…but it’s moved to the Project 42 website. Every Wednesday (usually) I spotlight a song from somewhere between 1975 to a few years ago. If you’re a pop music junkie like me, you just might like it.

Previous Weekly Rewinds are still archived here.  Just search for “Weekly Rewind” or use the category “Listen To The Music”.

Maybe big, big trouble. The “Fearsome Tycoon” describes the economic storm that may be on its way in plain English, in the context of a history lesson.  Those who don’t learn from the past…

I suppose that can (and will be) debated, but this is still danged good.  If you’re in a hurry, jump ahead to 3:30.  (HT:  the Mockingbird blog)

Over twenty years ago, I started my radio career KQTY in Borger, Texas.  In a little over a week, I re-start my radio career at that same station…sort of.

It’s been awhile since I even considered the idea of returning to broadcasting.  I was let go from the last radio job under what I feel is, shall we say, less-than-truthful pretenses.  When you’re told you’re being let go because the company can’t afford live jocks anymore, yet they go ahead an hire another live jock just two weeks after you’re let go, there’s reason to believe that something smells, and it’s not my socks.  But I digress.

After all that, I was tired of the whole thing.  I didn’t feel like moving across the state or across the country to find a job I’d have a good chance of losing in just a couple of years through cost-cutting, poor ratings or someone not liking a bit I did on the air.  That’s why I returned to retail.  It was something I knew I could do, it was closer to home, and the stress level was much less than what I’d experienced the last couple of years on the air.  Goodbye and good riddance…or so I thought.

One phrase I’d keep hearing from old broadcasters was something like, “Once you get radio in your blood, you never get it out”.  It turned out that, at least for me, the love of the medium and the music didn’t go away.  It’s the main reason I started Project 42 Radio.  I wanted a way to “play radio” without the same old hassles.  It was radio as a hobby, while I got my income from retail.

Not long after I returned to the old hometown, my old boss at the ratio station asked me (and asked me and asked me) about coming back.  I didn’t want to.  Not only was I still burned fromthe way I was kicked out at the previous station, I had the feeling that, due to issues I won’t go into here, me returning to KQTY just wouldn’t work.  In addition to all that, I felt returning would be a major step backwards in my life.  After so many recent “backward” steps, I didn’t want to take another one.  It took several months more before I came to some realizations that changed my mind.

First was, although I enjoyed my current job at the store, I had to work mostly evenings.  That meant I wouldn’t be home until after J-Boy had to be in bed, and I saw him for all of half an hour on school mornings.  J-Boy is in his early teens, and he needs a parent at home now more than ever.  Second, watching him while I was at work was starting to wear on my Mom and Dad.  They did so happily, but as anyone who has raised a teen knows, you often end up clashing over various and sundry things.  The bottom line is, my little boy is growing up fast, and I’ve been missing it. That was the main reason I went to see Mr. G. at the station a couple of months ago. We talked about what he needed done at the station and what I would like to do.  He gave me a proposal that sounded good to me, and after finally getting everything approved by the station owner, I signed the deal a few weeks later.  It felt right.  I was getting back to the kind of work I loved, and I was getting more time for J-Boy and me.

So, in just a couple of weeks, I’ll turn on a microphone in the same studio in which I uttered my first words on the air.  I’m a little scared, but much more excited. Here’s hoping I prove Thomas Wolfe wrong.

…it’s been a long time.

There’s never a good time to write anymore.

I wonder if I’ve taken on too much; there’s my full-time job, college classes, and the internet station, not to mention raising a second teenager.  This one’s likely to be tougher than the first.

No, that’s not what’s been bothering me.  It’s something a bit more personal.

It’s the realization that I’m a coward.

It hit me after getting back from the U2 concert last month in Arlington.  We had been in line to get in the show four hours, when the call came for everyone to put their chairs and other personal items back in their vehicles.  All the others in their party took their stuff back while I held our place.

After they left, a couple of college-aged guys walked up and got in line next to me like they had been there all day.  I didn’t say anything.  It the young woman in line behind me to firmly explain to them that they couldn’t cut line.  We’d been there since 8 a.m., and we weren’t giving up our place in line for those Johnnies-come-lately.

That stuck with me, and I didn’t really know why until the drive home.  I didn’t speak up because I was afraid.  I didn’t want to stir anything up, or deal with any negative outcome.

It was then I’d realized how often, in different situations, I’d done the same thing. I’ve not investigated job opportunities because I was afraid I’d fail.  I stayed in a living hell of a marriage for years because I was afraid of what the kids would think if I filed for divorce. I don’t talk politics anymore, let alone religion.

Even now, I’ve let fear keep me from telling a very special woman the full extent of how much I love her, because I’m afraid of being rejected.  I can write that here because I’m quite sure she won’t be reading this.

I don’t write anymore because every time I try, the end result sounds really stupid.

I’m tired of being afraid.  I don’t know how to change.  I don’t even know if I can.

Well, enough keep looking for the “Der Kommissar” post (which I’m too lazy to link to; you can find it in the archives), but I really haven’t posted anything since before the beginning of summer.

Just in case you were wondering — and if you were, God bless you — Project 42 Radio is streaming. Right. NOW!  There’s pop, rock and else I could find from the last four decades, with an emphasis on music that’s fun to sing along with, tap your feet to, or play your air instrument of choice.  I hope you’ll try it out.  You can request a song from the playlist (and it’s a BIG one), too.

Posts here may still be infrequent, but they should be a bit less infrequent going forward.  Expect to see more stuff from everyday life here, as writing about it helps me to sort things out.  I won’t be telling everything, though.  This isn’t Jerry Springer.

(Do you know how hard it is to come up with a clever title using the letter “F” without sounding obscene?)

So, it’s two weeks until Project 42 Radio launches, and the lists continue…

• Foreigner
• Fountains of Wayne
• The Four Seasons
• Franke & The Knockouts
• Frankie Smith
• Frankie Valli
• Franz Ferdinand

Might as well jump…

• The Fray
• Fred Knoblock
• Freddie Jackson
• Free
• Freedy Johnston
• Frida
• Frijid Pink
• Frozen Ghost
• Fuel
• Funkadelic
• Fuzz

Remember, if it’s not Project 42, it’s not a whole bunch of songs and a guy with too much time on his hands!

Project 42 Radio launches in 2 weeks.  Here’s more of the artists you’ll be able to hear..

• EMF
• The Eagles
• Earth, Wind and Fire
• Ebn-Ozn
• Echo and the Bunnymen
• Eddie & The Hot Rods
• Eddie Kendricks
• Eddie Money
• Eddie Rabbitt

(Don’t stop now.  There’s more after the jump!)

• Eddie Vedder
• Eddy Grant
• Edgar Winter Group
• Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians
• Edwin McCain
• Edwin Starr
• Edwyn Collins
• Eiffel 65
• Electric Light Orchestra
• Elliot Yamin
• Elton John
• Elvis Costello
• Elvis Presley
• The Emotions
• En Vogue
• England Dan & John Ford Coley
• Enigma
• Enya
• Erasure
• Eric Burdon
• Eric Clapton
• Eric Heatherly
• Eruption
• Europe
• Eurythmics
• Evan & Jaron
• Evanescence
• Eve 6
• Evelyn “Champagne” King
• Everclear
• Everything But The Girl
• Expose
• Extreme

Fifteen days to the official launch of Project 42 Radio!  Here’s some of the artists you’ll hear…especially if you listen all the time.  Really, you should just implant the headphones now and save the wait.

• DC Talk
• DHT
• DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
• DNA
• Dakota Moon
• Damn Yankees
• Dan Baird
• Dan Hartman
• Dana Glover
• Daniel Bedingfield

Lots more after the jump…

• Danny Wilson
• Daryl Hall (solo)
• Daughtry
• Dave & Ansell Collins
• Dave Edmunds
• Dave Mason
• Dave Matthews Band
• David & David
• David Bowie
• David Cook
• David Dundas
• David Essex
• David Gray
• David Lee Roth
• The Dazz Band
• De La Soul
• DeBarge
• Dead Or Alive
• Death Cab For Cutie
• Debbie Gibson
• Deee-Lite
• Deep Blue Something
• Deep Purple
• Def Leppard
• Default
• Del Amitri
• Delbert McClinton
• Delerium
• Delta Spirit
• Deniece Williams
• Dennis Coffey & the Detroit Guitar Band
• Dennis DeYoung
• Deon Estus
• Depeche Mode
• Des’ree
• Destiny’s Child
• Devo
• Dexter Freebish
• Dexy’s Midnight Runners
• Diamond Rio
• Diana King
• Diana Ross
• Dido
• Dierks Bentley
• Diesel
• Dionne Farris
• Dire Straits
• The Dirt Band
• Dirty Vegas
• Dishwalla
• The Dixie Chicks
• Dobie Gray
• Doctor And The Medics
• Dog’s Eye View
• Don Henley
• Don McLean
• Donald Fagen
• Donna Lewis
• Donna Summer
• Donnie Iris
• The Doobie Brothers
• Double
• Dr. John
• Dr. Hook
• Dramarama
• The Dream Academy
• Dropkick Murphys
• Dropline
• Duffy
• Duncan Sheik
• Duran Duran
• Dwight Twilley
• Dwight Yoakum

More to come…

Trying to decide how to build the rest of the Project 42 site is driving me nuts.  It’s been years since I put a site together on my own.  My HTML-fu is very, very weak…and not let’s even get into content management software.  That stuff makes my head spin.

I want to offer information on what’s currently playing, and let you all request songs.  I can get those pages uploaded, but they look so…1999.  This is where my struggle with perfectionism comes to the fore.  I can’t get it perfect, so I do nothing.  This means a lot to me, and I want it to be good…augh.

I can’t afford to hire a professional, so I have to do this myself.  I hope it’s not too ugly when I’m finished.