Category Archives: radio

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Songs of the Summer

click to download

The Tens of listeners over at TBTL have been submitting their nominations for this year’s Song of the Summer contest. Official voting will begin soon. Before you cast your vote, though, you might want to check out some of the nominees.

I zipped-up the top 40 SOTS submissions and posted them here.

This will likely take you a while to download, because 40 MP3s apparently take up a lot of space. But if you have any issues downloading other than speed, let me know.

Also, I hope I don’t have to even say this, but if you love any of these songs and want them to be permanent fixtures on your iPod, please support the bands by purchasing their music directly from them. Also buy a t-shirt. Or a watch. Or a totebag. And go see a show.

Click HERE to download the mix (zip file)

1/ We Are Young  / Fun. (ft. Janelle Monáe)
2/ Call Me Maybe   / Carly Rae Jepsen
3/ Somebody That I Used To Know / Gotye
4/ Ho Hey / The Lumineers
5/ Hallways / Islands
6/ Hold On / Alabama Shakes
7/ Dokąd / Muzyka Końca Lata
8/ Little Talks / Of Monsters and Men
9/ Young, Wild and Free / Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa
10/ Boyfriend / Justin Bieber
11/ Capricornia / Allo, Darlin’
12/ The Only Place / Best Coast
13/ Oblivion / Grimes
14/ Everybody Talks / Neon Trees
15/ Let’s Go To The Beach / The White Wires
16/ Tongue Tied / Grouplove
17/ No Interruption / Hoodie Allen
18/ Part of Me / Katy Perry
19/ Do My Thing / Estelle
20/ This Head I Hold / Electric Guest
21/ I’m Shakin’  / Jack White
22/ Caught Me Thinking / Bahamas
23/ Chevy Thunder / Spector
24/ Disparate Youth / Santigold
25/ Anna Sun / Walk the Moon
26/ The Rifle’s Spiral / The Shins
27/ Only Wanna Give It to You / Elle Varner (ft. J. Cole)
28/ Starships / Nicki Minaj
29/ Sex On the Regular / Miniature Tigers
30/ Bright Whites / Kishi Bashi
31/ Toyohashi / Summerays
32/ Settle Down / Kimbra
33/ Everyone Knows / Vacationer
34/ Summerlong / Xylos
35/ The Night Out (Madeon Remix) / Martin Solveig
36/ Velvet Elvis / Alex Winston
37/ You Go Running / 1606 Deep Sea Diver
38/ Youth Without Youth / Metric
39/ Go Right Ahead / The Hives
40/ Hey Jane / Spiritualized

 

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Time Machine Music

McDonalds Rockin' GoldWhen I was a kid, back in 1986, my sister and I had a collection of four cassette tapes from McDonald’s. They were called “Rockin’ Gold”, and even though they were just a collection of top 40 oldies hits, they had a huge impact on me. I listened to them over and over and over and over and over again. They were the soundtrack to my childhood summers.

I forgot about the tapes until about five years ago, when I heard Chad & Jeremy’s “A Summer Song” on the radio.  That song was on the McDonald’s collection! I was suddenly overcome with the need to track down all four original tapes. I didn’t need the actual cassettes, but I wanted to find the playlists so I could recreate them.

The task was harder than I thought it would be; I couldn’t remember the actual name of the collection, and I couldn’t remember the name of the individual tapes. I just recalled keywords like “golden” and “classics” and “summer” and “McDonald’s”, and if you type those words into Google, you get all kinds of stuff that you can’t dance to.

Eventually I stumbled upon two of the tapes on this site, but I still couldn’t find the other two in the series. I asked for help from the listeners of the TBTL podcast, and they helped me track down the playlist for a third cassette.

One awesome Canadian had the great idea of searching the U.S. Copyright Office, which confirmed that there is a fourth tape: “Rockin’ Classics.” I haven’t found the playlist for that one yet, but at least I know it’s out there.

So, we’ve now accounted for three tapes in the “Rockin’ Gold” collection, and I spent this weekend downloading the songs and putting them in the order that God intended them to be played in (or at least the order that Ronald McDonald intended them to be played in.) And now I’m that much closer to reliving my childhood.

These tapes, I’m sure, will have little resonance with you — just a collection of Golden Oldies you’ve heard a million times. But if you want to pretend you’re a chubby, 10-year-old Andrew Walsh, download the tapes below, put them on your iPod in the right order, and go outside and play.

I think this is going to be an awesome summer.

 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

 

Summer Classics

1/ Surfin’ Safari / The Beach Boys

2/ One Fine Day / The Chiffons

3/ A Summer Song / Chad and Jeremy

4/ The Wanderer / Dion

5/ Summer In The City / The Lovin’ Spoonful

6/ Remember (Walking In The Sand) / Shangri-Las

7/ Rhythm Of The Rain / The Cascades

8/ Summertime, Summertime / The Jamies

 

Lovin’ Classics

1/ (You’re My) Soul and Inspiration / The Righteous Brothers

2/ Baby I’m Yours / Barbara Lewis

3/ Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow / The Shirelles

4/ Sea Of Love / Phil Phillips

5/ Cherish / The Association

6/ Blue Velvet / Bobby Vinton

7/ To Know Him Is To Love Him / The Teddy Bears

8/ There’s A Moon Out Tonight / The Capris

 

Dancin’ Classics

1/ Let’s Twist Again / Chubby Checker

2/ Shout / Joey Dee & The Star Liters

3/ Ally Oop / Hollywood Argyles

4/ Sea Cruise / Frankie Ford

5/ Soul Man / Sam & Dave

6/ Twist & Shout / Isley Brothers

7/ Kansas City / Wilbert Harrison

8/ Come Go With Me / The Del-Vikings

 

If you have issues downloading this, let me know.

 

 

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Leave JC Penney Alone!

Last month, the New York Times published a fantastic story about the way JC Penney figured out how to get great placement in Google search results. Around the holidays, if you typed a generic product into Google — like “dresses” or “bedding” or “area rugs” — the first result would inevitably be JC Penney. Which — theoretically — increased chances that you would buy these products from JC Penney instead of one of its competitors.

This was also true for some specific brand names, too. If you typed “Samsonite Luggage” into Google, your first result would have also been JC Penney, which sells that product.

The store accomplished this by basically gaming the system. It didn’t do anything illegal, just something that Google and other self-appointed web police look down on. It either created or hired a bunch of meaningless, empty web sites and posted links on them that pointed back to JC Penney’s site. This made JC Penney seem very popular on the web, and thus it achieved higher page rankings.

I looked into this topic for a radio show I was working on, and while I interviewed potential guests, I couldn’t help getting frustrated that no one would give credence to my devil’s advocacy. “But what did JC Penney do wrong?” I kept asking search experts. “How is it different than naming your pluming company ‘AAA Plumbing’ just to get listed first in the phone book?” None of the experts answered that adequately, but they all insisted Google was right to punish JC Penney for its “black hat” actions.

This all happened last month. Today, I was listening to an old episode of public radio’s On The Media, and the hosts were reading listeners’ letters. One listener wrote in to comment on the JC Penney story. I wanted to kiss my iPod when host Bob Garfield read it. I’m posting the audio and a transcript below.

[gplayer href="http://radiofreewalsh.com/audio/otm-letter-jcpenny.mp3"]On the Media: Listener Letter: JC Penney[/gplayer]

On our interview last week about how JCPenney gamed Google to achieve better search results, Ted Bunn of Richmond, Virginia writes, quote: “I’m baffled by your use of the words ‘sinister’ and especially ‘illicit,’ to characterize JCPenney’s search optimization strategy. Nothing in your report suggests that anything the company did was illegal. You can bet that all of JCPenney’s competitors do their best at search engine optimization. They’d be negligent in their obligation to their shareholders if they didn’t.

As far as I can tell from your report, JCPenney’s only crime was to be better at it. If Google wants to remain preeminent in the search business, its obligation is to plug holes in its algorithm. No one else is obligated to refrain from walking through any holes they find.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Trust me, I tried.

 

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Revolt of the Worms

Revolt of the Worms

Revolt of the Worms - Photo by Ben McLeod

A long time ago, my girlfriend bought me a CD filled with hundreds of old radio shows from the 1940s. One of the best stories was about a selfish, mean-spirited, overly-ambitious scientist who tried to create the biggest rose the world had ever seen. But instead of creating huge flowers, his experiments yielded giant worms. Giant, man-eating worms.

Radio producer Arch Oboler wrote the story, and it aired on his popular “Lights Out” program on October 13, 1942.

Back in 2003, I sucked the story into my computer, chopped it up, and added other people’s music. Then I played the remix for all my friends until they started making excuses not to hang out with me anymore. Now it’s your turn. Enjoy.

[gplayer href="http://www.radiofreewalsh.com/audio/2011-01-10_radiofreewalsh_podcast-worms.mp3"]Revolt of the Worms[/gplayer]

Right-Click here to download.

Subscribe to the podcast here.