“Dee Jay Applebee”

I am an Applebee’s finder and pretty much love the 38 year-old casual dining franchise chain.

In the several states my radio DJ career took me and since, I always found a friendly Applebee’s Bar and Grill restaurant as my initial watering hole to settle my world and meet new locals, while I got the “lay of the land”.

So, imagine my pleased perspective when, while chillin’ at my newest Apples location, a DJ party erupted! They didn’t move the furniture or rearrange the booths, as a real, live selector set up and began to rock the house!  He calls himself DJ Marc J and I empathize with him taking his blends seriously and using a small variety of today’s DJ tools.  There were only a couple of guys who were dancing in the isles, most just head noddin’, boppin’ to the beats from their seats while sippin’ and kickin’ convo.

Marc J mixes a musical cocktail of uptempo jams.  From R&B remixes to reggaeton, club, pumpin Pop, techno, electronica, hip-hop (without all the cursing and n-words, by the way), with a splash of Chutney Soca, Afro-beat, Reggae Fusion, southern soul, jazzy juice and dance-Pop. 

Kudos to this Richmond, Virginia Applebee’s management for always having a nice classic soul, R&B mix playing in-general on the “Muzak” system, friendly waitstaff, bartenders and in-particular for featuring a live disc jockey on Thursday nights!

 

It was “eatin’ good in the neighborhood, 2.0″   and as a fellow Selector for over forty years, I feel qualified to rate DJ Marc J: The night I listened to him, he was blending perfectly, although I would like to see him mix vinyl, talk on the mic a little bit and run a dance floor club, but at “Club Applebee’s on Laburnum” that night overall, he earned 4.5 stars!

pickhit: remember to swing over to my mothership blog for all things mostly not about music, http://www.achilliad.wordpress.com – now going on ten years of blogging this month!

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“Super Hit” Radio Station Music Surveys From The Past” – What Were You Listening to 48 Years Ago this month?

This is a new category for the blog!  Reuniting with some of my history from my storage pod recently, I came upon some masterpieces, preserved  to now share with you.

When I was growing up and just starting to get into music, I’d stop by the records shops on the way home (anything to stall going back there) to pick up the hottest 45rpm record my allowance allowed and the latest hit ‘survey” sheets that all of the local radio stations put out regularly, listing what they were playing , by who and what was bubbling-up to be a smash soon! My parents didn’t even want me to listen to this music.  I remember my mother asking me, “What are you doing listening to that gut-bucket music?!”  I think I was listening to some Motown on my record player at the time. My folks and their relatives used to act all bourgie sometimes.  In retrospect, seeing it for what is was, typical generation-gap disrespect, I guess. We all are subject to do it, poo-pooing the fashions or new trends of those that follow us – if we keep a closed mind.

This survey was right on top of the pile when I opened that now falling-apart file; from forty-eight years ago this month and at the time New York City’s number one “Soul”  and R&B (Rhythm and Blues, if you don’t know) music station, waaay down at the end of the AM radio dial on 1600, WWRL.  The mainstream “Top 40” stations were the powerhouse “Musicradio 77WABC” and at the other end of the dial WMCA AM 570, featuring “The Good Guys”. Theonly other “competing soul stations were WLIB AM and over in New Jersey, WNJR AM, but they had weaker signals with more static. All of this was pre-FM radio.

Do you remember any of these songs, or maybe the versions other groups and bands did as covers of them? And the gentlemen on the right-hand column were some of the guys who made me want to be a radio DJ too (though at the tine I didn’t know it).  I even got to hang out with all of them except Enoch Gregory (top) who, if memory serves me correctly was the morning disc jockey at the time.  All but a couple are not with us in the physical world anymore, but not forgotten.

Turn the page and you’d see:

I remember going to Alpha Distribution when I started DJing back in 1972 to get promotional copies that were free for us to play at parties!

On the back, “Jack” you’d see two more places to get the latest vinyl:

I’m so happy to have found these in great condition and as the month go by, I will share more from those same past months with you. Ironically I still own much of these records and they are still very playable (secret: never lend records to anyone)!

Please comment on anything here that moves you or, if you are too young to have known these records, feel free to email and ask me about them.  I am here to educate and connect the musical “dots” for you, unlike so many people on the air fail to do these days. This is positive history; after all…its musik !

As always, be sure to flash on over to the mothership  blog which spawned this one, www.achilliad.wordpress.com for mostly non-music content and diary ramblings now going on ten years of blogging!  Thank you.