Picking a Song

One of the great things about doing a podcast about songs is that there are literally thousands of songs to pick from. If we did a song a day, which is crazy for our current operation, it would take nine years to do over three thousand songs. And in those ensuing years, there would be thousands of songs and more stories to tell. Essentially, we got a lot of work to do if we're going to do this right.

That being said, it's not easy picking songs. First off, where do you start? There are just too many songs. Just like cleaning an overflowing garage. There's just too much stuff. Too much junk. Where do you begin? Another thing is that some stories are better than others. We can't just pick any song and tell the story about it. Well, actually we can, but how good would that be? We'd rather pick songs that have interesting stories with interesting characters. So I read a lot of books and went on http://wikipedia.com/ and http://songfacts.com/ I created a spreadsheet with songs and who plays it, who I'd like to interview. Realistically, that is. Ideally, I'd like for us to interview Paul McCartney about "Hey Jude." Realistically, right now we'd probably get a Beatle fan or a book writer and interview that person. Eventually, we will get top notch people to tell the story of the song. In fact, as you will learn on the next post, we did incredibly well for our first podcast guest. I'll even give you a hint about the first song we did. It was investigated by the FBI. You can't say that about a lot of songs. I'm sure there might be a few, but not that many.

One of the problems for picking songs and having an ideal person to interview, is that some of them are dead. Sure there are the basic deaths everyone knows about like Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Kirk Cobain. But what about people we don't know about? Someone like Cub Koda. One of the songs included on the spreadsheet I created was "Smokin' in the Boys Room." Terrific song done by Motley Crue, but first played by Brownsville Station. I found out that Cub Koda and Mike Letz wrote it. I was excited about Cub Koda because he was an interesting character. Not only was he a song writer, he was a record collector and music scholar as well. So I figured it would be a great interview. I even had a few questions bubbling up in my head. I was excited. I went into his official site, http://www.cubkoda.com/. He wrote liner notes for some Rhino records. He wrote a column for "Goldmine," which is a music magazine. Then I found out he was dead. Died in 2000. I was bummed out. I really was. It felt as if he had just died. I know we could still get a terrific person to tell the story of Smokin' in the Boys Room. But I still feel sad about it. I'm sure we're going to encounter similar situations in the future, so I guess I'm going to have to get used to it.