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 Mike Sain, host of the Insane World Of Mike Sain which airs every Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM E.S.T. on WPON-AM 1460 Detroit. This interview aired on Wednesday morning, February 11, 2004.
Interview
Mike Sain: [Introduction at beginning of show] Good morning Detroit, and welcome to the Insane World of Mike Sain. It is Wednesday morning, February 11, and it's a beautiful day outside here in the Detroit area. We've got a lot of things planned for this morning. We have an interview coming up today with the person who runs allbutforgottenoldies.net. It's the website that I use religiously to help me find songs for the program here, and we're going to talk to Ms. Amy Gold in a little bit and she'll tell us all about allbutforgottenoldies.net.
MS: It's February 11, 2004, and it's almost 14 minutes after 9:00 and we have on our line somebody who is near and dear to my heart. This lady is the most helpful person who keeps "The Insane World Of Mike Sain" running as smoothly as we can on a week-to-week basis. I'd like to introduce everybody to Ms. Amy Gold, who is the owner of the website allbutforgottenoldies.net. Amy, good morning.
Amy Gold: Good morning Mike.
MS: How are you doing?
AG: Oh, pretty good, thanks.
MS: How's the weather in your neck of the woods?
AG: Um, it's a little bit cold. We've been getting some snow flurries, but probably nothing like Detroit.
MS: Yeah, it's about 18 degrees here this morning. For us that would be considered a heat wave, just about.
AG: I used to live in Boston, so I know what that's like.
MS: Oh yeah, you sure do. Very much the same. Well, it's a beautiful morning this morning and I'm really appreciative of the fact that you've agreed to come on the show and give us some insight into what All But Forgotten Oldies is all about. What really inspired you to develop the website?
AG: Well, first of all, the name of my website, allbutforgottenoldies.net, comes from the expression "all but forgotten" which people use all the time to describe certain ideas and artistic works that have mostly but not quite faded from memory. You know, when you have bits and pieces of an old song running through your head, as many people do, with words you're not quite sure about and you can't for the life of you remember the title, it can literally drive you nuts.
MS: Which it's done me many on occasion.
AG: Yeah, well, I still have some songs that are driving me nuts, and you know, for me, the most interesting songs, the ones that I think are the true "all but forgotten oldies," are the ones that never made the Top 40 but they got just enough air play to leave a hazy and yet long lasting impression. You know, those are the ones that kind of stick in your brain, somewhere in the back of your mind, and these are the ones that inspired me to put up my website, allbutforgottenoldies.net.
MS: What kind of development did you put into the site and how much time do you spend on a daily basis or weekly basis maintaining it?
AG: Well, let's see. In the beginning, I started small, with about 200 song titles linked to song samples. Most of the songs on my website, by the way, are those for which I'm able to find song samples, 'cause I think that makes things more interesting. The song samples I link to are not my own, by the way. They come from various online music stores that have the legal permission to post them. Today, I have more than 4,000 songs, and many of them are fairly well known, but I have a fair number of obscure ones mixed in as well. And you can browse both by artist name and by song title and I think being able to browse is very important. The reason I have my material organized this way is that 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 think. Of course, you can also search on my website as well. Let's see ... the development part, okay, I'd say building up and maintaining my database of links to song samples has been and still is the main part of allbutforgottenoldies.net. I've also added other web pages with lots of tips to help people track down things like naming long lost tunes, finding CDs, sheet music, and even old vinyl recordings, since, as you probably know, there are a lot of oldie songs that never made it to CD.
MS: Right.
AG: Let's see ... how much time? Maintaining and expanding my website averages about, oh, I'd say 2 to 3 hours per day roughly, except for about 2 to 4 weeks out of the year that I dedicate full-time to a full website update.
MS: Wow. So in your updating, does that mean you have another site planned besides allbutforgottenoldies.net?
AG:: Yeah, allbutforgottenoldies.net is my only website right now. I do have an older version at a free website host, freeyellow.com. Right now I'm putting most of my efforts into expanding allbutforgottenoldies.net, but I do have plans for other websites sketched out, which I'm really eager to put online. Sometime this year, I'm expecting to add a "Song Of The Day" RSS datafeed to allbutforgottenoldies.net. I should also mention I own allbutforgottenoldies.com and I'm saving that domain for a possible e-commerce website to complement allbutforgottenoldies.net. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to put on that one. And I'm also planning to market some website publishing software I've written, which will most likely entail my putting up another website.
MS: Busy lady. What's the strangest or oddest or weirdest request you've received?
AG: Well, as you can probably guess, most of the e-mail I get is "name that tune" type requests. People send me whatever words or lyrics or other tidbits of information they can remember about some long lost tune in the hopes that I can tell them what the song title is, and I'm happy that I'm able to do that most of the time, but that's mainly because of search techniques I've devised. Since I've been online I've received over a thousand requests like this, so it's very rare for the same song to get requested more than once.
MS: Really?
AG: I mean, after all, I estimate there are between at least 10,000 and 15,000 song titles if you include all the bubbling under hits, so it's rare for the same song to get asked about more than once. So, to answer your question Mike, I'd say, I think it's very strange when I'm asked again and again by different people to identify the same song, and this has actually happened to me several times.
MS: Okay. You feature lots of artists on your site. Have you ever had a chance to meet or talk to any of them?
AG: I've never met or talked to any of them, but two artists that had chart hits in the 1960's have contacted me to exchange website links, meaning I post a link to their website on my website and vice versa, although I've never had a chance to talk to them or meet them, we converse by e-mail.
MS: Okay, kind of like we started out.
AG: Exactly.
MS: And, so everybody knows, we also have links that we share, WPON has a link that automatically sends you right to allbutforgottenoldies.net and allbutforgottenoldies.net has the list of songs that I play on a week-to-week basis that you maintain beautifully for me.
AG: Well, thanks.
MS: And then the link right back to WPON, so there's a lot of back and forth that goes into your site and ours.
AG: That's right.
MS: Which we really appreciate. I assume that the era of the 50's to the 70's is your favorite for music? Or are you in another area that you like even more?
AG: I think that's largely correct. I grew up during that time period, the 60's and the early 70's, so that's the pop music I know best. I'd say my favorite oldies music is from around the mid to late 60's. But actually, my musical tastes and background are really quite broad. Besides oldies, I enjoy all types of classical music and various types of ethnic and world music.
MS: Do you play any instruments?
AG: Piano, all kinds of keyboards. I compose too.
MS: Okay, well that's a very busy lady. Well, anything else you'd like to tell the listeners about how to get in touch with you, or if they have information for you or requests for you?
AG: My e-mail is [click here for current contact info] and that's the best way to get in touch with me.
MS: We'll announce that again later on so that everybody gets it, [click here for current contact info]. There's another radio station in town that when they do an interview with a young lady, the last question that they ask her is what she's wearing. Well, we're much classier than that. What we're going to do instead is we're going to dedicate a song to you by Bobby Goldsboro in keeping with our theme today, and it's called "Honey." So from my heart to yours, thank you very much for this wonderful interview that you've done with us. I hope you had a good time.
AG: And thank you for having me.
MS: And I hope all of our listeners sign on to take a look at allbutforgottenoldies.net and enjoy it as much as I do. This goes out to Amy Gold and a big thank you.
