Train Toon

Wilt Chamberlain's 100-Point Game

15 years of Fog City Blues: www.kalw.org/show/fog-city-blues/2022-01-27/15-years-of-fog-city-blues.

FCB IDs: Locals

FCB IDs: Not-so-locals

FCB IDs: Not actually my guests

July 4, 2022 in the Lower Haight

Did you really want to eat that last piece of cake, or were you secretly thinking about your mother? Sigmund Freud, who might have suggested the latter, established the unconscious mind as a legitimate domain for scientific research. He was the first to seriously study dreams and slips of the tongue, and he proposed that neurotic behavior could be explained by beliefs and desires that we repress. However, many of Freud’s theories have been rejected as unscientific, and his particular brand of psychoanalysis is all but obsolete. So why is Freud still worth remembering? John and Ken get Oedipal with Stanford historian Paul Robinson, author of "Freud and His Critics."

http://philosophytalk.org/shows/legacy-freud

Sunday 10 am / Tuesday 12 pm on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco. Worldwide at www.philosophytalk.org.

The Legacy of Freud (outtake)

Bi-Rite Fall 2022 15-sec

Bi-Rite Fall 2022 30-sec

George Jones has said that he initially thought "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was too sad to be very popular, but, at one of the lowest points of his career and personal life, he made it one of country music's defining and most enduring songs.  Billy Sherrill's restrained production highlights the plaintive yet highly nuanced vocals that were the hallmark of Jones' mature style. George Jones himself remembers the recording, along with the song's co-author, Bobby Braddock, and Nashville insider Hazel Smith.

George Jones: He Stopped Loving Her Today

This hit country song was written in 1969 by Loretta Lynn. With her plaintive, but proud voice, Lynn tells the story of growing up poor in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Lynn, Nashville veteran Harold Ray Bradley, and Jack White of The White Stripes explain what makes the song a classic.

More at http://www.wnyc.org/story/108690-coal-miners-daughter.

Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter

Captain Beefheart was the stage name of Don Van Vliet. He and his Magic Band spent nine months sequestered in a house in the Los Angeles foothills rehearsing and recording the songs for their third album, which was produced by Van Vliet's high school friend, Frank Zappa. The album contained some of the most unconventional, avant-garde rock music ever released commercially, and cemented Captain Beefheart's reputation as a musical visionary. The recording’s impact is brought to life by Magic Band drummer and musical director John French, Van Vliet biographer Mike Barnes, and Beefheart aficionado Tom Waits.

More at https://www.wnyc.org/story/180752-captain-beefheart-trout-mask-replica.

Captain Beefheart: Trout Mask Replica

In 1974, Latin music in the US was about to get a kick in the pants. The audience for the big bands was aging; younger, US-born Latinos thought of the classic Cuban forms – the mambos and sones and guarachas and guaguancós – as their parents’ and grandparents’ music. But Johnny Pacheco, a bandleader and star percussionist, had formed a new record label with a new approach. Fania Records, based in New York, put those forms together with influences from Puerto Rico, Colombia and other countries, and called it salsa. Pacheco wasn’t the first to use the term to describe music, but Fania Records made it nationally popular, and "Celia & Johnny" was its first breakout hit. It set Cruz, a singularly talented and popular singer who had worked with Tito Puente, in front of a much smaller band that left a lot of room for vocal improvisation. The record's impact is brought to life by Cruz biographer Ana Cristina Reymundo, ethnomusicologist Marisol Berrios-Miranda, and Johnny Pacheco himself.

Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco: Celia & Johnny

Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz To Come (edit)

Innocent When You Dream

Is Your Love In Vain

It was 1978. Gloria Gaynor wasn’t having a good year. Her first hit, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” never translated into staying power in the disco scene. Her recording contract at Polydor wasn’t being renewed, she’d been hospitalized for spinal surgery, and her mother had died.

Then she got a call. Polydor had hired a new president from England — where Gaynor was popular. He invited her back to the studio to record the song “Substitute.” Gaynor recorded the song, and all that was left was to pick out the B-side. That’s when the producers asked Gaynor what kinds of songs she might want to record.

“I said I like songs that are meaningful, I like songs that are strong, that touch people’s hearts, that have good melodies,” remembers Gaynor. That’s when the producers offered Gaynor a song they’d written two years ago: “I Will Survive.”

Gaynor immediately knew it was a hit, but the producers cautioned her not to get her hopes up for a track hidden on the B-side. But Gaynor said, “If I have anything to do with it, it’s gonna get some play, it’s gonna get noticed now.”

She started passing out the song to DJs at Studio 54, asking them to share it around town with their friends. People started requesting the song in clubs, then on the radio. The song was a hit, and it revived Gaynor’s career.

“There was a sense of real fury in her,” music writer Vince Aletti explains, “but also determination and survival.” And the lyrics transcended just another disco pop song: Aletti says, “It’s something that is well beyond the idea of spurning a boyfriend; people want to sing that refrain.”

Inside The National Recording Registry

Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive

The Hill We Climb

JMRG: First Blood Part II

Devon is the Senior Producer of "Philosophy Talk," Host/Producer of "Fog City Blues," Audio Editor of Climate One at the Commonwealth Club, and co-Producer of the Peabody Award-winning "Inside the National Recording Registry." He is an amateur steel-drummer and speaks over a dozen languages, some used by more than .01% of the world population. He is author of "The Paris Café Chronicle" (2005), "Strolecisms" (forthcoming), and a much-cited PhD dissertation on medieval Judeo-Portuguese.

Devon Strolovitch

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