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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

Mike Read, a veteran radio DJ and TV host in the UK, has a weekly “programme” called “The Heritage Chart Show.” Not living in the UK, I’ve only every seen clips of the show on YouTube, but basically, Read interviews bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s who are still making music today and plays their music videos. Here’s a clip with Limahl, the lead singer of Kajagoogoo (“Too Shy”) who also had a solo hit with “The NeverEnding Story.” (In case you ever wondered, “Limahl” is an anagram of Christopher Hamill’s original last name.)

Continue reading