Professor Mikey blew through the one year anniversary of the Old School podcast just as attendance was picking up with more podcast subscribers and the all new YouTube Channel. So now we have the rad but delightful situation of new listeners wanting older episodes.
Hence the first Old School Redux. This one combines the first three episode from way back in early 2022. I started with short episodes until I figured out what I was doing. I’m still on that road. Of course you can navigate back to those first three baby steps on Substack, but this one gives you a chance to hear them in one commute with out having to go clicky crazy.
Enjoy, subscribe, rock on!
Sincerely,
Professor Mikey
OLD SCHOOL #1 Are You Ready?
Pacific Gas & Electric 1970, Mink DeVille 1980, The Shangri-Las 1965
Introducing a new Retrofit podcast feature straight from the Old School!
This show began as a one-song one-off crafted for college radio audiences as well as truants. These listeners craved the deep dope that reeked of obscurity and cool. From the funky halls of this way back institution you could be the first kid on your block to hear something from 40 years ago that rang with spirit and originality. Or perhaps there’s a sample in it that collected mold on the sound shelf until a master DJ dripped it from a beaker into a beat track.
Scholars and Professor Find Musical Common Ground
For the podcast version of Old School, the plan is to tell short stories about two or three songs, then actually play these rare wonders in real time. Radical, right? It’s all done in the name of music education. Total class time: around 12 minutes but since I get to write the rules I’m keeping them short.
The sound closet I’m pulling from covers over 50 years and is stacked with albums, CDs, cassettes, videos, reel-to-reels. Lots of genres, scattered promos, unintentional rarities, lost vinyl that hasn’t felt a needle in decades. It’s an expanding universe.
The Retrofit newsletter continues with articles, photos, and other feature podcasts. The Old School podcasts will arrive in your mailboxes just as your newsletters do. Hopefully it will be that surprise bolt of inspiration from the Fifties through the Nineties you were needing.
Thanks for tuning in and please oh please share with friends! This is how your desert island joint gets found bobbing around in the podcast ocean.
You can subscribe to it as you do your other podcasts and it will show up in that cue. In case you want to hear them in sequence or whatever.
The goal is to keep it surprising and lively, to offer a take as to why the work was created, and why it didn’t make the standard forever cemetary hit lists. It’s not a countdown or programming based on sales. Please comment, offer suggestions, and send Professor Mikey on scavenger hunts into the unknown.
Once again, we open the Old School, the detention hall of the forgotten, the obscure, the unknown, the diamonds in the rust!
Are you Reddy?
This week on our first Old School podcast!
OLD SCHOOL #2 Hold On to Your Lunacy
Here’s another edition of Old School which dropped for the first time on Retrofit yesterday. This week while we introduce this new podcast feature the Professor Mikey lesson plan calls for an episode a day Tues-Fri then take Super Bowl Weekend off!
No real schedule is set, it’s pretty much play and see, but at least once or twice a week sounds about right. Thoughts? Lemme know.
Hold on to Your Life PSYCHOTIC PINEAPPLE
Subscribed
Janitor of Lunacy NICO
Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby? BUSTER BROWN
OLD SCHOOL #3: Hard to Believe the Night Planet
Devo live is a hard charging example of the de-evolution that threatened to zap the 80s into something caring and generous. Hang on to your red helmets!
Be Stiff 🌎 Planet Earth DEV0
Mersey inspired Glenda Collins was a small part of the British Invasion, a bundle of pop protest from Joe Meek’s quirky stable. Here she is, slamming the nukes in favor of ending world hunger.
It’s Hard to Believe it GLENDA COLLINS
Bombs and missiles are here to stay It's hard to believe it, but I do They hit the moon with mice and men One day they'll send 'em back again It's hard to believe it, but I do How can they spend a million on a rocket head When there's millions on Earth in need of bread? It's hard to believe, but they do We're all in for a shock and soon When we find living creatures upon the moon It's hard to believe it, but I do I don't need a telescope to see What our future on Earth is gonna be Don't you disguise it, no, no, not for me I put my plea for all it's worth Let's first make this a better Earth I really believe it, yes I do I really believe it, yes I do I really believe it, yeah yeah, don't you? It's hard to believe it, but it's true I really believe it, yeah yeah, 'cause it's true I really believe it, yes I do
Minimalistic and sullen, the Brits who shortened their name from “Troglodytes” wowed both side of the Atlantic in 1965 with “Wild Thing.” Here they are less than a year later, so successful they don’t want to do their own yard work. Lead vocalist Reg Presley, a big influence on Iggy Pop, left us in 2013.
Night of the Long Grass THE TROGGS
Preview week for Old School, the new podcast from Retrofit, continues tomorrow with some down to earth spaciness. Remember you can hear the episode through the player at the top of this page. Even easier, click on “listen through your podcast app” at the top right and this episode can be stored with your other podcasts. You can also access previous episodes of Apple iTunes, Stitcher, and Tune In! Thanks so much for checking it out!
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