Annual Music Awards

11/08/2025

Today I learned something fascinating to me. I thought my experience was common nationally, but today I found out that instead, I was experiencing something local that had national notoriety. Let me tell you about it…

Back in 1991, I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. While there, I worked at a totally cool mom & pop CD & record shop, Circle CD & Records, which was located in the living room and dining room of this couple’s house. Their trademark genre was alternative music. It was an amazing time to be working in an alternative music store because at the time, the alternative music scene was full of creativity and variety, the way MTV music was in the early 1980s. In addition to working in this store, I was also a live DJ for Rick Juler Systems, working in a variety of settings, two of which I had an opportunity to DJ alternative rock events.

While at the CD shop, I made a mix tape of songs heard on the local alternative rock radio station, 97X, and songs that we sold in our store. I was listening to that tape today, thoroughly enjoying it. I really appreciated alternative music in 1991 because it was before grunge came along and homogenized the scene.

While listening today, I got curious about 97X and decided to look it up. I was fascinated by what I found. There’s a whole book written about 97X. I read several articles, with one that particularly fascinated me. I learned that 97X was the sixth alternative radio station in the entire country! Not only that, I learned that it was known nationwide as being a station with great innovation and variety. So, here I thought that music like this was being played everywhere, but instead I was experiencing something extraordinary.

Here are some quotes from the article.
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Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, 97X was *the* modern rock radio station in southwestern Ohio. … From its first song — U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” — until its last internet broadcast in 2010, the station was the center of the new music universe for a generation of young people, like me, who lived for something different. … When Doug and Linda Balogh bought the station in 1981, they asked Miami [University] students what they wanted to hear. The answer was modern rock. So the Baloghs delivered, playing music no one else in the area was giving airtime to. …

“The station started off in ‘83 basically copying L.A.’s KROQ (pronounced Kay-rock) playlist,” James said. “By the ‘90s though, 97X was sort of the place for new and different music.”
…
In 1988, the station rose to fame in the Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman film “Rain Man.” Filmed in Cincinnati, the movie featured Dustin Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt repeating the station’s tagline “97X, BAM! The Future of Rock and Roll.”

From there its notoriety grew.

“They grew to have a national reputation,” James said. “’Rolling Stone,’ for several years in the ‘90s, named them one of the top radio stations in the country. Then later on, ‘Rolling Stone’ named them the last great independent radio station.”
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I had no idea! So here I was in Cincinnati, awash in the music of 97X, which was not just a local radio station but one with a national reputation, working in a CD shop featuring such alternative music (and even more diverse stuff than was even played on 97X), and DJing and attending events of “97X-type” music. The DJ company I worked for did a regular cruise on the Ohio River called Cross Currents — it was all alternative (97X-type!) music.

Little did I know…it was a little like living in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s…or Seattle in the mid-1990s. I was in the middle of something creative.

So now I have an even greater appreciation for my alternative music mix tapes from Cincinnati 1989-1991. (I also DJed in Cincinnati in 1989, but I didn’t live in Cincinnati — I drove 2 hours from Springfield to go to work every day.

Side note: Also while I lived in Cincinnati in 1991, there was an AM Christian radio station (I know it was AM because my car only had an AM radio) that played alternative Christian rock! It’s the only alternative Christian rock station I’ve ever heard, and I had the chance to hear it while in Cincinnati during this amazing musical era. I feel so blessed.

Small-town radio station 97X, one-time home to "The Future of Rock and Roll," is still rocking, with one last take on its "Modern Rock 500."

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of 10 albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #10. (Originally posted May 15, 2020 on my personal page.)

For this album, I owe a debt to a radio DJ friend of mine in Finland (I became friends with him on my first trip there), who came to visit me when I lived in Louisville in 1986. We took a trip down to Nashville to visit record companies, and with him being a DJ with wide reach in Finland, they gave him all kinds of records. Some that he determined wouldn’t work well for his purposes, he gave to me, and this one was one of those. This is the album that introduced me to, and made me a fan of, industrial music.

However, like the debut album by The B-52’s, I didn’t like it at first. I didn’t quite get the music, and the vocals were kind of sniveling, wimpy vocals over heavy, fast music. How this album turned around for me was the same way The B-52’s debut did: I’d listen to it when doing housework because I hate housework and it seemed to have a gritty, grouchy mood to me. Eventually, again like The B-52’s, I *got* the music and ended up really liking the album.

The album opens with “Just Like You” — thundering, up close drums and lots of industrial types of sounds. This sound continues throughout the album. You can dance through the entire thing. The album closes with a 12-minute two-part song, the beat considerably faster than the rest of the album — more of a drum’n’bass tempo. It leaps into the second part of the song with the shout, “Crash and burn!” and from there on out it’s intense percussion.

This album was influential because it introduced me to industrial music. The next industrial music I remember hearing was in 1988 from a Christian industrial group, Blackhouse, another one with intense, pounding drums, with yelled vocals. Then in 1989, industrial became a big thing with groups like Front 242, Front Line Assembly, Assemblage 23, KMFDM, and Skinny Puppy, and I got a number of 12” singles and albums of industrial music that year. In the 1990s, I got music from Christian industrial groups Blackhouse, Deitiphobia, X-Propagation, Circle of Dust, AP2, Massivivid, and my favorite industrial band of all, Aleixa.

And it all began with Twitch by Ministry.

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #9. (Originally posted on my personal page on May 14, 2020.)

MCMXC a.D. — Enigma

In my Music History class in college, I discovered Gregorian chant, and was immediately fascinated by it. My classmates made fun of me for being so crazy about the music. Well, I got my vindication in 1990 when Enigma’s debut album came out and became such a huge hit by 1991 that it brought Gregorian chant to the masses. The album put downtempo dance beats to Gregorian chant vocals, but it had such an impact that even albums of straight Gregorian chant were being released at the time. So there, classmates! I was right! This is good stuff! For years afterward, electronica chill albums featured Gregorian chant sounds.

Wow, this album!!! It mixed Gregorian chant, which I loved, with downtempo dance beats, which I also loved. Putting on this album is like being transported into an otherworldly place. Supremely beautiful.

I ended up getting remixes of the singles from this album — the U.S. Violent Mix of “Sadeness,” and a CD maxi-single of “Mea Culpa” which includes the Fading Shades Mix, Catholic Version, and Protestant Version. I continued to buy subsequent Enigma albums and remixes. I also sought out more albums mixing Gregorian chant and chill beats, my favorites being “Sanctuary” by Magna Canta and “Oracle” by Oracle. In a similar vein is “Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen” by Richard Souther, where 12th-century vocal songs are put over an electronica chill beat. This whole genre is one I love, and it was Enigma’s debut album that actually created the genre.

Trivia tidbit: In old CD players, like my 1988 Technics player (my main one), you could access a CD not only by track number but by index number. This Enigma album was one of the rare ones that had index numbers — some tracks have several index points within them. CD players made after 1990 don’t show the index numbers or have the ability to access by them, but my old Technics player can.

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #8. (This was originally posted on my personal page on May 13, 2020.)

In 1989, I was a full-time live DJ in Cincinnati, so most of the music I bought consisted of records for my gigs. However, I still bought some CDs from Columbia House, things just for myself. In one of their catalogs, they mentioned the hot new world beat sound. Hmm…world beat…that sounds interesting! So I bought a couple of CDs from the world beat page. I immediately loved this one from Ofra Haza, a Jewish woman from Yemen. I was fascinated by the Middle Eastern sounds on top of western dance club beats. This was the album that made me a world beat fan, and so it was definitely an influential album for me.

Soon after, I moved to Japan, where world beat was more popular than it was here, enabling me more opportunities to build my world beat collection, including Japan-only releases of Ofra Haza remix CDs. I continued to build my world beat collection throughout my years when I worked at Borders. I now have a significant collection of CDs in this genre…and it all began with this album.

P.S. “Shaday” is a spelling that we more often do as “Shaddai,” as in “El Shaddai.”

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #7. (This was originally posted on my personal page on May 12, 2020.)

Though I was buying Minneapolis Sound singles and albums early on, beginning with Prince’s 1979 single “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and his 1982 album “1999,” as well as music by The Time, such as their 1981 single “Cool,” it was this debut album by Sheila E. that turned me into a huge fan of the Minneapolis Sound. In 1985-1986, the Minneapolis Sound was at its peak, and I bought just about every record in the genre that I could find — I have quite a collection. This is the album that sparked that enthusiasm, and it has remained my favorite Minneapolis Sound album. I found the album to be mesmerizing from beginning to end.

Something about the opening song on side 2, “Oliver’s House,” made me feel like I was *in* Minneapolis when I listened to it. When I bought this album, this city boy was living in a small coal mining town in the hills of Kentucky, a fish out of water, desperately missing urban life. I dreamed of living in Minneapolis. (Actually, I came quite close to moving to Minneapolis in 1996 but ended up in Detroit instead.) While I couldn’t live in Minneapolis, this album could take me there in spirit.

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #6. (This was originally posted on my personal page on May 9.)

RAGE IN EDEN — ULTRAVOX

My first trip abroad was in 1982 — I went to Finland. The next year, through an ad I had placed in a Finnish rock magazine, I received letters from about 150 people, mostly from Finland. With a few of those, I ended up exchanging cassettes of music. This was the era of European technopop music. We got some of it in the USA, but the music I liked best of this style was unheard of here. A song from this album was on one of the tapes a Finnish friend sent me, and I was immediately smitten by its incredible dark beauty. The song was “I Remember (Death In The Afternoon)” and along with the electronic rhythm, it included a haunting piano line and background vocals that reminded me of Gregorian chant. I eventually got the album and was fascinated with it from beginning to end.

There is not a single weak song on here. This is a perfect album. I have since bought a number of other Ultravox albums, including their 2012 album Brilliant. But this album is like the pinnacle of the European technopop genre — it sent me on a search for more like it, but although there were many other great albums of this genre, none could match the haunting beauty of this one.

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #5. (This was originally posted on my personal page May 8, 2020.)

¡ALARMA! — DANIEL AMOS

The ¡Alarma! Chronicles was a four-album work of art. I don’t know of any other artist who created such a magnificent project. The four albums were accompanied by a singular story that began with album one and finished with album four. The names of the albums were: ¡Alarma! (1981), Doppleganger (1982), Vox Humana (1984), and Fearful Symmetry (1987). I’m not sure how to list this since they were four separate albums but were all part of the same continuing story, but I guess I’ll list the first album since that’s where it began.

The ¡Alarma! Chronicles are the account of the spiritual journey of one person who was confronted by the realization of the shallowness of his faith (¡Alarma!), his double nature of good and bad (Doppleganger), the struggle to resist technology’s tendency to isolate us from each other and God (Vox Humana), and in the finale (Fearful Symmetry) there is some reconnection with God, though in a complex way, not in a simplistic way that Christian movies suffer from.

There is LOTS of satire all throughout, and since I love satire, I have a blast with this. An example is the song “Faces To The Window.” It’s a fast, chirpy New Wave song: “I go to work, I work hard, I do come home exhausted; I go to sleep quite early, lights off and I roll over, nice and keeping warm, but morning comes too soon!” The song continues about how this person goes on his merry way, whistling as the days go by, but he keeps being annoyed by the faces at the window, starving and hurting people longing for help. It’s a heavy message, but putting it to these satirical words and the chirpy music gives it a unique impact.

The first two albums — ¡Alarma! and Doppleganger — are both loaded with killer satire, attacking all kinds of shallowness and hypocrisy in Christians and Christianity, but you have a blast listening to the zany songs while they can be quite challenging to your comfort zone.

Back to the factor of being influential — yes, these were highly influential! The lyrics provided MUCH food for thought, prompting much wrestling about my relationship with God.
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Due to contractual issues, each of the four albums was released on a different record label, and soon all were out-of-print. Finally, in 2000, the complete ¡Alarma! Chronicles was released on a 3-CD set, with a 170-page book accompanying it. At the time I’m posting this, there are a few copies available at Discogs for $65-$100+.* If you like satire and lyrics that provoke deep thought, this is a great set.

*As of May 8, 2025, there are no copies available on Discogs; on Amazon, there is one copy for $300 and one for $1000.

Oh, also, Daniel Amos’s music changed with every album for quite awhile. Their first album (1976) was country; their second (1978, Shotgun Angel) was a mix of country, rock and pop; their third (1980, Horrendous Disc) was what would now be called classic rock; their fourth album, ¡Alarma!, was New Wave; Doppeganger was…I don’t know how to describe it…, Vox Humana was synth-pop, and Fearful Symmetry was kind of a little of all the previous three Chronicles’ albums styles. So, not only were the lyrics imaginative and insightful, they were always coming up with new musical styles. (I just bought the latest Daniel Amos album recently, 2013’s Dig Here Said The Angel.)

08/05/2025

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #4. (This was originally posted on my personal page on May 7, 2020.)

THE B-52’s
After disco music suddenly evaporated at the end of 1979 (I’ve never seen a style of music disappear instantly like that), the buzz was that the next big thing was New Wave music. My first album of the 1980s decade was this debut by The B-52’s, a New Wave group. I had seen some of their songs on the dance music chart, so I thought it would be a good place to start the new decade and age of New Wave.

I hated the album at first. A lot of that reaction was because I was devastated that disco had died, and approached this as the replacement for disco. WHAT??? THIS is what is replacing disco??? How awful!! On one song on the album, “Dance This Mess Around,” it sounded so awful to me at one point that I put my hands over my ears!

What changed? The first pivot point was the last song on the album, a remake of the 1960s pop hit “Downtown.” The original hit was very melodic 60s pop; in this remake, they were practically screaming it. I eventually saw it as hilarious…which was the turning point for me.

The conversion point was one day when I had to do housework, which I hate, and I wanted some music to keep in me in gear, but since I hate housework, I was in a grouchy mood, so I wanted something to fit my grouchiness. I thought of this album, and it fit. Not only did it fit, but I suddenly understood the album and liked it from then on. (Interestingly, some years later they came out with a song called “Housework”!)

This is not my favorite B-52’s album — that would be their second album, Wild Planet, which I frequently listened to with great enjoyment in the early 1980s, and still really like. (Altogether, I have 7 albums by The B-52’s and some singles.) But this debut was a huge turning point for me, so it’s the one that makes the influential list.

08/05/2025

Ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #3.

I learned about this disco album from Stereo Review magazine, which listed it as a Recording Of Special Merit in their record review section. It contains three songs — two 7-to-8-minute songs on side one, and one 15-minute song on side 2. I bought this album in 1979, the year I discovered disco…I was *crazy* about disco and bought lots of disco albums and singles. But this album was one of the best.

The way this was influential to me was influenced by the words in the Stereo Review album review that said something like, “This is what it’s like in a New York discotheque at three o’clock in the morning — all the high energy dancing.” When I listened (and DANCED!) to this album, it took me in my imagination into the middle of a fabulous discotheque in New York City, dancing the night away.

Disco was at the height of its popularity in 1979. I was too young to go to discos then, and I could hardly wait until I was 21 so that I could go to discos. Unfortunately, by the end of 1979, disco spectacularly imploded and evaporated overnight, two years before I would be old enough to go.

I did go dancing in the 1980s at dance clubs and had fun, especially at the dance clubs in Louisville, but the vibe wasn’t the same as the fabulous days of disco. It wasn’t until I discovered the rave scene in 2011 that I had my chance to live the regular, ecstatic experiences of dancing in an atmosphere that came close to the energy and excitement of the disco days. Actually, the rave scene significantly surpasses the disco scene for me, so if I could only have the chance to experience one of them, I’m definitely glad it was the rave scene.

(This was originally posted on my personal page on May 6, 2020)

08/05/2025

(Originally posted on May 5, 2020, on my personal page.)

Participating in the Facebook activity of ten albums that greatly influenced me, one album per day: Day #2.

This album came out in 1975, when I was in the 9th grade. My friends at the school bus stop were Led Zeppelin fans and got me interested in Led Zeppelin in general, and this album in particular. I bought this album as soon as I could — a double album that I got on 8-track since my bedroom stereo was an 8-track player. I played this album nearly every day for almost two years. I got all of Led Zeppelin’s original albums before John Bonham died; Physical Graffiti was my first and remained my favorite.

I consider it influential first of all because it turned me into a huge Led Zeppelin fan — they were my favorite group in high school. I also consider it influential because the variety of styles on the album gave me an appreciation for different sounds and even rich chords (such as in “Ten Years Gone”). My favorite song on the album is “In The Light,” which to this day is still mesmerizing.

08/05/2025

(Originally posted on my personal page May 4, 2020)

I was requested to join the Facebook activity where you are to list ten albums that greatly influenced your taste in music. The rules are “One album per day for ten consecutive days. No explanations. No reviews. Just covers.” I want to do this, but I am going to break the rules. I simply cannot just put an album cover up of something that was influential without telling the story of *why* it was influential. Also, in some of my cases, it was the lyrics that were highly influential to me, more than the music.

Okay, here we go with Day #1!

1. BOOTLEG (1968-1972) — LARRY NORMAN
This was one of my first Christian albums as a teenager, a double album that I got on 8-track tape, since the stereo in my bedroom was an 8-track player. It had not only studio-recorded songs on it, but a television interview with him, a stand-up comedy sketch of his, a serious speech about not bending to persecution (“Let The Lions Come,”) and a recording of him teaching a group of youth leaders his song “Sweet Song of Salvation,” which was quite funny (and where I learned the word "mnemonic").

The really influential part, though, was his lyrics. They addressed things like doubt and failure (“I Don’t Believe In Miracles,” “Walking Backwards”), included apocalyptic visions (“Ha Ha World”), and had blunt lyrics like those in “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus” (“Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day, and you’re still looking for the perfect lay”) and “Without Love You Are Nothing” (“You can be a brilliant surgeon or a sweet young virgin, or a harlot out to sell; You can be woman feeler or a baby stealer...you can drink your life away, or be a holy prophet, get blessing off it, you can fast for 50 days — but without love you are nothing”).

I really liked the way he played the piano. I particularly liked his love songs to Jesus such as “I Think I Love You” and “When I First Met You.”

This album was the most influential album of my teen years, bar none.

16/11/2023

I was listening to a tape today that I recorded in 1982, where I counted down my top 10 favorite pop hits of 1982, American Top 40 style, starting with #10. I was surprised by the first two songs on the countdown being at the bottom spots, while some songs after them were songs I now play much less often. There were more surprises on the list, which I'll mention after the list. I couldn't predict exactly what songs were on this list, except that I KNEW what the #1 song was, without a doubt -- I was *crazy* about that song in 1982!

Here's the sequence of what I heard in my Top 10 countdown:

10. Forget-me-nots - Patrice Rushen
9. I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow
8. I Ran - A Flock Of Seagulls
7. Kids In America - Kim Wilde
6. It's Raining Again - Supertramp
5. Gloria - Laura Branigan
4. Vacation - The Go-Go's
3. The Look Of Love - ABC
2. Don't You Want Me - The Human League
1. Let It Whip - Dazz Band

Usually if I play a 7" single by A Flock Of Seagulls, I play "Space Age Love Song" (and its B-side-only "Windows"), so I was surprised that "I Ran" was on the list. But as I thought about it, I might not have gotten "Space Age Love Song" until early 1983. Not sure. But certainly, I play that song much more than "I Ran" and like it (and "Windows") significantly more.

I was *shocked" by #6. I introduced it as "My #6 song is by Supertramp" and I couldn't even imagine a song by Supertramp in 1982; I could only think of their Breakfast In America album that came out in 1979. I didn't even remember "It's Raining Again" until it started playing. Talk about dropping into obscurity (as far as my listening habits).

I am a BIG Kim Wilde fan, and her albums make regular appearances on my turntable or CD player, but her debut album, where "Kids In America" is from, is one I listen to less than her next three albums -- Select, Catch As Catch Can, and Teases And Dares. However, I do like her first album very much and still totally love the song "Kids In America."

Similarly, I listen to The Go-Go's quite a bit, but the album of theirs I listen to most often is 2001's God Bless The Go-Go's, the best album they ever did. I still enjoy their first three albums, though.

Now I'm going to make a list from the above songs: here is the frequency (roughly) of how often I listen to these songs these days:

1. Forget-me-nots - Patrice Rushen
2. I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow
3. Kids In America - Kim Wilde
4. Vacation - The Go-Go's
5. The Look Of Love - ABC
6. Gloria - Laura Branigan
7. Let It Whip - Dazz Band
8. Don't You Want Me - The Human League
9. I Ran - A Flock Of Seagulls
10. (NEVER) It's Raining Again - Supertramp

"Forget-me-nots" is a song that has never completely disappeared from my music listening. I mean it's not like I play it frequently, but it never became dormant. Such a lovely smooth groove.

People who regularly read my posts know that in 2020 much of my record collection got damaged by flood/mold, and the amount I had insured only covered a fraction of what it would have cost to replace all my records, so I had to choose carefully what I would replace. Well, "I Want Candy" made the cut, and in a big way -- it cost me $14.77 to replace that 7" single, but I like the song well enough to pay that much to replace it. And it was only #9 on my list in 1982! I mentioned on the tape that it only made it to #66 on the Billboard singles chart. Yet despite it not even reaching the top 40 in 1982, I bet you know the song.

For "The Look Of Love," I have a 12" single with Parts 1-4. Part 1 is the radio version, part 2 instrumental. Part 3 is my favorite and the one I play far more than the radio version: It's a stripped down version where the drums are out front and very little of the strings and horns. The #5 frequency position on the list is actually Part 3, not the radio hit version, so if I forced my list to be the radio versions only, it would rank lower on the list.

The Human League album Dare, which "Don't You Want Me" came from, was a big album for me in 1982, but my favorite song on the album was "The Sound Of The Crowd." If I only play one Human League song, it's usually that one.

Though I don't get out "Let It Whip" as often as the ones above it on the list, when I do play it, I still greatly enjoy the song.

Can you think of any songs that you were crazy about when they were popular but now you almost never play them (compared to other songs of the time)? And can you think of any songs that you were not crazy about when they were popular but that you have continued to enjoy over the years, making them more important to you now than they were when they were popular?