAMJericho he'll retweet it and it'll be seen by thousands. And then you'll be as famous as Quince and Klugman but with less money thrown at you. #EggNipples

THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR. S1E22 "Banks Shot". It's episode 94 and we finally watch one of Matt's all time favorite shows! We sit with Kate and Sam and scenes include: Sam Goody, Playing House, Gay Butler, Swimnastics, Pool Hall, Scott's Idea.

This week we had a wild conversation with Larry Kessler and bandmate Rick Sambuco of the groundbreaking 60's proto-punk band, The Godz. Larry talks with us about working at the original Sam Goody, dancing with cops on LSD, and being a septegenarian making a comeback. At the end of the show we have another installment of our weekly calendar of arts events in Baltimore and around Maryland. Enjoy!

A special re-airing of Resume. Tune in for the premiere of Season 2 on Wednesday August 10th with special guest Adam Carolla.Plain White T's (Tom Higgenson, Tim Lopez, and Mike Redondo) join the show to recall some of their early jobs including working as a Sam Goody employee, loading UPS trucks, and being a Subway sandwich artist. They also explain why they decided to start their own label and put out their incredible new album, American Nights, independently.Host: Chris LaxamanaChrisLaxamana.com'Support the show:Purchase the 'Resume Podcast Theme' song on iTunes and Amazon.

Raquel and Katie speak with New Yorker cartoonist and author Emily Flake about the battle for sleep, white lies, Sam Goody, cavities, becoming an aunt at 13, and the wave that waits for all of us. Buy her new book Mama Tried! (music: www.bensound.com)

Keller McDivitt (Dungeon Beach, Vomitface, The Ted Kennedys, Jared Micah & Hats, The Ascent of Everest) has come a long way since his childhood days in west Tennessee when he was working at Sam Goody and learning about music through "Matt Pinfield, Beavis and Butthead." He transcended his small redneck town upbringing to become a partner in a post production recording studio in Brooklyn, New York and yet still remains a punk at heart. Dungeon Beach - http://www.dungeonbeach.com/ Vomitface - http://vomitface.com/ Jared Micah & Hats - http://www.last.fm/music/Jared+Micah+and+Hats The Ted Kennedys - https://urbanachiever.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-your-vietnam-ep The Ascent Of Everest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jt3-fTc9Ys March 4th This Is A Call Show Page - https://www.facebook.com/events/1650300055233244/ March 4th This Is A Call Tickets - http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2493943

I can still very vividly recall the first time I heard ambient music. It was during my teenage years. I popped in the record store at our local mall—a Sam Goody or something like that—and picked up Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II by Aphex Twin. I had read about ambient but had never actually heard it. I remember being very surprised and delighted to find this album at such a small shop in our relatively small town. (Mind you, this was in the mid ‘90s, so music consumption via the internet wasn’t really a thing except for the tech elite.) I wandered back to the car, popped in the CD, and was absolutely mesmerized and transplanted by what I heard. The dark, eerie vibes of SAW2 aren’t exactly the ideal introduction to the genre, but I managed to gulp it all down without any trouble. From that moment forward, I knew this music would be a passion of mine. And fittingly, the SAW duology is some of the most celebrated and sought after material in Richard D. James’ (aka Aphex Twin’s) catalog. However his ambient work at large is scarce in comparison to his vastly more plentiful beat-centric material. When James shocked the electronic music world earlier this year by leaking 175 previously unreleased and unheard early demos on SoundCloud, it was no big surprise that ambient music made up a tiny fraction of the flood. Not that I’m complaining—this clutch of tracks is an absolute treasure—but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t hoping for more SAW2-style ambient out of the whole ordeal. After all that’s the era of his career that shaped me the most. I’ve noticed that many of the fan mixes dedicated to the flood—both simple SoundCloud sets and intricate DJ sets alike—seem to favor James’ SAW1-era ambient techno tracks over the beatless tracks more akin to SAW2. (Even James put together a SoundCloud playlist entitled SAW 1.5, which is all techno.) But since I’m clearly biased toward his beatless efforts, those were my focus for this podcast. Luckily James’ friend and collaborator Mike Paradinas (aka µ-Ziq) followed James’ lead and leaked 156 of his own demos, which include a few beatless numbers. The combined beatless efforts of the two producers exceeds an hour, and it makes for good album-style listening. This may be the closest thing we’ll ever get to another SAW2-style album out of RDJ, so let’s savor these selections.

Plain White T's (Tom Higgenson, Tim Lopez, and Mike Redondo) join the show to recall some of their early jobs including working as a Sam Goody employee, loading UPS trucks, and being a Subway sandwich artist. They also explain why they decided to start their own label and put out their incredible new album, American Nights, independently. Host: Chris Laxamana ChrisLaxamana.com

Last week, J&R unceremoniously closed its store in Lower Manhattan after 43 years in business. The iconic electronics and music retailer is vowing to reopen “totally reimagined and redeveloped.” But for now at least, it has gone the way of Tower Records, HMV, Virgin Megastore, Sam Goody and other brick-and-mortar shops that used to make New York City a music superstore haven. Steve Smith, a freelance music critic for the New York Times, believes that online shops have filled much of the void, but the communal aspect of record-buying has largely gone by the wayside. "What's really missing now is the social element of shopping for CDs,” he tells Naomi Lewin in this week's podcast. “That's a very real thing. If you went to a show any given night at Lincoln Center, you could tell whether it was a success or not by going over to the Lincoln Center Tower Records afterwards and see how many people were hovering around the bins in the classical section." Saturday is Record Store Day, an annual retail promotion started in 2008 to help struggling independent stores. The event’s organizers – a consortium of independent stores and trade groups – hope that it can trumpet the benefits of stores where opinionated clerks give advice and point you to special deals. As in past years, this Saturday’s event brings collectible rarities and limited-edition pressings to serve as draws for shoppers at some 1,200 stores around the country.   “Record stores don't sell food, they don't sell water, and things you need to live,” said Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton. “But there's something that makes life a lot better when you love it. I think it's best to have a physical place for human interaction." Colliton isn’t discouraged by J&R's closing, or of Rizzoli's plans to leave its longtime 57th Street location (the bookstore carried a small selection of music). “Of course it's tough,” she said of the real estate environment. “And the larger you are in a more expensive city, the more difficult that can be, no matter what it is that you sell inside the store.” So where does Smith suggest shoppers go to find classical music? For used product, Academy Records satisfies the urge to “get carried away by the experience of flipping through CDs." There are small but select offerings at the Met Opera Shop and the Juilliard Bookstore. And if you’re not too picky, the Barnes and Noble locations on East 86th Street and in Union Square in Manhattan still have modest selections. For deeper tastes? "Arkivmusic.com caters to a clerk-like mentality,” said Smith (disclosure: Arkivmusic has a retail partnership with WQXR). But often, Facebook, Twitter and blogs are the best places to seek advice on recordings, something you can't find as much on iTunes. "I think you are looking at a scenario that's split in two, where you get your advice in one place and then you go shop in another place." Listen to the full podcast above and subscribe to Conducting Business on iTunes. And tell us below: where do you go most often to buy recordings?

“This Week” Nathan and Conlan discuss North Carolina exorcism, Christine O'Donnell, Blockbuster declares war on profit, movie rentals, Hollywood Video, Sam Goody’s, On Cue, Kevin Smith, Medi-buddy, Tony Blair’s a Journey, The Anti-Bucket list: Burning Man, gathering of the Juggalos, Homebag, Stephen Colbert goes to Washington. Email: wierdoesandwarriors@gmail.com