//podcastplus.net/feed/how-good-it-is~f9ab1733 Each episode I choose a song from the 50s through the 90s and dive into its history, the story behind the song and other items of interest. Find more stuff at www.howgooditis.com Sun, 13 Sep 2026 11:00:25 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/178-Influential_Women_Part_3--Jane_Asher.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=11215641&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&cat_exclude=IAB1-8%2CIAB1-9%2CIAB7-41%2CIAB8-5%2CIAB8-18%2CIAB11-4%2CIAB23%2CIAB24%2CIAB25%2CIAB26&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F Of all the people in the Beatles' inner circle, Jane Asher is perhaps the most mysterious.Not because she's reclusive--far from it, in fact. Jane Asher has spent lots of time on stage and on screens large and small from the time she was a  child. But other than newspaper and magazine articles, and maybe a few video clips which survive from the 1960s, there isn't a lot of first-hand knowledge about her relationship with Paul McCartney.For about five years she was his girlfriend, and she had a front-row view of the beginnings of Beatlemania, the madness of touring, the changes in the band's sound, the death of Brian Epstein, the psychedelic period, even the visit to India. But she finds it insulting when people ask her about those days. And even though she's written several books, both fiction and non-fiction, none of them are about The Beatles. She may be the only person who's had prolonged contact with the band who hasn't written a book about it.But Paul McCartney, tunesmith that he is, wrote several songs a... Wed, 18 Sep 2024 04:01:26 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/178-Influential_Women_Part_3--Jane_Asher.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=11215641&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&cat_exclude=IAB1-8%2CIAB1-9%2CIAB7-41%2CIAB8-5%2CIAB8-18%2CIAB11-4%2CIAB23%2CIAB24%2CIAB25%2CIAB26&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/177_Influential_Women_Pt_2--Rosanna_Arquette.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=11128980&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&cat_exclude=IAB1-8%2CIAB1-9%2CIAB7-41%2CIAB8-5%2CIAB8-18%2CIAB11-4%2CIAB23%2CIAB24%2CIAB25%2CIAB26&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F In case you haven't heard, we're on a little bit of a journey, meeting various women who have had an influence on multiple pop songs. In today's episode we'll be visiting Rosanna Arquette.The interesting thing here is that whether or not the songs in this episode are about Rosanna has been an on-again, off-again mystery. For a while they're not, then they are again, and maybe, maybe not. Personally I think the evidence is there, although I can accept the explanation that there are other models for one song and there's a deliberate ambiguity in the other, because of the nature of the music that was influencing the singer.At any rate, there's a terrific storm going on tonight and I've already lost power briefly one time; let me get this out before there's another outage.Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Paid members get a newsletter 48 times per year and ad-free episodes. Free members get the newsletter on a delayed basis.  Sat, 03 Aug 2024 02:46:16 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/177_Influential_Women_Pt_2--Rosanna_Arquette.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=11128980&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&cat_exclude=IAB1-8%2CIAB1-9%2CIAB7-41%2CIAB8-5%2CIAB8-18%2CIAB11-4%2CIAB23%2CIAB24%2CIAB25%2CIAB26&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/content.blubrry.com/howgooditis/176-Influential_Woman_Pt_1--Renee_Fladen-Kamm.mp3 For the next several episodes, we're going to take a look at the women who inspired some of the Rock Era's most iconic songs.There will be six episodes in this series; five of them will concentrate on a specific woman, each of whom inspired multiple songs. The sixth episode will look at several women who each inspired a single song. A couple of the women I've chosen will be fairly obvious but I'm hoping a couple will come as a surprise to you.And this episode, I hope, is one of the surprises. We'll be taking a look at Renee Fladen-Kamm, who was just Renee Fladen back in the day. This young woman inspired three songs, all with a similar theme to them. Two of the songs became big hits for the artist, and the third...not so much. But there's a pretty good cover that I mention during the episode.Click here for a transcript of this episode.Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons receive a weekly newsletter about 48 times a year (I dunno, I don't count, but I don't take a lot of weeks off), plus bragging... Sat, 06 Jul 2024 03:59:12 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/content.blubrry.com/howgooditis/176-Influential_Woman_Pt_1--Renee_Fladen-Kamm.mp3 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/175-In_the_Still_of_the_Night.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=11048757&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&cat_exclude=IAB1-8%2CIAB1-9%2CIAB7-41%2CIAB8-5%2CIAB8-18%2CIAB11-4%2CIAB23%2CIAB24%2CIAB25%2CIAB26&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F After this many episodes, it gives me a moment of "Huh, isn't that interesting" when I start writing the post for an episode and discover that I haven't covered a song from that particular year before. In this case, that year would be 1956.In retrospect, that shouldn't be a surprise, given that we're reaching waaay back into the early days of the Pop music era. But it's still a fun little statistic, regardless."In the Still of the Night" was originally "In the Still of the Nite," partly because they didn't want this song to be confused with a 1936 song written by Cole Porter and recorded several times over the years. The other reason is that it was a little bit of a trend to spell "Nite" like that. (See also The Dells' "Oh What a Nite".) Later on the spelling changed to the more conventional style, and you'd often see "(I'll Remember)" tacked on. Why it's "I'll remember" and not "I remember", I have no idea.This wasn't relevant to the broader story, but in 1986 Ronnie Milsap recorded a song called "Lost in th... Mon, 17 Jun 2024 03:00:21 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/175-In_the_Still_of_the_Night.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=11048757&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&cat_exclude=IAB1-8%2CIAB1-9%2CIAB7-41%2CIAB8-5%2CIAB8-18%2CIAB11-4%2CIAB23%2CIAB24%2CIAB25%2CIAB26&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/166-Daydream_Believer.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10182246&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F I think that by now the Monkees have overcome their epithet of "Prefab Four," which I suppose was clever but not especially accurate. At least three of the Monkees were musicians who could act. I'd argue that Micky Dolenz was an actor who could play music. (More on that below.) Having said that, however, he's got one of the best voices of the rock and roll era, so my label comes from the fact that he came from acting rather than from music, as the others did.That they didn't write most of their own music is really of no consequence, given that the pressure for artists to write their own material wasn't really there yet. Similarly, the Monkees were under a tight contract, which made that difficult. Every move they made toward autonomy was met with resistance. In Michael Nesmith's case, it meant some acrimony between him and the label.At any rate, as I mention early in the show, "Daydream Believer" was the Monkees' last Number One hit, but it was only  their second-to-last Top Ten in the United States.  (Thei... Mon, 10 Apr 2023 17:57:29 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/166-Daydream_Believer.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10182246&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/165-If_You_Could_Read_My_Mind_featuring_Mike_Messner_.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10093862&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F You might remember a few episodes back when I teamed up with Mike Messner. He's the host of the Gordon Lightfoot appreciation podcast Carefree Highway Revisited. Well, Mike is back, and this time around we're talking about Lightfoot's first big American hit, "If You Could Read My Mind."I actually went looking around for the album that I'd first heard this song on, and it turned out that I was exactly correct about its title:This was a four-album box set that came out in 1973, so clearly the folks at Warner Brothers didn't have a lot of hope for the rest of the decade, musically. However, this is a pretty amazing collection. I don't think K-Tel ever put anything like this together. And it's a shame that A) it's never appeared in cassette or CD format; and B) it's not likely to be, considering the nightmare it's got to be to get the rights to them by now. (You can get it on 8-track tape if you're so motivated, according to Discogs.)At any rate, I've actually wanted to cover this song for a long while, but didn'... Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:32:26 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/165-If_You_Could_Read_My_Mind_featuring_Mike_Messner_.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10093862&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/164-Chinese_Food_on_Christmas.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10009287&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F To be honest, I didn't really expect both of the musicians I approached this year to be both very open to the idea of an interview and so generous with their time. But I'm definitely glad that they were, especially because you get to benefit from the chats I had with them. And during this holiday season you get two long episodes instead of one semi-long one. Win-win all around!Brandon Walker's "Chinese Food on Christmas" isn't as Baltimore-centric as David DeBoy's song is, but it definitely has its origins in the fact that Brandon is from the Baltimore area, which is estimated to have about 100,000 people of the Jewish faith living here. Baltimore City is just under 600,000 people, so that's a pretty big chunk of matzoh, there. And, of course, he shot the video at several spots in the immediate area: Hunt Valley Towne Centre is a local outdoor shopping mall just north of the city. And yes, they spell it like that. The Senator Theatre is in the northern part of town.  You may recognize it from several J... Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:15:08 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/164-Chinese_Food_on_Christmas.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10009287&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/163-Crabs_for_Christmas.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10003837&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F Over the last several years, radio stations have been snapped up by large corporations. Then, as a cost-cutting measure, certain functions have been centralized. One of these has been the stations' playlists, the literal list of songs that a station has in its rotation. This has led to a homogenization of radio stations and it kind of makes them not as much fun to listen to when you travel.That said, there are going to be variations to the playlists depending on requests and local tastes. For instance, Billboard lists the Top Song of 2022 as "Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy, but in Charlotte, North Carolina it comes out as #16 for the year.In Baltimore, there's a Christmas-related song that's a perennial favorite among the locals. However, it gets next to zero airplay anywhere else. And the song's author and performer is fine with that, because he knows that the song is very Baltimore-centric. His name is David DeBoy, and his song is called "Crabs for Christmas."David DeBoy is a local  theater actor, a television a... Tue, 27 Dec 2022 04:56:43 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/163-Crabs_for_Christmas.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=10003837&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/162-Reach_Out_Ill_Be_There_.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=9913048&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F Such a life I've had lately, what with getting Covid and then getting part of the house renovated...four weeks of a two-week project. And the job isn't even done, but that's not the contractor's fault. (Replacement parts, don'tcha know.) And for some reason it's taking forever to put the kitchen—the whole downstairs, really—back together. Anyway. This episode takes a peek at the song that arguably became the Four Tops' signature hit. The funny thing is, none of the Tops thought it would be a hit. What's more, none of them thought it SHOULD be a single, never mind a hit. But Berry Gordy isn't called "genius" for nothing, and he not only released the single, he made it the lead (and title) track for their fourth album. Reach Out (the album) is definitive Four Tops, and marks the bridge between early 1960s Motown and the sounds they were producing in the second half of the decade. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Thu, 27 Oct 2022 04:40:33 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/mc.blubrry.com/howgooditis/162-Reach_Out_Ill_Be_There_.mp3?awCollectionId=811698&awEpisodeId=9913048&aw_0_azn.pgenre=Music&aw_0_1st.ri=blubrry&aw_0_azn.pcountry=US&aw_0_azn.planguage=en&aw_0_cnt.rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howgooditis.com%2Ffeed%2Fpodcast%2F https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/content.blubrry.com/howgooditis/162-Reach_Out_Ill_Be_There_.mp3 Such a life I've had lately, what with getting Covid and then getting part of the house renovated...four weeks of a two-week project. And the job isn't even done, but that's not the contractor's fault. (Replacement parts, don'tcha know.) And for some reason it's taking forever to put the kitchen—the whole downstairs, really—back together. Anyway. This episode takes a peek at the song that arguably became the Four Tops' signature hit. The funny thing is, none of the Tops thought it would be a hit. What's more, none of them thought it SHOULD be a single, never mind a hit. But Berry Gordy isn't called "genius" for nothing, and he not only released the single, he made it the lead (and title) track for their fourth album. Reach Out (the album) is definitive Four Tops, and marks the bridge between early 1960s Motown and the sounds they were producing in the second half of the decade. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Thu, 27 Oct 2022 04:40:33 +0000 https://media.blubrry.com/howgooditis/content.blubrry.com/howgooditis/162-Reach_Out_Ill_Be_There_.mp3