Professor of Rock

Coming up, it’s the closest thing we have to a time machine. It’s our latest Time in a Bottle countdown where we feature 10 tracks that take you back to the exact moment they came out on radio. Along the way, we’ll tell the story of how Sophie B Hawkins accidentally wrote her signature song when her hand slipped on a piano. That same song went on to make history as the first song title with profanity to become a massive hit on the charts. We’ll also cover Sir Mix A Lot, whose music video was banned from MTV for celebrating full-figured women. So he stalked an MTV network executive at a restaurant, and railed on him until he convinced him to air the video. And then there’s Shakespears Sister that should have been a sisterhood after they scored a big time hit, but their creative partnership came to an embarrassing end when one of the member had her publicist fire the other on national television. And finally, we have Jon Secada, who sang backup for a legend for years until he stepped into the spotlight and amazingly outsold his iconic mentor. Let’s do it.

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Coming up next… So about a month ago, I did an interview LIVE at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland at the RAB Fall meetings in front of owners of Radio stations and some voting members of the Rock Hall and employees RAB stands for Radio Advertising Bureau, and I was there representing my syndicated radio show Classic Rock U when is growing steadily. It think were somewhere between 35 and 40 station including WNCX FM in Cleveland. I was given the opportunity to interview someone of my choice, and I chose my good buddy Huey Lewis From 1984 to 1988 nobody was bigger. he had so many classic hits like The Heart of Rock and Roll, Heart and Soul, Jacobs Ladder, I Want a New Drug, Stuck With You, The power of Love, Hip to Be Square and a dozen more. Huey Tells the story of all of them here in some of the best stories you’ll hear on this channel. Now, anyone who has watched this show knows that I’ve had some pretty big disagreements with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about some glaring omissions over the years, including Boston, INXS, Styx, and Huey Lewis, among others. Well, I got a chance to share my opinion on stage at this event in front of the Rock Hall. I was polite, but I pointed out that Huey is part of a short list of artists who’ve had back-to-back multi-platinum albums with at least 4 top-ten hits, and every one of these artists is in the Rock Hall with the exception of Mr Lewis. It’s time to change that. So hopefully this put a bug in their ear. Anyway, this interview was filmed by the Rock Hall, and it’s a fun walkthrough of Huey’s amazing career, including where he is now, having to walk away from music because of his diagnosis of Ménière's disease, which has taken his hearing, and sadly he can’t even hear music anymore. But Huey is a fighter, and it was so great to not only interview him, but I had a chance to walk through the Rock Hall with him… He had never been there. We took some pics and even got a chance to walk on a replica Saturday Night Live Stage because the Hall of Fame was celebrating 50 years of SNL Music. And I got to introduce him as the musical guest…. We also checked out a bunch of other rock memorabilia. It was a great time. So here’s the interview… Hopefully the Rock Hall listens to reason and inducts Huey... It’s about time.

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Today we are visiting one of the most gloriously weird and wondrous years in music history — the charts were packed with streakers, gangsters, and some passive-aggressive jealousy. We celebrate this crazy year with 10 songs that sound exactly like the moment they came out in the 70s and when you hear them you’ll be transported to the exact moment they ruled radio and the stories are even better. We’ll tell the story of how a folk icon sat alone at his desk one evening, unable to shake the thought of his girlfriend cheating on him with another man. He wrote what sounded like a mellow tune but if you listen closer, it is the most dangerous song of his career and in the end he got a #1 hit and she went to prison. Then there’s the comedian songwriter who read a magazine blurb about the national craze of streaking during his flight. He rushed home and wrote the most iconic streaking song in history. And then there’s the songwriter who took his song to the Beach Boys for help, but watched the sessions dissolve into chaos after Brian Wilson kept sneaking in at night trying remix his master tape. He gave up and recorded it himself, then disappeared to the South Pacific for two months while it climbed to #1. Let’s get into it.

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We’re rewriting history again today as we revisit a year when one band completely took over and overshadowed many classic songs that deserved better. Today we put those songs where they belong at #1. Including The Drifters Under the Boardwalk, a song that was recorded just a day after an iconic band’s lead singer passed away. Their singer was gone, but they still had a session planned, so an outsider walked in and sang a perfect vocal that gave them their most famous hit. Plus the Innocent Classic by the Zombies, She's Not There, that got banned nationwide 37 years after it peaked on the charts for offensive lyrics, but everyone’s still trying to figure out what was offensive about it, including the band who’s here to comment. Plus the creepy song Last Kiss that was inspired by a fatal car crash, but it got even creepier after the song became a hit, and life imitated art when the band got into a fan carwreck that would destroy their group. Plus, I tracked down the mysterious girl behind the classic Beach Boys car song Fun Fun Fun, who got in trouble for driving her dad’s T-Bird. And lastly the biggest band in the world The Beatles took over the charts for one fateful week they made up 7 of the top 10 spots on the countdown but their best song, that was ruled by their singer’s sick as a dog vocal missed #1…Let's do it.

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I know you are gonna love this episode! Because i’m gonna give you some familiar songs that were hits that I guarantee you haven’t heard in ages. Radio and streaming playlists are filled with the same songs we hear over and over again. So I just spent about 6 hours going through every chart from the 80s to find songs that were hits in their day and songs you know and love but have fallen through the cracks. They’re never played today, but once you hear them, you will be like Oh man, I remember that song! I love it. I’m choosing one from each year in the 80s. Along the way, I’ll tell you the stories behind them. Including how Saga's producer decided the only way to get the right vocal performance for an epic song was to rig a microphone to a crossbeam 60 feet in the air… and then convinced his singer Michael Sadler to climb to the top and record it. He did it without rope or a harness… If he fell, he would have been toast. That’s why his vocals sound so ALIVE. Plus there’s the solo rocker John Mellencamp, whose record labels made him change his name 4 times… So he had hits under different names. Plus Van Halen's Most Badass guitar riff of the 80s that has been forgotten cuz the song has been the victim of cancel culture! And finally, I’ll cover Billy Joel who shocked radio when he put out the first major hit about phone S-E-X.

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