Rob Nichols

Here’s my background. Love Bryan Adams. He did “Cuts Like a Knife”, one of the great rock tracks of eighties radio. “Straight from the Heart”, one of the great ballads of rock radio, and the windows down, summertime, turn it up loud, catch a little buzz, rock and roll of Reckless. His eighties work is the foundation. And then he went into the nineties and worked with Mutt Lange and had a huge album. And then worked on some soundtracks, went ballad-heavy, and then lost his way. Now I saw him live, would have been 1987.  The Hooters opened. It … Read more

Examine the post-1970’s output of Aerosmith, because the path that they traveled was unlike how things usually and eventually play out in a career in a rock band. What was it, really? There’s roughly three stages to the Aerosmith career:  First, a nearly decade-long run in the 1970s as a party, blues-rocking, Stones-emulating live band with rock radio stone-cold classics. Secondly, a late 1970s into the early 1980s drug-hazed, hit-empty period that caused a fallout that cost them both guitar players, with the grind stretching into 1985 with a less-than-great (“Done With Mirrors”) comeback album. Then, for the third act, … Read more

Is Billy Idol a couple of hits and not much else? Is his career more than the peak “Rebel Yell”, “White Wedding”, and “Dancing With Myself”? Surprises?  I found some. The hits?  Fewer than you might think. He did have four top ten songs, but even they aren’t what you might think initially.  But he had some tunes that weren’t big but did rock. We dig into a couple of those. Was he a pioneer in blending punk attitude with mainstream rock and pop appeal, bringing a sneering, rebellious edge of punk to MTV?  Or was he a jump-on-the-bandwagon pop-punker? … Read more

Radio friendly, some heartland authenticity, and a bit of Philly attitude.  Remember The Hooters? “I don’t think we really fit into the ‘80s mold,” said lead singer and guitarist Eric Bazilian. “But we sure do show up on a lot of ‘80s playlists. If anything, I think we were a ‘70s band who had survived into the ‘80s.” And you can hear a little in the first album – their major label release Nervous Night. In the United States, they had three decent hits off that album. In 1985, the band played at the Live Aid benefit concert in Philadelphia … Read more

This is the 50th episode of Rock, Pop, and Roll.  In honor, here are, of the 100’s of 45’s I owned, the 16 that I think shaped my musical journey. It’s what resonated. The building blocks of what I liked.  Straight emotion – with no judgment of what was cool.  It’s what made me move.  Made me think and feel stuff I didn’t quite yet understand.  Bubble gum. Rock of the 50s and 60s. Some 70s country.  A lot of hits.  A few that weren’t.  And records I bought because I heard them on AM radio. Really, it’s the 16 songs … Read more

Daryl hall and John Oates made lots of albums.  And had a strong run of early hit singles.“Wait For Me”“Sara Smile”“She’s Gone”“Rich Girl” What was the Hall & Oates heyday? The string of albums that they created at their career pop-rock apex?  It came in the 1980’s: Voices. Private Eyes. Big Bam Boom. Rock and Soul Part 1.  Maybe even Live at the Apollo.   Were they great albums? Early on, as artists tend to do, Hall & Oates had trouble clearly defining their sound, alternating among folk, soul, rock, and pop.  None of their early albums—Whole Oats, Abandoned Luncheonette, and … Read more

The rise and slide of the Simple Minds – one of the most successful and influential bands in the UK during the 1980s. A mix of new wave, post-punk, and rock. Multiple UK Top 10 hits. But it took “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” to break them big in the US.  They rode that stand-alone single into one hit album here in the States. When Once Upon a Time was released in 1985 – without “Don’t You” on it. “Alive and Kicking” was the lead single – essentially the band’s 2nd American single. It went to #3 on the Billboard … Read more

We play just five songs from an artist’s catalog – from all the albums, the singles, the live albums. The music game is called “Play Me 5”. Can we hear a band or performer in five songs, and find the reason – a bit of the understanding – as to why they are who they are and why they matter in the rock and roll continuum?  That’s it.  Let’s go. This episode, it is Bryan Adams.   Why does Adams, a rock and roll singer from Canada, have a place in rock and roll history?  Or does he? Reckless was a … Read more

This episode is a conversation with a 30-something Bruce fan who came to Bruce Springsteen’s career only recently. We talk with Brandon Fitzsimmons, who started his journey with Springsteen during the downtime he had during COVID in 2020.  He did a deep dive into Springsteen’s catalog, and most interesting to me, just saw Bruce for the first time at a show in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2024, driving 6 hours to see a 74-year old Springsteen and the E St. Band.  What was that like?  We talk about it, and how Brandon started – and went all in – … Read more

Greg Kihn, the California-via-Baltimore pop rocker passed away in August 2024, leaving behind a truly great FM radio hit with “The Breakup Song” and his biggest song, “Jeopardy”, that hit #2 and found heavy rotation on MTV.  The same song was famously parodied by Weird Al Yankovic. Kihn also had a long career as a rock radio DJ on KFOX, and he wrote books. But mostly he was a guy who just kept rocking. After a run of yearly albums for more than a decade, from the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s, he released his final album (Rekihndled) in … Read more