Completely Conspicuous 425: Reeling in the Years, 1981 (Part 1)

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Brian Salvatore as we look back at the music of 1981. Listen to the episode below or download directly.
 
Show notes:
- Recorded via Skype
- Check out Brian's podcast Input/Output
- In 1981, Jay was 13 and Brian wasn't born yet
- Jay: Lived in Canada for most of the year, then moved to U.S.
- Listened to a lot of hard rock and AOR
- Toronto radio was cool but a few years from becoming heavily formatted
- A lot of solo albums
- Beginnings of indie rock
- Lots of soft rock on the charts
- The Stones had a resurgence in '81
- Old rockers were in their 30s and 40s then
- Death of Lennon hung over the music scene
- Hall and Oates left a strong legacy of pop hits
- The puzzling Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame selection process
- The strange popularity of Steve Miller
- "Under Pressure" has become bigger as years passed
- MTV's debut in August 1981
- USA Network premiered "Night Flight"
- REO Speedwagon's one breakout year
- Ozzy's comeback continues
- To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 413: Song of the South

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Christian Douglass as we discuss the differences between the North and the South. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
 

Show notes:
- Christian grew up in Texas
- The tension between North and South is still around
- The Cuban Connection
- Ted Cruz's attempts at humor
- Batshit crazy election season
- The Trump effect
- It's still the economy, stupid
- A brown dude in New Hampshire
- Canada welcomed a generation of immigrants in the '70s and '80s
- Sri Lankan and Samoan street gangs
- Jay: Toronto was the most diverse place I've lived
- Christian: Was ignorant of the North as a kid
- The OJ Simpson miniseries is pretty fun
- Southern stereotypes are strong up North
- A formal level of ignorance
- To be continued


Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 276: Oh, Canada

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Ric Dube as we dissect a classic mid-1970s song from a Canadian music legend. Listen to the episode below or download it directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:
- Recorded at More Lost Time world HQ
- Dissecting Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
- Song's a total downer, no pun intended
- Based on a true life incident in 1975
- Sounds like Lightfoot put the Wikipedia entry to music
- Checking out the early '70s Canadian band Lighthouse
- Sounds like the Guess Who or Blood, Sweat and Tears
- Lightfoot's "Sundown" is a much better song
- Ric: A little like Velvet Underground's "Loaded"
- Frank Chacksfield, the king of elevator music
- Making slow '70s songs even slower
- Pat Boone and Paul Anka later made entire albums covering hard rock songs
- Anne Murray dominated Canadian radio in the '70s
- Canadian content rule meant a third of music on the radio had to be Canadian
- A random song from The Randoms to wash the MOR crap away
- Teenage Head was an Ontario punk band from the late '70s
- CanCon meant a lot of bands got on the radio that normally wouldn't have
- Bonehead of the Week


Music:
Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong
Stars - Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It

Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The Sloan song is on the album One Chord to Another on Murderecords. Download the song for free at Noisetrade.
The Stars song is on the album The North on ATO Records. Download it for free at Epitonic.

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 89: Doctor Doctor

I celebrate three years of podcasting CompCon with part 2 of my conversation with Dev Sarathy, this time discussing the pros and cons of the Canadian healthcare system. Click here to listen to the show in streaming audio or download it directly here (right click and "save as").

The show notes...

Topics:

- In Canada, paying taxes = healthcare coverage

- Canadian taxes are extremely high

- Health insurance doesn't cover "natural health" services like chiropractic

- Quality of life vs. quantity of life

- Money isn't going into preventive healthcare/wellness

- Old man Kumar: No kids play outside anymore

- Dev's awesome impression of his dad

- Fat people are fatter nowadays

- Canadian delays: Three-month waiting period for MRIs

- Maybe a hybrid of the two systems would work

- Canadian system abused by trivial ER visits

- Dev would make more money in U.S. system

- Canadians aren't used to paying for health services

- Hard to roll out a national plan due to sheer size of U.S.

- Outsourcing is a serious problem

- Pinhead of the Week

Music:

- Lou Barlow - Gravitate

- Big Dipper - She's Fetching

- MSTRKRFT (feat. N.O.R.E.) - Bounce

Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The Lou Barlow song is on the forthcoming album Goodnight Unknown. The Big Dipper song is on the box set Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology. Both albums are on Merge Records, where you can download the songs.

The MSTRKRFT song is on the album Bounce on Dim Mak Records. The song is courtesy of RCRDLBL, where you can download the MP3.

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blogs Clicky Clicky and Keeping Some Dark Secrets. Additional music used in the show is by Me and Boris the Bull, which is the brainchild of the mighty Mark Campbell. Thanks to Bob Durling for the album art; find out more about his photography here.

Completely Conspicuous is a Tan God Production. Word.