John Maynard

It's happening all over the country, including in the Pacific Northwest. People are walking away from their mortgages. In most cases, the homes that are being abandoned are valued for less than their mortgage. 

And the winner is…

Music and movies have pretty much always gone together. What would Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid be without “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”? Try to imagine The Wizard of Oz without “Over the Rainbow”. Or Blue Velvet without “Blue Moon”. Okay stop imagining now.

It doesn’t take a good movie to produce an Oscar winning song. For example, The Poseidon Adventure produced the Oscar winner “The Morning After”, and Towering Inferno gave us “We May Never Love Like This Again.”

Now that we have your attention…it’s time for another romp through history in honor of this weekend’s big President’s Day Holiday. It’s a day to pay tribute to those brave men who served their country, and to enjoy deep discounts on furniture and appliances that honor their memory.

Record Bin Roulette takes this occasion to review the popular music Presidents have chosen for their formal celebrations. The biggest, baddest of all is the Inaugural Ball.

The Grammys have been awarded since 1959, when Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" was the hit of the year. Some of the greats have been honored along the way, from Frank Sinatra to The Beatles to Quincy Jones.

Some not-so-greats have been honored, too. Milli Vanilli had to give theirs back-- seems they weren't actually on their award-winning record.

It's the unlikely history of the biggest halftime show on the planet: the Super Bowl. Sunday's game between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers will be  Super Bowl XLV - yes, 45 years of the Big Game - and among the millions watching some will be hanging on to see what passes as entertainment for the masses.

Seattle area landlords are breathing a sigh of relief these days due to dropping rental vacancies. Real estate appraiser Richard Hagar tells KPLU's  John Maynard that two forces are driving this.

It's a sign of the times for the lowly CD: Sony closes a huge CD manufacturing plant, and the same week the band Cake sells a dismal 44,000 copies, the lowest ever for a number one album.

Downloads and file sharing are undeniably edging out the Compact Disc. So, in memoriam, we offer a retrospective of the short but flashy career of the venerable CD.

You can name a few, we're sure: TV theme songs that topped the pop charts. 

Here's a little quiz, based on this week's Record Bin Roulette. Name the show (and theme song) from the clue provided (answers at bottom of the post!):

1. Johnny Rivers sang it all the way to #3
2. Don Diego de la Vega was the lead character's name
3. Theme song with one word, repeated over and over...
4. The Sweathogs had him
5. Unofficial University of Hawaii fight song
   

The first Baby Boomers are turning 65, and Record Bin Roulette is celebrating with a review of the choicest vinyl of a generation.  

We've done a little research, and discovered that one Kathleen Kirschling has the distinction of being the very first Boomer, born on Jan 1, 1946.

We follow the top music of her life, decade by decade, featuring Elvis, The Troggs, the Bangles, and a special appearance by Ricardo Montalban. 

With birds falling out of the sky lately, Record Bin Roulette turns attention to songs about our feathered friends.

In Seattle, there's a lot of potentially dangerous places where the soil could give way any moment. This is especially true in neighborhoods with good views. 

The City of Seattle publishes a landslide map that makes this abundantly clear.  On the map, landslide-prone areas are marked in red. And, boy, is there a lot of red!

Eric “Two Scoops” Moore is a big, gregarious man who's released seven critically-acclaimed CDs. The Washington Blues Society has honored him with numerous awards. Perhaps more than those accomplishments, the blues musician is better known for his musical spontaneity and his big heart. 

Despite life's challenges and some true hardships, he retains a keen sense of optimism. Flesh eating disease? No problem. His wife Amy's multiple sclerosis?  That's easy. You find out why when you listen to his philosophy. The wild look in his kind eyes starts to tell the story. His uncanny connection with a piano punctuates it.

The roulette wheel spins wildly for this last time in 2010, and lands on: the days of the week.

John Maynard and John Kessler stroll through the 7 days of the week on Record Bin Roulette and find some imbalances: certain days are just a little more popular than others. Can you guess which?

Anybody have a mirror? John Maynard and John Kessler are checking out songs reflecting narcissism on this week's Record Bin Roulette.

Episode 98 finds the roulette wheel landing on a personality trait that, in its more extreme form, is considered a personality disorder, as noted in clinical definitions.

(Listen to this week's Record Bin Roulette by clicking on the audio 'play' arrow above)

Who knew there was even a Cheez-it category, but that's where the Record Bin Roulette wheel landed this week. John Maynard and John Kessler explore the depths of obscure vinyl at their fingertips and dig up the songs that were popular when icons of modern life came to be.