• Presty the DJ for Jan. 7

    January 7, 2025
    Music

    The number one single in Britain …

    … and over here on my parents’ wedding day in 1961:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Jan. 6

    January 6, 2025
    Music

    First: The song of the day for those who understand what the 12 days of Christmas really mean:

    The number one album today in 1968 was the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”:

    The number one single today in 1973 included a person rumored to be the subject of the song on backing vocals:

    The number one British single today in 1979 was this group’s only number one:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Jan. 5

    January 5, 2025
    Music

    Today’s first song is posted in honor of the first FM signal heard by the Federal Communications Commission today in 1940:

    Today in 1968, Jimi Hendrix was jailed for one day in Stockholm, Sweden, for destroying the contents of his hotel room.

    The culprit? Not marijuana or some other controlled substance. Alcohol.

    Today in 1973, Bruce Springsteen released his first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” It sold all of 25,000 copies in its first year.

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Jan. 4

    January 4, 2025
    Music

    The number one single today in 1959, which (1) extended Christmas beyond where non-Episcopalians (who would tell you that Christmas lasts until Epiphany) would want it, and (2) proves yet again that there is no accounting for taste:

    Today in 1970, the Who’s Keith Moon was trying to escape from a gang of skinheads when he accidentally hit and killed chauffeur Neil Boland.

    The problem was Moon’s attempt at escape. He had never passed his driver’s license test.

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Jan. 3

    January 3, 2025
    Music

    The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1957:

    Today in 1964, NBC-TV’s Tonight show showed the first U.S. video of the Beatles, two months after NBC News’ first report:

    Today in 1967, Beach Boy Carl Wilson got his draft notice, and declared he was a conscientious objector.

    Today in 1969, Jimi Hendrix appeared on BBC’s Lulu show, and demonstrated the perils of live TV:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Jan. 2

    January 2, 2025
    Music

    The number one album today in 1965 was the soundtrack to “Roustabout”:

    Today in 1968, the complete shipment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s new album, “Two Virgins,” was confiscated by New Jersey authorities due to the album cover. A revised cover was used in record stores:

    Click here to see why the album cover was revised.

    The number one album today in 1971 was fellow ex-Beatle George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass”:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Jan. 1

    January 1, 2025
    Music

    I’m going to guess that not many readers will read this immediately upon posting, either because when posted you were out, or you were already in bed.

    Perhaps that was the problem for the Beatles in 1962, when they went to Decca Records for an audition, and Decca declined to sign them.

    Before that, the number one single (for the second time) today in 1956:

    Today in 1964, BBC-TV premiered “Top of the Pops”:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Dec. 31

    December 31, 2024
    Music

    Similar to Christmas, more happened on New Year’s Eve in rock history than one might think.

    Today in 1961, the former Pendletones made their debut with their new name at the Long Beach Civic Auditorium in California: the Beach Boys:

    Today in 1963, the Kinks made their live debut at the Lotus House Restaurant in London:

    The number one single today in 1966:

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Dec. 30

    December 30, 2024
    Music

    The number one single today in 1967:

    Today in 1970, Paul McCartney sued John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to legally dissolve the Beatles.

    The suit was settled exactly four years later.

    (more…)

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  • Presty the DJ for Dec. 29

    December 29, 2024
    Music

    The Billboard Top 100 should have been renamed the Elvis Presley 10 and Everyone Else 90 today in 1956, because Presley had 10 of the top 100 singles, though not number one:

    Today in 1957, Sidney Liebowitz married Edith Garmezano. You know the couple better as Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé.

    (more…)

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Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

The thoughts of a journalist/libertarian–conservative/Christian husband, father, Eagle Scout and aficionado of obscure rock music. Thoughts herein are only the author’s and not necessarily the opinions of his family, friends, neighbors, church members or past, present or future employers.

  • Steve
    • About, or, Who is this man?
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Adventures in ruralu0026nbsp;inkBack in June 2009, I was driving somewhere through a rural area. And for some reason, I had a flashback to two experiences in my career about that time of year many years ago. In 1988, eight days after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, I started work at the Grant County Herald Independent in Lancaster as a — well, the — reporter. Four years after that, on my 27th birthday, I purchased, with a business partner, the Tri-County Press in Cuba City, my first business venture. Both were experiences about which Wisconsin author Michael Perry might write. I thought about all this after reading a novel, The Deadline, written by a former newspaper editor and publisher. (Now who would write a novel about a weekly newspaper?) As a former newspaper owner, I picked at some of it — why finance a newspaper purchase through the bank if the seller is willing to finance it? Because the mean bank lender is a plot point! — and it is much more interesting than reality, but it is very well written, with a nicely twisting plot, and quite entertaining, again more so than reality. There is something about that first job out of college that makes you remember it perhaps more…
    • Adventures in radioI’ve been in the full-time work world half my life. For that same amount of time I’ve been broadcasting sports as a side interest, something I had wanted to since I started listening to games on radio and watching on TV, and then actually attending games. If you ask someone who’s worked in radio for some time about the late ’70s TV series “WKRP in Cincinnati,” most of them will tell you that, if anything, the series understated how wacky working in radio can be. Perhaps the funniest episode in the history of TV is the “WKRP” episode, based on a true story, about the fictional radio station’s Thanksgiving promotion — throwing live turkeys out of a helicopter under the mistaken belief that, in the words of WKRP owner Arthur Carlson, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST01bZJPuE0] I’ve never been involved in anything like that. I have announced games from the roofs of press boxes (once on a nice day, and once in 50-mph winds), from a Mississippi River bluff (more on that later), and from the front row of the second balcony of the University of Wisconsin Fieldhouse (great view, but not a place to go if…
    • “Good morning/afternoon/evening, ________ fans …”
    • My biggest storyEarlier this week, while looking for something else, I came upon some of my own work. (I’m going to write a blog someday called “Things I Found While Looking for Something Else.” This is not that blog.) The Grant County Sheriff’s Department, in the county where I used to live, has a tribute page to the two officers in county history who died in the line of duty. One is William Loud, a deputy marshal in Cassville, shot to death by two bank robbers in 1912. The other is Tom Reuter, a Grant County deputy sheriff who was shot to death at the end of his 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift March 18, 1990. Gregory Coulthard, then a 19-year-old farmhand, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and is serving a life sentence, with his first eligibility for parole on March 18, 2015, just 3½ years from now. I’ve written a lot over the years. I think this, from my first two years in the full-time journalism world, will go down as the story I remember the most. For journalists, big stories contain a paradox, which was pointed out in CBS-TV’s interview of Andy Rooney on his last “60 Minutes” Sunday. Morley Safer said something along the line…
  • Food and drink
    • The Roesch/Prestegard familyu0026nbsp;cookbookFrom the family cookbook(s) All the families I’m associated with love to eat, so it’s a good thing we enjoy cooking. The first out-of-my-house food memory I have is of my grandmother’s cooking for Christmas or other family occasions. According to my mother, my grandmother had a baked beans recipe that she would make for my mother. Unfortunately, the recipe seems to have  disappeared. Also unfortunately, my early days as a picky, though voluminous, eater meant I missed a lot of those recipes made from such wholesome ingredients as lard and meat fat. I particularly remember a couple of meals that involve my family. The day of Super Bowl XXXI, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle and a group of their friends got together to share lots of food and cheer on the Packers to their first NFL title in 29 years. (After which Jannan and I drove to Lambeau Field in the snow,  but that’s another story.) Then, on Dec. 31, 1999, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle and Jannan and I (along with Michael in utero) had a one-course-per-hour meal to appropriately end years beginning with the number 1. Unfortunately I can’t remember what we…
    • SkålI was the editor of Marketplace Magazine for 10 years. If I had to point to one thing that demonstrates improved quality of life since I came to Northeast Wisconsin in 1994, it would be … … the growth of breweries and  wineries in Northeast Wisconsin. The former of those two facts makes sense, given our heritage as a brewing state. The latter is less self-evident, since no one thinks of Wisconsin as having a good grape-growing climate. Some snobs claim that apple or cherry wines aren’t really wines at all. But one of the great facets of free enterprise is the opportunity to make your own choice of what food and drink to drink. (At least for now, though some wish to restrict our food and drink choices.) Wisconsin’s historically predominant ethnic group (and our family’s) is German. Our German ancestors did unfortunately bring large government and high taxes with them, but they also brought beer. Europeans brought wine with them, since they came from countries with poor-quality drinking water. Within 50 years of a wave of mid-19th-century German immigration, brewing had become the fifth largest industry in the U.S., according to Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer. Beer and wine have…
  • Wheels
    • America’s sports carMy birthday in June dawned without a Chevrolet Corvette in front of my house. (The Corvette at the top of the page was featured at the 2007 Greater Milwaukee Auto Show. The copilot is my oldest son, Michael.) Which isn’t surprising. I have three young children, and I have a house with a one-car garage. (Then again, this would be more practical, though a blatant pluck-your-eyes-out violation of the Corvette ethos. Of course, so was this.) The reality is that I’m likely to be able to own a Corvette only if I get a visit from the Corvette Fairy, whose office is next door to the Easter Bunny. (I hope this isn’t foreshadowing: When I interviewed Dave Richter of Valley Corvette for a car enthusiast story in the late great Marketplace Magazine, he said that the most popular Corvette in most fans’ minds was a Corvette built during their days in high school. This would be a problem for me in that I graduated from high school in 1983, when no Corvette was built.) The Corvette is one of those cars whose existence may be difficult to understand within General Motors Corp. The Corvette is what is known as a “halo car,” a car that drives people into showrooms, even if…
    • Barges on fouru0026nbsp;wheelsI originally wrote this in September 2008.  At the Fox Cities Business Expo Tuesday, a Smart car was displayed at the United Way Fox Cities booth. I reported that I once owned a car into which trunk, I believe, the Smart could be placed, with the trunk lid shut. This is said car — a 1975 Chevrolet Caprice coupe (ours was dark red), whose doors are, I believe, longer than the entire Smart. The Caprice, built down Interstate 90 from us Madisonians in Janesville (a neighbor of ours who worked at the plant probably helped put it together) was the flagship of Chevy’s full-size fleet (which included the stripper Bel Air and middle-of-the-road Impala), featuring popular-for-the-time vinyl roofs, better sound insulation, an upgraded cloth interior, rear fender skirts and fancy Caprice badges. The Caprice was 18 feet 1 inch long and weighed 4,300 pounds. For comparison: The midsize Chevrolet of the ear was the Malibu, which was the same approximate size as the Caprice after its 1977 downsizing. The compact Chevrolet of the era was the Nova, which was 200 inches long — four inches longer than a current Cadillac STS. Wikipedia’s entry on the Caprice has this amusing sentence: “As fuel economy became a bigger priority among Americans…
    • Behind the wheel
    • Collecting only dust or rust
    • Coooooooooooupe!
    • Corvettes on the screen
    • The garage of misfit cars
    • 100 years (and one day) of our Chevrolets
    • They built Excitement, sort of, once in a while
    • A wagon by any otheru0026nbsp;nameFirst written in 2008. You will see more don’t-call-them-station-wagons as you drive today. Readers around my age have probably had some experience with a vehicle increasingly rare on the road — the station wagon. If you were a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, or were a member of some kind of youth athletic team, or had a large dog, or had relatives approximately your age, or had friends who needed to be transported somewhere, or had parents who occasionally had to haul (either in the back or in a trailer) more than what could be fit inside a car trunk, you (or, actually, your parents) were the target demographic for the station wagon. “Station wagons came to be like covered wagons — so much family activity happened in those cars,” said Tim Cleary, president of the American Station Wagon Owners Association, in Country Living magazine. Wagons “were used for everything from daily runs to the grocery store to long summer driving trips, and while many men and women might have wanted a fancier or sportier car, a station wagon was something they knew they needed for the family.” The “station wagon” originally was a vehicle with a covered seating area to take people between train stations…
    • Wheels on theu0026nbsp;screenBetween my former and current blogs, I wrote a lot about automobiles and TV and movies. Think of this post as killing two birds (Thunderbirds? Firebirds? Skylarks?) with one stone. Most movies and TV series view cars the same way most people view cars — as A-to-B transportation. (That’s not counting the movies or series where the car is the plot, like the haunted “Christine” or “Knight Rider” or the “Back to the Future” movies.) The philosophy here, of course, is that cars are not merely A-to-B transportation. Which disqualifies most police shows from what you’re about to read, even though I’ve watched more police video than anything else, because police cars are plain Jane vehicles. The highlight in a sense is in the beginning: The car chase in my favorite movie, “Bullitt,” featuring Steve McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang against the bad guys’ 1968 Dodge Charger: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMc2RdFuOxIu0026amp;fmt=18] One year before that (but I didn’t see this until we got Telemundo on cable a couple of years ago) was a movie called “Operación 67,” featuring (I kid you not) a masked professional wrestler, his unmasked sidekick, and some sort of secret agent plot. (Since I don’t know Spanish and it’s not…
    • While riding in my Cadillac …
  • Entertainments
    • Brass rocksThose who read my former blog last year at this time, or have read this blog over the past months, know that I am a big fan of the rock group Chicago. (Back when they were a rock group and not a singer of sappy ballads, that is.) Since rock music began from elements of country music, jazz and the blues, brass rock would seem a natural subgenre of rock music. A lot of ’50s musical acts had saxophone players, and some played with full orchestras … [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CPS-WuUKUE] … but it wasn’t until the more-or-less simultaneous appearances of Chicago and Blood Sweat u0026amp; Tears on the musical scene (both groups formed in 1967, both had their first charting singles in 1969, and they had the same producer) that the usual guitar/bass/keyboard/drum grouping was augmented by one or more trumpets, a sax player and a trombone player. While Chicago is my favorite group (but you knew that already), the first brass rock song I remember hearing was BSu0026amp;T’s “Spinning Wheel” — not in its original form, but on “Sesame Street,” accompanied by, yes, a giant spinning wheel. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi9sLkyhhlE] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxWSOuNsN20] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9U34uPjz-g] I remember liking Chicago’s “Just You ‘n Me” when it was released as a single, and…
    • Drive and Eat au0026nbsp;RockThe first UW home football game of each season also is the opener for the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, the world’s finest college marching band. (How the UW Band has not gotten the Sudler Trophy, which is to honor the country’s premier college marching bands, is beyond my comprehension.) I know this because I am an alumnus of the UW Band. I played five years (in the last rank of the band, Rank 25, motto: “Where Men Are Tall and Run-On Is Short”), marching in 39 football games at Camp Randall Stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois (worst artificial turf I had ever seen), the University of Nevada–Las Vegas’ Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, the former Dyche Stadium at Northwestern University, five high school fields and, in my one bowl game, Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., site of the 1984 Hall of Fame Bowl. The UW Band was, without question, the most memorable experience of my college days, and one of the most meaningful experiences of my lifetime. It was the most physical experience of my lifetime, to be sure. Fifteen minutes into my first Registration…
    • Keep on rockin’ in the freeu0026nbsp;worldOne of my first ambitions in communications was to be a radio disc jockey, and to possibly reach the level of the greats I used to listen to from WLS radio in Chicago, which used to be one of the great 50,000-watt AM rock stations of the country, back when they still existed. (Those who are aficionados of that time in music and radio history enjoyed a trip to that wayback machine when WLS a Memorial Day Big 89 Rewind, excerpts of which can be found on their Web site.) My vision was to be WLS’ afternoon DJ, playing the best in rock music between 2 and 6, which meant I wouldn’t have to get up before the crack of dawn to do the morning show, yet have my nights free to do whatever glamorous things big-city DJs did. Then I learned about the realities of radio — low pay, long hours, zero job security — and though I have dabbled in radio sports, I’ve pretty much cured myself of the idea of working in radio, even if, to quote WAPL’s Len Nelson, “You come to work every day just like everybody else does, but we’re playing rock ’n’ roll songs, we’re cuttin’ up.…
    • Monday on the flight line, not Saturday in the park
    • Music to drive by
    • The rock ofu0026nbsp;WisconsinWikipedia begins its item “Music of Wisconsin” thusly: Wisconsin was settled largely by European immigrants in the late 19th century. This immigration led to the popularization of galops, schottisches, waltzes, and, especially, polkas. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl7wCczgNUc] So when I first sought to write a blog piece about rock musicians from Wisconsin, that seemed like a forlorn venture. Turned out it wasn’t, because when I first wrote about rock musicians from Wisconsin, so many of them that I hadn’t mentioned came up in the first few days that I had to write a second blog entry fixing the omissions of the first. This list is about rock music, so it will not include, for instance, Milwaukee native and Ripon College graduate Al Jarreau, who in addition to having recorded a boatload of music for the jazz and adult contemporary/easy listening fan, also recorded the theme music for the ’80s TV series “Moonlighting.” Nor will it include Milwaukee native Eric Benet, who was for a while known more for his former wife, Halle Berry, than for his music, which includes four number one singles on the Ru0026amp;B charts, “Spend My Life with You” with Tamia, “Hurricane,” “Pretty Baby” and “You’re the Only One.” Nor will it include Wisconsin’s sizable contributions to big…
    • Steve TV: All Steve, All the Time
    • “Super Steve, Man of Action!”
    • Too much TV
    • The worst music of allu0026nbsp;timeThe rock group Jefferson Airplane titled its first greatest-hits compilation “The Worst of Jefferson Airplane.” Rolling Stone magazine was not being ironic when it polled its readers to decide the 10 worst songs of the 1990s. I’m not sure I agree with all of Rolling Stone’s list, but that shouldn’t be surprising; such lists are meant for debate, after all. To determine the “worst,” songs appropriate for the “Vinyl from Hell” segment that used to be on a Madison FM rock station, requires some criteria, which does not include mere overexposure (for instance, “Macarena,” the video of which I find amusing since it looks like two bankers are singing it). Before we go on: Blog posts like this one require multimedia, so if you find a song you hate on this blog, I apologize. These are also songs that I almost never listen to because my sound system has a zero-tolerance policy — if I’m listening to the radio or a CD and I hear a song I don’t like, it’s, to quote Bad Company, gone gone gone. My blonde wife won’t be happy to read that one of her favorite ’90s songs, 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” starts the list. (However,…
    • “You have the right to remain silent …”
  • Madison
    • Blasts from the Madison media past
    • Blasts from my Madison past
    • Blasts from our Madison past
    • What’s the matter with Madison?
    • Wisconsin – Madison = ?
  • Sports
    • Athletic aesthetics, or “cardinal” vs. “Big Red”
    • Choose your own announcer
    • La Follette state 1982 (u0022It was 30 years ago todayu0022)
    • The North Dakota–Wisconsin Hockey Fight of 1982
    • Packers vs. Brewers
  • Hall of Fame
    • The case(s) against teacher unions
    • The Class of 1983
    • A hairy subject, or face the face
    • It’s worse than you think
    • It’s worse than you think, 2010–11 edition
    • My favorite interview subject of all time
    • Oh look! Rural people!
    • Prestegard for president!
    • Unions vs. the facts, or Hiding in plain sight
    • When rhetoric goes too far
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