Summer jams on Those Were The Days

RICHLAND CENTER, Wis (WRCO) – Memorial weekend marks the unofficial start of summer. This Saturday night’s “Those Were the Days” radio show will feature some of the songs of summers from the fifties through the early nineties. Your assignment is to request a song that reminds you of summer.

Perhaps it is a song that was playing when you met your first love (you don’t have to go into details if it is not your current love), a song on the radio that you heard while cruising with friends, or a song that played while you toiled away at your summer job.

My memories of summer songs are very vivid. When I hear Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl), I am walking with my cousins to Copp’s in Madison to buy the new K-tel album. When Kodachrome by Paul Simon (Summer of ’73) plays, I am riding with the folks in their 1971 Impala on the way to the root beer stand. The July of 1976 Wings hit Listen to What the Man Said transports me to pulling gravity boxes full of oats back to the farm with the Farmall. I would steer with one hand and hold my transistor radio in the other (this was not what I learned in Farm Safety classes). Rocky Burnette had one hit in 1980 called Tired of Toeing the Line. It was playing as my sister, and I went to a movie in Dubuque. This was the first time that this farm boy ever traveled out of state!

It seemed like the lights of Vegas to me as we crossed the bridge into Iowa. The Greg Kihn hit the Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em) takes me back to the summer of 1981. I was pulling loads of hay with my dad’s 1974 Chevy C-20 truck dreaming about Senior year of high school and life afterwards. The power of music is incredible. It can transport you back to a time and place. I can sometimes smell new mown hay or imagine the taste of a malt and a cheeseburger at the Dairy Queen when I hear certain songs.

I will be in the studio this holiday weekend between six and midnight to take your requests and to play trivia. You can share a summer memory or ask for anything from the playlist. Most often I can find everything that is asked for. Sometimes we get requests for deep album cuts that I only have tucked away somewhere on vinyl. These songs are great, but again we try to feature tunes that were commonly heard on the radio. Once in a while there is a request for a really long song of 10 minutes or more. These are difficult to play because of time restraints and the fact that I can play three regular length requests instead of the one long tune. Keep that in mind if you are going to contribute to the show. Thanks for reading. Have a happy and safe weekend.

Phil

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