You should know how to do at least one of them — My dancing skills leave much to be desired. This never stopped me from loving songs introducing dances to listeners. Here are just a few old school ones worth busting out your dancing shoes for. Maybe. “The Twist” by Chubby Checker First he taught us to do the twist. Then we needed to twist…

This is why Gen X considered VH1 their parents’ music video network — I love one-hit wonders. REAL one-hit wonders. Problem is, too many people declare an artist/group to be a one-hit wonder just because they don’t recall other hits of theirs. …

You probably haven’t heard of most of them, which is the point. — Far too many lists involving musicians that died too soon involve one or more of the following: Drug overdoses Suicide Gang related activity Musicians that were household names when they died. This list contains none of those. I think. MC Trouble (20) MC Trouble was a rapper out of LA…

Please follow my rules. — I was naïve when I first started writing on Medium. I thought it worked like social media or school essays, where people wrote and hoped the audience liked it. Then I saw all the articles from Medium authors with far more followers than I have, expressing frustration over how readers…

A Plethora of Pop series — I was reminded by Matthew Joseph of a great cover song: With a Little Help From The Beatles: Joe Cocker’s Greatest Cover Song How Joe Cocker became a mainstream star.medium.com Then I remembered I had another contribution to the Rate-A-Record series Terry Barr started: Rate-A-Record A Brand new Plethora of Pop Seriesmedium.com Here are your two songs. For those of you who forgot, this works like American Bandstand did it. Give each song a rating between 35–98.

All inquiries on the internet do not require your response — When someone asks me a question directly, I will respond. I will even respond with some variation of “I don’t know” if that’s the case. Questions on the internet, however, are rarely directed at me. There is no need for me to respond unless I have an actual answer. “I…

Don’t scare off those who would help you get there — It’s very exciting when you join Medium. You’re ready to share your writing with the world. You expect to start making money the second you publish your first article. Then you see there are requirements to make money off articles you post on Medium. Some are crushed to discover they…

There wouldn’t be a song to cover without them writing it — Cover songs have been around almost as long as music. Per MasterClass: A cover song is a new recording or performance of a song by an artist other than the original composer or performer(s). The Wikipedia entry uses a similar definition, defining a cover song as: a new performance or…

An amazing instrumental performance that took me by surprise — It was Bumbershoot, Seattle’s Labor Day Weekend arts festival, in 2004. The headline act that year was The Pixies. I spent well over two hours in line and still barely got into the stadium in time for their start. …