If you you’re reading this because I mentioned my blog on The Daily Flash, “hi” and welcome! Here’s another round of Down the Rabbit Hole, where I start with a bit of pop culture and see where it takes me.

I recently had the song below pop up on a streamer and was surprised how many of the lyrics I knew – even though I have heard it for a good thirty years. If you think “Country Boy (You’ve Got Your Feet in LA)” sounds a lot like Glen Campbell’s hit right before this one, the super smash “Rhinestone Cowboy,” you’re right.

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Sometimes, you turn on the radio and hear a familiar song but it doesn’t quite sound right. Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” is one of those records – because, over the years, it’s been released to radio and streaming services in so many versions.

Best known is the take that you saw on MTV and heard on most radio stations in 1987. It’s the version with the picture up top, where they didn’t bother to take the price tag off Tawny Kitaen’s new shoes. Today, it exists on YouTube as a blurry “official” clip from Rhino Records.

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Just a year before Huey Lewis and the News first released music under the name we all know, five-sixths of the band put out a 1979 disco single as Huey Lewis and (the) American Express. Yes, it’s a terrible name.

Disco covers of songs from movies and TV soundtracks were a mini trend.  Meco hit #1 in 1977 with “Theme from Star Wars.” At about the same time, studio musicians Wilton Place Street Band had a smaller hit (#24) with “Disco Lucy,” a cover of the “I Love Lucy” theme.

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I was a weekend Smooth Jazz DJ for about three years in the early 2000s, right as the number of stations that could make the format work on commercial radio was getting smaller. I was never one of the main on-air talent at Orlando’s WLOQ, 103.1 FM, but you might hear me Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings. I’d be playing – still on CDs – Euge Groove or Mindi Abair or Acoustic Alchemy. Smooth Jazz was never my personal favorite, but it can be nice while reading or studying – not a lot of lyrics to distract you.

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Actor and “The Masked Singer” panelist Ken Jeong is the newest person to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you’ve walked the real neighborhood of Hollywood, it’s not as glamourous as you might expect. It’s a touristy strip with “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (not live) shooting at the old Hollywood Masonic Temple, but there’s also a lot of t-shirt shops, dirty bootleg characters charging for photos, and a long-time homeless encampment that LA dismantled in August before a big public event.

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