In the last week or so there has been a lot of media coverage of "one year of the coronavirus pandemic", supported by many of my friends posting similar memories as Facebook shows a lot of concerned "on this day one year ago" items. I actually already got into this a bit with yesterday's post about it being a full year since I ate in a restaurant, ( Read more... )

When I hit the end of the alphabet in my radio encyclopedia project, I really thought I was close to done. Hey, there's no crime in having an opinion. It turns out that the six columns of agate type of bands who were cut from the prior edition is slower going than the encyclopedia itself. Just the letters A-C took 12 weeks, pushing me past the ( Read more... )

I really wrote the W & X entry a bit too soon. When I was writing it, the last entry in W skipped right over X and had two entries in Y. After a week off, I came back and kept reading and found nothing else in Y and nothing at all in Z. Which means, that really my last entry should have had W, X, Y and Z for 7 total weeks, but instead of going back ( Read more... )

The letter 'W' and 'X' combined took all of six weeks, which is way more than 'U' and 'V' but isn't actually very much at all.

Once again, I found every band I looked for, and I didn't hate anything. Was (Not Was)" was more than usually good. There were a lot of bands/artists where I said "oh, I know that song" in this letter, including Jerry Jeff ( Read more... )

To my complete lack of surprise, the two total weeks of music required for the letters 'U' and 'V' weren't even half the weeks needed for 'T'Equally unsurprisingly, none of the very few bands played fell into either the "terrible", "great" or "not found" categories. There've been so few "not found" bands thus far that I'm starting to wonder if I ( Read more... )

After the slog that was the letter 'S', the six weeks it took to get through the letter 'T' felt like flying. You might say it fit me to a 'T'. Or you might not ( Read more... )

It's been more than five months since I concluded the letter 'R'. 'S' tied 'B' as the longest letter in the encyclopedia to date, with 18 weeks of music. 'B' had more interruptions so it technically took me longer to finish that letter. Of the five weeks I missed, two were radio station events (Telethon and Hessler Street), two were for travel and ( Read more... )

The letter 'R' felt like it dragged on forever. It also took me past the three year anniversary of the Encyclopedia Project, with just under 25% of the book remaining.

For the second letter in a row, I was unable to find a specific artist. In this case it was the Swedish pop singers Roxette. I told the assistant Music Director, and he went out and ( Read more... )

To my complete lack of surprise, the letter 'P' was nearly double the letter 'O'. The letter 'P' also hit the rare trifecta of having one each of a really good band (Pylon), a really terrible band (Pablo Cruise and, most excitingly, a band I couldn't find it the library anywhere. That last artist was P.J. Proby, who I could not find anywhere ( Read more... )

The letter 'O' was much shorter than its predecessor (that would be 'N' for those of you alphabetically challenged) but although it tied 'I' for the fewest weeks at 4, it did not break the record for fewest unrecognized bands because 'I' had two weeks where I couldn't make it and 'O' only had one.

'O' has several interesting bands (Mike Oldfield, ( Read more... )