RockPopandRoll
A look at music that was rock, pop, and radio of the 1980's, with takes on the greatest, the worst, the underappreciated, and the burned. It's a deep dive into the retro greatness of the decade, at the intersection where rock music, pop music, power pop, guitars, drums, memorable tunes, and guilty pleasures come together. Longtime radio rock DJ and music writer Rob Nichols hosts, along with his artist and writer friends, to dig into the music.
Episodes
Our episode features Jonathan Rundman, singer/songwriter from Minneapolis, who has a new Americana rock and roll album called "Waves".
It is a fascinating and fun talk about 80's rock music, The Silos and the circle of friends that includes Cracker, The Vulgar Boatmen, and all they that have influenced. If you dig 80s rock, his tales are what you might want. We talk about Bob Seger, the Rainmakers, The Hooters, and lots more.
Born...
In this episode, we take a first listen to the new album from Mitch Ryder, called With Love the latest chapter in the career of the rock and soul icon. With the release of his 21st studio album, Ryder calls it one of the most honest works of his career—raw, autobiographical, and packed with his grit and soul. Produced by Don Was, the album marks a 2025 moment in Ryder’s decades-long career.
We'll also hear Ryder’s roots—from fronti...
Rockpile? The band? How were they well-known in roots rock music circles and not so much with radio listeners and album buyers? Or were they, and we just didn't realize it?
Rockpile began as the name of the first solo album by Dave Edmunds, released in 1972. Edmunds plays almost all the instruments except for bass and backing vocals, The album included a 1970 single, "I Hear You Knocking" - a #1 song in Britain
He billed his ban...
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 soundtra...
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-...
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...
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...
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 were...
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...
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 si...
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, h...
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 Spri...
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 ...
Albums that may not have seen big sales - a couple did - but that are worth turning up. We talk about who, why, and how come they rock. And a couple of bonus albums too.
James McMurtry
Melissa Etheridge
Rick Springfield
Warren Zevon
Todd Snider
The Gaslight Anthem
The Elms
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Hear all the archived episodes and find our social media and email links on the website: rockpopandroll.com
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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".
Five songs that do two things:
1. Give a representation of the artist - the musician - the band - the singer.
2. Find songs that reveal a bit of the magic of the performance or the musicians. Or both.
Can that work? I don't know. That's the idea and intent. Can we hear a band or performer i...
More known as a party band than they were rock royalty, the J. Geils Band is still a rock band of the era that gets tossed aside, despite a decade of incendiary live shows and more hits than some may recall. One of my favorites. Played them loud. Learned some history too. I seriously rocked the “Blow Your Face Out” live cassette in my $2,000 brown Buick Skylark back in 1986.
It’s really not just that the J. Geils Band is not in t...
John Waite was in The Babys, out front of two pop hits that both peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, ("Isn't It Time" and "Everytime I Think of You") His solo career started with a really good but forgotten 1982 debut album Ignition, which produced the single "Change". It didn’t chart on Billboard's Hot 100 during its initial release (June 1982) but was #16 rock track on AOR radio stations and was produced by the great Bob C...
On this episode, take a tour with us - to the early 80’s - to Scandal, as we drop into the short history of the band that released an EP that was a scattering blast of five songs - including “Goodbye To You” and “Love Has Got A Line”. At the time, it was the best-selling EP in the history of Columbia Records. But did I ever really listen to, back in 1982 or 84 or 87 or whenever, all the five songs? Maybe.
Henry Lee Summer latched on to the sound of pop and rock radio in the 80s and rode that bad boy to a couple of late-decade hits, and a handful of good, heartland rock and roll albums.
But in his home state - Indiana - Summer was more than couple nice radio hits and a handful of albums. Weird that he could be, maybe? Really not. His story is like a lot of local-but-more-music heroes. Cleveland and Providence and Pittsburgh and Toro...
I thought it might be simple. Who were some of my favorite roots rock bands from the 1980’s and 90’s? And why? This episode turned into a deep dive into what still feels like it was only skimming along the surface of a genre that was hot for about five years and before fading back into where it was before, into a mostly forgotten sub-genre that I still love.
"Roots Rock" was a name that was branded on a sound that came of age in...
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