Anyone who's been to Amoeba Hollywood on a Saturday knows that it's always the busiest day of the week. Saturday November 12, 2011 was a reflection of this simple fact, with one major addition: Amoeba Music celebrated 10 years of serving the Hollywood community!!! Amoeba Hollywood officially opened its doors on November 17, 2001 and we decided to celebrate a few days early: filling the store with colorful balloons, conducting trivia contests, and doing what we do best - helping locals, regulars, and visitors find the music, movies, and memorabilia they can't get anywhere else.

This Saturday was also extra special with the help of the crew from KCRW 89.9FM, who were broadcasting live all day from Amoeba's famous stage. This was the first time KCRW ever did a live radio broadcast and the first time Amoeba ever hosted one.

KCRW DJ Chris Douridas kicked things off from 12-2pm, playing a broad mix of tunes from the wonderfully bleak "My Autumn's Done Come" by Lee Hazelwood to the sweet and honest vibes of Michael Kiwanuka's "Tell Me a Tale;" from Ray Charles' pitch perfect version of Sam Cooke's "Laughin' and Clownin" to a brand new Black Keys single, "Lonely Boy" (new album El Camino out Dec. 6th!). KCRW had some challenging trivia questions about the station, with winning answers receiving KCRW hats and Amoeba gift certificates. KCRW also held a Willy Wonka style scavenger hunt with staffers and DJs hiding "golden tickets" among the Amoeba racks: tickets to their December 3rd "Are Friends Eclectic?" concert.

I recently saw a petition to get the US government to fully fund PBS and NPR. Now, I'm sure the writers of this petition have nothing against other public radio producers, NPR's competitors Pacifica, PRI and APM. All compete for airtime against each other and locally produced material, as well as foreign public radio producers BBC and CBC. What they have in common is that they rely primarily on listener support rather than commercials.


I tend to hate metonyms. To the displeasure of many, I don't call all soda Coke, nor do I call facial tissues "Kleenex," all brands of gelatin "Jello," nor all adhesive bandages "Band-aids." If that makes me a bit like that annoying guy from "The Velveteen Touch of the Dandy Fop," then so be it. I also hate that that sketch's title incorrectly synonymizes "dandies" and "fops" but I'll save that rant for another blog.

 
                  Pacifica's Amy Goodman                                                           NPR's Tom and Ray Magliozzi

Confession is a crime drama anthology that originally aired on NBC from July 5 to September 14 in 1953, Sunday nights at 9:30. Each episode featured Paul Frees as Richard McGee -- then the director of California Department of Corrections. John Wald was the announcer.

                

The term AOR, as in Album Oriented Rock, was first used in the seventies to describe the then new format of FM rock radio stations that specialized in playing album cuts, digging deeper into a record than merely spinning the singles heard on more pop oriented radio. The AOR format idea, which over the years disintegrated into boring predictable programming by "suits" whose bottom line was profit, not good music, began its days as a somewhat noble idea; one that borrowed the progressive and freeform radio pioneered in the years just before its launch by such adventurous  programmers as the late great Tom Donahue at KMPX and KSAN in San Francisco.

But before there was AOR, there was MOR, a format that never pretended to be hip or alternative or adventurous in any way. Most popular in the sixties and seventies, MOR, as in Middle Of the Road, was, as its name implied, a most mainstream radio format whose playlist offered a mix of non-offensive popular music. Middle Of The Road was not the type of music that a self-respecting "artist" would claim to be but it was also the name that a successful 70's Scottish pop band chose. Although technically more bubble gum pop, Middle of The Road sure managed to appeal to a middle of the road audience and also scored a string of pop hits in the early 70's, including their 1971 debut single, "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep," which shot to #1 on the UK pop charts that year and went on to sell over 10 million copies. The hit captured Middle Of The Road's pure, unadulterated sugary pop, and their singalong sound. To me, their infectious Europop style and the fact that Middle of the Road included male and female pop vocals harmonizing made the group sound similar to Abba's style, whom they predated by a couple of years. Sweden's Abba formed in 1972 and scored their first pop hit ("Ring RIng") in 1973.