Interview Of Allbutforgottenoldies.net Webmaster By Crazy Al - November 4, 2004

Introduction

Below is a transcript of a live interview by telephone of the allbutforgottenoldies.net webmaster, Amy Gold (a.k.a. "AM Radio Gold") by Crazy Al, host of Crazy Al's Radio Party. Crazy Al's program is recorded live every weekday morning and archived for rebroadcasting 24/7. This interview aired on Thursday morning, November 4, 2004, starting at around 8:45AM EST.

Cast Of Characters:

Crazy Al - Host of Crazy Al's Radio Party
Amy Gold - Webmaster of allbutforgottenoldies.net
Mike Sain - Guest DJ and host of the Insane World Of Mike Sain
Larry Matthews - Co-host of Crazy Al's Radio Party

Interview

Crazy Al: Hold on, Crazy Al's got a telephone call coming into his rock and roll show. Hi, this is Crazy Al. Who's this?

Amy Gold: This is Amy Gold of allbutforgottenoldies.net.

CA: Amy, how are you, sweetheart?

AG: I'm doing great, how about yourself?

CA: I'm doing terrific. I've got Mike Sain here in the studio today, too.

Mike Sain: Hey Amy.

AG: Hello, Mike.

MS: Can you hear me okay?

AG: Yes, I can, yeah.

MS: Good.

CA: Well nice having you here. Hey Amy Gold, allbutforgottenoldies.net, can we just ask you a couple of questions about the website?

AG: That'd be great.

CA: Amy, how in the world did you ... whatever made you develop a fabulous website like allbutforgottenoldies.net? How'd it all begin?

AG: Um - thank you for the compliment - allbutforgottenoldies.net started out pretty small, as a lot of websites do. In the very beginning, it was just a couple of web pages with links to song samples for around 200 songs. I gradually expanded it, and as I did so I made a game of trying to match as many song titles and song samples as I could find on the websites of online music stores. My website deals with those songs that you may have grown up with from the 1960's through the early 70's that you can't quite remember because it's been awhile since you've heard them on the radio, but you can't quite forget them either. Right now, allbutforgottenoldies.net has more than 4000 songs. Many of them are fairly well known. I have some obscure ones mixed in as well. You can browse both by artist's name and song title and the reason I have it organized this way is, sometimes you may have a song in mind, but you may not know exactly what you're looking for and browsing can really help to jog your memory. I'll tell you what inspired me to develop this website. allbutforgottenoldies.net is for all those of you who have bits and pieces of some old song stuck in your brain that won't go away until you name that tune. (laughter from everyone) You know what I'm talking about?

CA: (still laughing) We know what you're talking about!

AG: It's really, um ... you know, there's actually a name for this syndrome. It's called "earworms" and people have written up about it.

CA: Is it really? - You have earworms in the back, that happens to you?

AG: Oh gosh, yes!

CA: Earworms, is that what it's called? The syndrome is?

AG: Yeah, um, it's been given a name, it's been written up, scholarly papers have been written about it in psychology journals. And the guy that came up with this name is James Kellaris. And if you want to read up on it, it's even written up on WebMD.

CA: Wow.

AG: And I understand that 98% of the people suffer from it at some time in their lives, and I ... You know, I've had this website up for a long time and there's still a few songs that I can't remember.

CA: Well Amy, let me ask you this. What are some of your website's most popular or clicked on songs these days for people that do suffer from earworm?

AG: Um ... well, I'll tell you, I've got a page on my website that kind of tallies up the most clicked on songs.

CA: Just give us a couple of them if you would.

AG: Okay, the Top Pick right now is "Georgia On My Mind" by Ray Charles.

CA: Wow.

MS: That's most likely because the movie just came out.

Larry Matthews: ... and because of his death as well.

CA: Yeah, that's coming out. We've got to see that this weekend.

AG: Yeah, I've heard a lot of good things [about this movie]. Some of the other ones are "Ben" by Michael Jackson. That one gets a lot for some reason and um, another recent Top Pick was "Hot Rod Lincoln" by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

CA: (laughing) That's very good.

AG: (laughing) which is kind of funny. And then - this is kind of interesting - "Draggin' the Line" by Tommy James, "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas are some of the other ones and also both versions of "I Say a Little Prayer For You" have been getting - both the Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick versions have been getting lots of clicks.

CA: Very good. You know, let me ask you this Amy, why do you think these songs have been clicked so much lately?

AG: Well, a lot of oldies music like what you'll find on my website, 1960's through the early 70's, is used in TV commercials, as you probably know. I think this may explain why I get a lot of clicks for songs like "Draggin' the Line," "I Say a Little Prayer for You" and "Kung Fu Fighting." You've heard these songs in commercials, I'm sure.

CA: Absolutely. And the movies of course are just laced with oldies in almost every brand new motion picture that comes out.

AG: That is so true.

CA: Amy, let me ask you this. Have you had any contact with any oldies artists since you've been online?

AG: As a matter of fact, yes I have. And with many more than I'd ever imagined. I get lots of requests for link exchanges and I just had the rare opportunity to interview Betty Harris and Ron Dante, which was really fun.

CA: Ron Dante of course of "Sugar, Sugar" fame, right?

AG: That's right.

CA: Very, very good. Let me ask you, do you get a lot of e-mail from your website visitors and what are some of the ones that stand out the most?

AG: Well, since allbutforgottenoldies.net has been online, I have received thousands of e-mails, literally thousands. And for awhile, I was getting numerous requests to identify this one song. I get a lot of "name that tune" kind of requests, as you can imagine. There was a time when I was getting a lot of questions about this one song by Dickey Lee called "Laurie (Strange Things Happen)."

CA: A record that we play, by the way.

AG: Yeah I - very famous, but yet the thing that's sort of strange about it is um, people can't remember the song title but they remember the story line quite well. You remember, it's about a girl ... It's about a guy and a girl, the girl borrows the boy's sweater and the boy finds out later, you know, really sad.

CA: Let me ask you this, Amy. How did you pick the years 1960 through 1975?

AG: Okay, um ... well, the 60's through the early 70's was a very interesting time for both this country and pop music and, it so happens, I also grew up during those years. Also, I'm rather partial to music from around the mid to late 60's because it was one of - I think it was one of the most innovative and experimental, and it was a forerunner to so much other stuff like punk rock, classic rock. I'd hear this music on the radio all the time. It was in the car, you know, at school (whenever the teachers would let you turn it on), it was on the bus, pool side, it was at parties, all kinds of public places and of course you'd hear it at the school dances.

CA: It was everywhere, and it was everywhere. Amy, Mike's got a question for you, too.

AG: Okay.

MS: Yeah, I just want to tell people in the audience that besides taking care of your earworms - (laughter from everyone)

LM: I wonder if you could have a sick day ...

CA: I've got one in my ear right now!!

MS: - a November day here, Earworms Day.

LM: I was just thinking, maybe call in sick for work or something: "I have earworms, I can't come in today."

AG: That's funny.

MS: The way that Amy and I hooked up together is that, as I would do research for my weekly show, I would send an e-mail to "Dear Sirs, I do a weekly radio program and my theme is going to be ... and I need help coming up with songs along those lines." And I would get these wonderful e-mails back with songs in them and information about the songs, and after a long time "Dear Sirs" became Amy Gold. We hooked up to you.

CA: Amy was the phantom lady on the other end of the PC.

LM: She was the "Sir."

MS: She was the "Dear Sir" that I didn't know.

CA: Amy - Oh, I'm sorry -

MS: And we did an interview of my program back in ... I think it was February, where I introduced Amy Gold to you guys and to the world, and I hope her website has certainly grown since that time, and I know you've added several different things to your website, Amy. What's the newest thing that you've put on the website?

AG: Well, besides the Top 40 list, I've added what's called an RSS feed, where RSS stands for "Real Simple Syndication" and it's a - it's like a newsletter but better. You don't have to worry about giving your e-mail address, you don't have to worry about receiving spam, it's totally opt-in, and it's a way to keep up with what's going on at allbutforgottenoldies.net. And you use a news reader or a news aggregator to read it. And the nice thing about that is that you can - with those softwares, you can consolidate a whole bunch of RSS feeds from different places all into one place and make your own sort of - get a whole bunch of information all at once from different websites.

CA: Very, very cool. Well Amy, we love you dear very much. Really appreciate your joining our radio show today with Mike here in Detroit. And to everybody out there in the audience, it's alltheforgottenoldies.net, allbutforgottenoldies.net. If there's a song that you're thinking about, if you've got the earworm syndrome, you need to log onto that.

LM: That website would have been handy for our artist spotlight. Not spotlight, but we did a mystery artist and we did not reveal the name of the artist or the song, but sometimes you can hear the chorus repeat itself and that would have been a helpful hint for our listeners out there.

CA: Amy Gold, we love you dear.

AG: Well, thanks for having me, it was really fun.

CA: Amy Gold, allbutforgottenoldies.net. Log on today.