Vinyl Voyage Radio

Oingo Boingo.  Depeche Mode.  Tones on Tail. R.E.M. Jethro Tull.  Need I say more? This is "Mix Tape #4" created in 1986 and airs exclusively on Mix Tape Memories.  If you missed the first show on Friday, you can hear a rebroadcast TONIGHT at 8 pm Central.  For more on "Mix Tape Memories" and a schedule of future shows, click here . Join us on April 1 for "Alane's Mix"---another eclectic mix tape from 1986.

Pour some coffee, open the Sunday paper and lose yourself in The Vinyl Brunch every Sunday starting at 10 am central.  The Vinyl Brunch features an eclectic mix of music perfect for Sunday mornings.  Jazz.  Soft-rock.  Motown.  Folk.  Showtunes.  Classical.  All played on original vinyl and commercial free.  Tomorrow you'll hear a song from the original cast recording of Hair.  Frank Sinatra will make an appearance or two.  So will Billie Holiday and Dionne Warwick.  Burt Bacharach, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Gordon Lightfoot and Carly Simon---to name a few.  Remember Nadia's Theme from the 1976 Summer Olympics?  You'll hear that, too, on the Vinyl Brunch. So join us.  The Vinyl Brunch streams live every Sunday morning from 10 am to 1 pm.

Just a few weeks ago, I collected two boxes labeled, "cassettes" from my basement. And these boxes were full of.....you guessed it, old cassette tapes. Hundreds of them. Many of them old mix tapes spanning the last thirty or so years. Mix tapes. What a concept---a concept that is completely lost on this new generation of kids who know only their iPods. Kids don't make mixes for each other. They create playlists, to be sure. But these are not necessarily designed to share. The mix tape was a collective art form. Mix tapes were meant to share. They were meant to be heard by more than just the person who put it together. There was a certain amount of pride that went into the mix tapes we created. Mix tapes given as gifts contained cryptic messages in the form of songs, and much agonizing thought went into the creation of these. I pulled out an old Walkman and listened to some of my tapes. The tapes reflect me at certain times in my life. A diary told throu...

We all have those songs which touch us in certain ways. Music has that ability---to stir emotions, to wrangle memories. We have the tendency to claim songs as our own for what they do within us. For me, no song is more poignant and powerful than “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” The song was written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, their only collaboration as songwriters. Russell was dying of cancer at the time and his lyrics for this song would be the last he ever wrote. The origin of the phrase is unknown, but it did appear as the title of an article in Kiwanis magazine in 1924 and then later became the motto for Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Town in the 1940s. Written in the late 60s, the song conjures images of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam. In fact, every year when I teach Vietnam, I use music to tell the story and “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother” highlights 1970, the year of it’s release. However, for me, the song has nothing to do with Vietnam. For me, the song i...

If you grew up in the 80s, no doubt you took your vinyl collection and made mix tapes.  The Sony Walkman went on sale in the United States in 1980 and nearly everyone I knew eventually had one.  I brought it to school, listened to it on the bus---not too different from kids today with their iPods and mp3 players. The only difference is that more thought went into a mix tape--after all, you only had 60-90 minutes for all of the songs you wanted to include.  A mix tape was all about mood.  It was about current feelings.  It was about friends.  Mix tapes were more inter-relational.  We would make mix tapes for road trips into the city; mix tapes for special events.  We would give mix tapes as gifts.  iPods are about the individual; mix tapes were more about friends. Mix tapes were meant to be shared. I had a special mix tape entitled, "Depression Songs."  Too bad I no longer have that one.  It was a tape with songs that would ...

One of my favorite albums as a kid was K-Tel’s classic 1975 compilation, Music Express . It’s typical K-Tel: cheesy 70s graphics, a few bona fide hits and obscure never-again-heard-from artists. Who the hell is Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes anyway? But there are some 70s powerhouses on this album to be sure: Captain and Tennille, Elton John and Barry Manilow. I think the Captain and Tennille may have been the first band that I could recognize by name. Yes, I admit it. Before the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or any other classic rock band---I remember Captain and Tennille. How could I not? They were all over the place. My parents had their albums, the first of which came out in 1975 and contained the title song which appears on K-Tel’s Music Express, “Love Will Keep Us Together.” And they were all over tv as well, even appearing on their own variety show. I remember watching that show, actually. And the segment that stands out was the “Bionic Watermelon.” The album al...