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We also broadcast on 1450 AM. Studios are located at 350 Byrd Ave.

WTBO first went on the air in 1928, and was the fifth station in Maryland, and the first in Cumberland.

15/07/2025

Just a Song Before Wilson Went

The Beach Boys‘ Mike Love paid a visit to his cousin and onetime bandmate Brian Wilson "three weeks" before his death.

He tells the Daily Express, "What Brian wanted me to do was to sing for him.

“Brian asked me to sing ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’, so I sang that. Then he said: ‘Sing ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.!’’, so I sang ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ to him. I sang ‘I Get Around’ for Brian, too. We even harmonized on a song called ‘Their Hearts Were Full of Spring’. That was a song by The Four Freshmen, a group which was a huge influence on The Beach Boys’ harmonies.”

A source close to Wilson tells us, "Brian had a good time."

While plans for a public memorial haven't been announced, the family recently held a private service.

Wilson died at his Los Angeles-area home on June 11th from respiratory arrest. The L.A. coroner's report also said that the 82-year-old had Sepsis and cystitis -- both infection issues.

14/07/2025

The finale of Jeff Lynne’s ELO farewell tour this Sunday in London has been canceled.

His office released a statement saying, “Jeff Lynne is heartbroken to report that he will not be able to perform at [Sunday's] BST Hyde Park show.

“[He] has been battling a systemic infection and is currently in the care of a team of doctors who have advised him that performing is simply not possible at this time nor will he be able to reschedule.

“The legacy of the band and his longtime fans are foremost in Jeff’s mind today (Saturday) -- and while he is so sorry that he cannot perform, he knows that he must focus on his health and rehabilitation at this time.”

So, this makes his show this past Wednesday in Manchester, England the finale as he also pulled the plug on Thursday's show in Manchester.

Reports from Wednesday show state that Lynne had difficulty performing.

Lynne started this final leg on Saturday, July 5th in his hometown of Birmingham, England despite having broken his left hand after reportedly having a run-in with a taxi door. As a result he was unable to play guitar.

Lynne's ELO was the headliner on a bill Sunday that included Steve Winwood and The Doobie Brothers. The entire show was canceled.

Join us at the fair today from 5 to 7!
11/07/2025

Join us at the fair today from 5 to 7!

11/07/2025

David Crosby was not a happy camper at Live Aid, which took place 40 years ago this Sunday, July 13th, in Philadelphia and London.

British journalist Mick Wall was in Philly that day and he tells Classic Rock magazine, "A bedraggled David Crosby thundered around [backstage], railing against the drugs and weapons offenses for which he’d just been sentenced to nine months in jail. Telling me how ‘disgusted’ he was that the first Crosby, Stills & Nash performance in 10 years had been followed by ‘some heavy metal garbage!’ Specifically, Judas Priest.”

CSN went on just after 11am, doing three songs -- "Southern Cross," "Teach Your Children" and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." They then returned just after 8:30 that night to join Neil Young on "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "Daylight Again/Find the Cost of Freedom". Young did a five-song set just after 6:00.

10/07/2025

Paul Simon's daughter Lulu is not a fan of Richard Gere and it has nothing to do with his acting, or does it?

A singer like her parents -- her mother is Simon's third and current wife Edie Brickell -- she is upset with Gere for selling to developers the 32-acre New Canaan, Connecticut estate he bought from her father in 2022.

She says he "promised he would take care of the land as condition of his purchase...

"Just in case anyone was wondering if I still hate Richard Gere — I do!" To show how much, she posted a photo of Gere with images of dogs and a cat in the background, which she captioned with: “I hope my dead pets buried in that back yard haunt you until you descend into a slow and unrelenting madness.”

Gere, who never lived in the house and has since moved to Spain, sold the property for $10.75-million in order for it to be turned into nine separate lots.

However, a company was brought in to save historic parts of the 1938 brick Colonial.

Paul and Edie now live in Texas where she's from, although they maintain an apartment in New York City.

09/07/2025

Paul McCartney has paid tribute to his friend and stained glass artist Brian Clarke, who died last week at 71. He posted a photo of the two of them on his socials, writing, “Brian was a dear friend of our family whom we had known for years… He made some stained glass windows for us and did a great collaboration with Linda using her photographs to make stained glass pictures out of… Ever since I met him in the ’70s with Robert Fraser the art dealer, we always had the best times together. We will all miss him but have fond memories of him to cherish and his incredible artwork to remind us of Brian himself.”

08/07/2025

Rod Stewart wrote in his 2012 autobiography, Rod: The Autobiography, that he "unconsciously plagiarized" the melody from Brazilian singer Jorge Ben's 1976 song "Taj Mahal" for use in his 1979 hit "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" Ben sued and the case was settled out of court.

But now, Stewart is singing a different tune, telling The Times of London that he "nicked it.” He justifies it by adding that after Ben sued him he "never earned a penny out of it [and] all the royalties went to UNICEF.”

And that's not all. Stewart also consciously lifted the song's signature synthesizer riff from the string arrangement on Bobby Womack's "(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down on It." Ironically, he says it's perfectly okay to lift a line from any song's arrangement as long as the core melody line is not copied.

Meanwhile, Jim Cregan, Stewart's guitarist on "Sexy," said it was "inspired in part" by The Rolling Stones' "Miss You." And the late keyboardist Ian McLagan, Stewart's bandmate in the Faces who played electric piano on "Miss You," said, "It's a rip-off of 'Miss You.'" The melodies are very similar.

Stewart starts his U.S. tour Today (Tuesday) in Raleigh, North Carolina.

07/07/2025

RINGO: 85 Years Young
Ringo Starr celebrates another milestone today, Monday, July 7th, his 85th birthday. And, as he's done the past 17 years, he's inviting everyone around the world to proclaim "peace and love" at noon local time.

"Peace & Love is important. I think it's a better world being a 'Peace & Love' world. While this madness is going on you can have a moment. And that's how it is."

And he'll be doing just that at noon PT at Beverly Hills Garden Park in Beverly Hills, California, home to his stainless-steel, eight-foot-tall, 800-pound peace sculpture. Joining him will be his brother-in-law Joe Walsh along with Ed Begley Junior, Jackson Browne, T Bone Burnett, Colin Hay, Jim Keltner, Steve Lukather, Richard Marx, Linda Perry and others.

Ringo’s message of Peace & Love will again be broadcast to the universe when it's beamed to the Moon and back to Earth, courtesy of Intuitive Machines through their transmission partner Goonhilly Earth Station in the United Kingdom. They will transmit Ringo’s message in intervals to the Moon, where it will bounce off the lunar surface and will return to Earth by Goonhilly’s GHY-3 antenna.

Also at noon PT he will give the command to the mission control team in Houston and his message of Peace and Love will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS).

Ringo says, “It's so great how this keeps growing -- we are in 38 countries!!! And we can't forget the guys in the spaceship!..."

The oldest of The Beatles. He was born Richard Starkey in the Di**le section of Liverpool on July 7th, 1940.
At 5-feet-6, he's the shortest of the four.
John Lennon was three months and two days younger than him.
He left Rory Storm & The Hurricanes to replace Pete Best as The Beatles' drummer on August 14th, 1962.
George Martin initially underestimated Ringo's skill: on the Beatles' first single, "Love Me Do," he was relegated to playing tambourine while session man Andy White played drums.
"Yellow Submarine" was his most successful vocal performance with The Beatles.
His first two solo albums were the standards collection Sentimental Journey and the country Beaucoups of Blues.
George Harrison produced and co-wrote his first two solo hits: "It Don't Come Easy" and "Back off Boogaloo."
"Photograph" -- also co-written with Harrison -- was his first number-one in 1973.
Ringo played Mister Conductor on the PBS children's show Shining Time Station.

He's been married to his second wife, actress Barbara Bach, since 1981. Her sister Marjorie is married to Joe Walsh.
Ringo's son Zak -- from his first marriage to Maureen -- was The Who's drummer until this past spring.
Ringo is the most active of the two surviving Beatles, with Paul McCartney being the other. He tours with his All-Starr Band every year, and has released five EPs since 2021, and Look Up, a new country album, his 21st studio effort, earlier this year.
He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with The Beatles in 1988 and for his solo work in 2015.
He'll be back on the road with his All Starr Band starting September 10th in Chicago.

03/07/2025

Earlier this week we reported that Alice Cooper has been elected for induction into the Radio Hall of Fame for his two syndicated shows -- Nights With Alice Cooper, and his new one, Alice's Attic.

Commenting on the honor he says, "Growing up in Detroit, the radio was always on — it shaped some of my most vivid memories from hearing The Beatles for the first time to the thrill of hearing my own songs on air. After years of listening to legendary deejays spin my music, I eventually joined them by launching my own syndicated show over 20 years ago. It's been a blast ever since — sharing stories, spinning rock 'n' roll and now being honored by the Radio Hall of Fame is truly the icing on the cake."

Cooper will join 10 other honorees (including Premiere Networks President Julie Talbott) at the induction ceremony on October 30th in Chicago.

Cooper is on tour in Europe and will be on the bill along with Judas Priest at the Scorpions' 60th anniversary concert Saturday in Hannover, Germany.

"Alice's Attic" airs weeknights on sister station ROCKY 106.1

02/07/2025

Debbie Harry is now an octogenarian as she celebrated her 80th birthday yesterday -- July 1st.

Born Angela Trimble in Miami in 1945, she spoke to Vanity Fair about what she's most proud of.

"I think the things I get most teary-eyed about are the relationships, good fortune, and the luck I’ve had working with some wonderful, exotic, talented people. Great minds. My list is going to sound very short, but having worked with [Blondie guitarist] Chris [Stein] and [Blondie drummer] Clem [Burke] for years -- especially Chris, that’s extraordinary. Keeping a rock band together for 50 years was like a marriage, and it’s sad that with Clem’s passing [in April] and without having Chris onstage, I can’t see myself being onstage as Blondie, even though I am the face of Blondie. But I’m proud of the music, and I would still like to do music. Then, [working with] John Waters and David Cronenberg on the film side of things. I feel like a little footnote in terms of how these people have affected culture."

With a new Blondie album coming out in the fall and a documentary and bio-pic in the works, she says she "ran into a wall: The tour ended, Clem died, and wow.

"What is this space I live in now? I’m curing -- I’m doing a cure. And part of that is de-cluttering up my space, which is crowded with that life. I need to get some breath, get some air in there. And I want to feel that little spark of creativity, surprise -- those things. There’s a little tingle of that, and I hope that will be there for me."

Debbie recently said she plans to put together an exhibit of her stage clothes.

01/07/2025

This Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Basement Tapes from Bob Dylan and The Band.

The 24 songs were recorded between June and October, 1967 in the basement of "Big Pink," the pink-sided house in West Saugerties, New York, just outside Woodstock, that was shared by The Band's Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson.

Hudson served as the recording engineer for those sessions, which basically meant he set up the mics and turned the two-track tape recorder on and off.

Tapes of the recordings has circulated over the eight years before the official release, with seven of them contained on the Great White Wonder, one of the first notable and best-selling bootleg albums.

The cover of the album was not taken at "Big Pink," but rather the basement of a Los Angeles YMCA.

In 2014, Dylan released 138 of the songs from those sessions on Volume 11 of his Bootleg Series ... The Basement Tapes Raw.

30/06/2025

A source close to the late Brian Wilson tells us his family is "doing a service in July," but adds that they "don't want the details out at this point."

Wilson died at his Los Angeles-area home on June 11th from respiratory arrest. The L.A. coroner's report also said that the 82-year-old had Sepsis and cystitis -- both infection issues.

In related news, The Beach Boys' catalog has benefited from Wilson's passing.

Their 2003 hits collection, Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys, has cracked the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 for the first time in over a decade. It jumped from 52 to 14, surpassing its highest position of 16 in 2003. Sounds of Summer also makes its debut on Billboard’s Top Streaming Albums chart, landing at number-20.

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