by Kevin Burton Lake Erie catching on fire was one of the storylines of my Ohio upbringing. I laughed about it in passing, but never sought any of the details. Turns out those details were more than a little fuzzy. The fire was actually on the Cuyahoga River, which leads into Lake Erie. …
Category Archives: 1970s
Rely On God Only, Not On Self, For Salvation
by Kevin Burton There used to be a Cap’n Crunch commercial where at the end, the announcer declared the ultra-sugary cereal to be “part of a complete breakfast.” Remember that one? It showed a bowl of the cereal on a kitchen table with, I believe, eggs, toast, butter and jelly, bacon and …
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Seeking An SOS From Beepball And ABBA
by Kevin Burton Eureka I say, eureka! I have my beep baseball problems figured out. In athletics they say, father time is undefeated, and that’s true. But all I need is a great idea, and an SOS, from ABBA. This is truly exciting! You’ve probably heard about ABBA Voyage, a virtual …
The DJs Made Old-Time Radio Come Alive
by Kevin Burton Music fans who go back as far as the 80s and especially before, badly miss the old days of radio. You had music historians, actual musicians and others who loved music, choosing what records hit the airwaves. It was a wacky, fun time for listeners across musical genres. It was …
Take Care Of Mom As She Took Care of You
by Kevin Burton From the cross, the most difficult circumstance imaginable, Jesus took care of His earthly mother. He knew He was ending his earthly walk and He was telling the disciple John to meet her needs. “So when Jesus saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said …
Steely Dan Takes On Lennon And “Imagine”
by Kevin Burton One of the few Steely Dan tunes I don’t really like took on more juice recently when I read that the song is an attack on John Lennon’s “Imagine.” I had no idea the song “Only A Fool Would Say That,” from the 1972 album “Can’t Buy A Thrill” casts Lennon as …
“If You Could Read My Mind” Is A Masterpiece
by Kevin Burton The greatest songwriters will leave room in their songs so you can climb in, look around and make yourself at home. Just be careful, there is going to be a mirror in there in the place you least expect. You’re going to see yourself. You’re going to be confronted. If …
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Video Killed Your Imagination, Not Radio
I think I’m done writing about MTV and Clear Channel for the moment, but I have one more thought on that Buggles tune, “Video Killed The Radio Star.” I raised the question without answering it in my Friday story: “If you could get your favorite top 40 hits, with pictures, moving pictures, wouldn’t that …
Clear Channel (iHeart) Killed The Radio Star
by Kevin Burton In the old days we turned on our radios for music, for news, for sports and weather forecasts, and we got all those things. But what we really loved, and what kept us coming back for more, was the way those things were delivered, something that was woven throughout the …
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Raised On Radio: MTV And Killer Video
by Kevin Burton In J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Sound-Sweep,” the main character is a non-verbal boy who has the job of vacuuming up all the stray sounds in a world without music. He befriends an opera singer living in an abandoned recording studio. The opera singer is destitute, having been displaced from …
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