Keener13.com

@keener13

Reinventing #radio. The Soundtrack of #Detroit is #music to our ears.

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Keener13.com@keener13· 2d

Today's Keener Birthdays include Kylie Jenner, 29. Actor Antonio Banderas, 66. Former heavyweight boxing champ Riddick Bowe, 59. Patti Austin, 76. Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, 79. And remembering Ronettes lead singer Ronnie Spector, born today in 1943.

Happy Heavenly Birthday to Ronnie Spector, Born Veronica Yvette Bennett in East Harlem, New York City, August 10, 1943.

Keener13.com@keener13· 2d

Some of Detroit’s most iconic auto events are coming up. Keener13.Substack.com

Welcome to the Motor City’s annual automotive nervous breakdown. For nearly two months, southeast Michigan becomes one enormous rolling celebration of speed, noise, chrome, mud, beer, nostalgia, technological ambition, and the deeply American conviction that anything worth doing is probably worth doing with a larger engine.

Call it the Big Five. Call it automotive Woodstock. Call it what happens when Detroit remembers exactly who it is.

Keener13.com@keener13· 5d

Michigan’s #Woodstock, Goose Lake, turns 56. Keener13.Substack.com

For three days, Leoni Township became the center of the rock-and-roll universe. The Goose Lake International Music Festival was supposed to be the Midwest’s answer to Woodstock. What it became was something louder, harder and considerably more dangerous: 200,000 longhairs, freaks, bikers, hippies and suburban kids descending on rural Michigan for a weekend of deafening music, open drug use and spectacularly organized chaos.

It was Woodstock with Detroit horsepower. The man behind the madness was construction entrepreneur Richard Songer, who wasn’t interested in building some temporary hippie carnival. He bought the property intending to create the world’s first permanent rock-festival grounds. And he went big.

Keener13.com@keener13· 6d

Happy birthday, #lucilleball. How she changed #TV. Keener13.Substack.com

Before television became a glowing shrine in every American living room, before reruns, syndication, streaming, and billion-dollar production empires, there was Lucille Ball.

Born August 6, 1911, Lucy didn’t merely become television’s first great comedy star. She helped invent the business that television would become.

Onscreen, she was controlled chaos in a polka-dot dress. She stomped grapes, baked bread that blasted from an oven like a freight train, and fought a candy conveyor belt. Her timing was surgical. Her willingness to look ridiculous was fearless. But behind the slapstick was a woman who understood power, ownership, and technology better than most of the men running Hollywood.

Keener13.com@keener13· 6d

Happy Birthday, #AmericanBandstand! Here's the #Detroit connection. Keener13.Substack.com. #oldies #60s #radio #keener

Keener13.com@keener13· 7d

Context is everything. How @johnlennonofficial.bsky.social’s observation about misplaced priorities caused a firestorm for the #Beatles. Keener13.Substack.com

Keener13.com@keener13· 8d

Uncle Russ at age 17 on Keener’s predecessor, WKMH. Two decades later he will skyrocket the #PaulMcCartney death rumor into the stratosphere on #Keener. #beatles #paulisdead #detroit

Future DJ and Grande Ballroom impresario Russ Gibb on the air at 17 at the station that would later become WKNR. Russ amplified the rumor that Paul McCartney had died on his weekend program on Keener in 1969..

Keener13.com@keener13· 9d

Happy Birthday, Billboard Hot 100.. Remember what the first #1 song was? keener13.substack.com/p/the-week-p...

Before this week in 1958, nobody in the record business could say exactly what a hit was. They knew one when they heard one, of course. It swallowed dimes in jukeboxes from Detroit to Dallas. But proving that a song was a hit was another matter entirely.

The American pop charts were a glorious, corruptible mess. Billboard published separate rankings for “Best Sellers in Stores,” “Most Played by Jockeys,” and “Most Played in Jukeboxes.” One record might be flying out of shops in Chicago, ignored by disc jockeys in New York, and setting jukeboxes on fire in roadside diners across the South. There was no single scoreboard, just a collection of competing realities.

This week in 1958, Billboard brought order to the chaos. The magazine combined sales, radio airplay, and other measures into one national ranking. It called the new chart the Hot 100. And pop music would never be the same.

Keener13.com@keener13· 10d

Remembering #MTV 45 years later. Keener13.Substack.com #80s #musicvideos #radio

At 12:01 on the morning of August 1, 1981, Apollo 11, grainy and ghostly, rose again toward the moon. But what followed was a new kind of blastoff. A voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” and the Buggles appeared with synthesizers, plastic glasses, and an inconvenient message for everyone working in radio. “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Keener13.com@keener13· 10d

The WKNR #Music Guides for today in 1966 & 1968. How many of these do you remember? #detroit #rock #oldies

Keener13.com@keener13· 12d

The Sultan of Groove. How Ahmet Ertegun Built a House That Rocked Detroit. Keener13.Substack.com. #atlanticrecords #AhmetErtegun #RockHistory #arethafranklin #detroit

Keener13.com@keener13· 13d

On Henry #Ford’s birthday, we look back on his impact on #Detroit #cars and #rockandroll. keener13.Substack.com

Keener13.com@keener13· 14d

Remembering Mama Cass, who left us today in 1974. She charted 10 times on the WKNR Music Guide - eight with the Mamas and the Papas, twice as a solo act. Keener13.Substack.com #casselliot #mamasandpapas #oldies #detroit #keener

Keener13.com@keener13· 15d

How Davy Crockett invented today’s pop-culture. Keener13.substack.com #nostalgia #television #disney #detroit

To understand the hypnotic grip of American pop culture in 1955, watch Back to the Future. When Marty McFly staggers into Eisenhower-era Hill Valley, Robert Zemeckis surrounds him with tailfins, soda fountains, and spotless storefronts. But the detail that truly pins the year to the wall is the music in the background. The theme from Disney’s Davy Crockett.

Keener13.com@keener13· 16d

Band on The Run: How #paulmccartney Grew #Wings and Escaped the #Beatles Shadow. Keener13.Substack.com

Band on the Run reached Number One in Britain on July 27, beginning a seven-week reign at the top. The debate was over.

This was not merely a successful album. It was McCartney’s dazzling escape from the long shadow of the Beatles. It was a declaration that he could still build pop monuments without Lennon, Harrison, Starr, George Martin, or the machinery of Beatlemania.

Keener13.com@keener13· 27d

Happy Birthday, Linda Ronstadt. Here's our appreciation: keener13.substack.com

Linda Ronstadt did not merely sing songs. She entered them.

She found the bruise inside a melody, pressed down hard, and made millions of people feel it.

Keener13.com@keener13· Jul 3

When The Doors lit the match. How a razor blade turned an album track into the Keener 13 song of the year. keener13.substack.com/p/when-the-d...

From the darker end of the Sunset Strip, a band called The Doors were not selling utopia. They were selling heat, danger, sex, death, poetry, and whatever might happen after midnight if you stopped pretending you were afraid.

Then, on July 3, 1967, Elektra Records sent “Light My Fire” out into our consciousness.

Keener13.com@keener13· Jul 2

What was your first #AirConditioned car? We had AC in the car before we had it in the house. Remember many a hot night driving around town just to keep cool.

Keener13.com@keener13· Jun 30

Remember "Quad"? Were you one of the few who had a quad receiver and figured out how to play #Quad #LPs on it? keener13.substack.com/p/the-day-th... #radio #keener #detroit

Keener13.com@keener13· Jun 29

Will there be a sequel to "St. Elmo's Fire"? Maybe. Would you watch it?

NBC Los Angeles reports the plan is “Yes”, but nothing is official yet. Rob Lowe says a St. Elmo’s Fire sequel is being written and that the original cast is interested. The idea gained momentum after Andrew McCarthy’s Brats documentary revived Brat Pack nostalgia.
No release date, director, or production start has been confirmed. For now, the fire is glowing, but not yet burning.

Keener13.com@keener13· Jun 24

Today in 1967, Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" topped the UK charts. Here's some Keener backstory. keener13.substack.com/p/1967-proco...

Somewhere in the blur of 1967, lyricist Keith Reid heard somebody tell a woman she had gone “a whiter shade of pale.” That was all it took. A fragment. A spark. A sentence with no map. From there, Reid built one of the strangest and most enduring fever dreams ever pressed onto vinyl.

Keener13.com@keener13· Jun 1

This week on Keener13.com in 1964.

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 21

April 21, 1963 Beatles meet the Rolling Stones for the first time.

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 21

April 21, 1980 Howard Stern begins broadcasting on WWWW Detroit.

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 19

Today in Today in 1965…The movie "The T.A.M.I. (Teen-Age Music International) Show" featuring the Rolling Stones, Supremes, Four Tops, James Brown, Beach Boys, and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, opened in London under the title "Teenage Command Performance."

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 19

Today in 1965…The Beatles released the single "Ticket to Ride."

John Lennon explained the song's title as being about cards indicating a clean bill of health carried by Hamburg prostitutes in the 1960s. The Beatles played in Hamburg early in their musical career, and "ride/riding" was slang for having sex. A notation on the label of "Ticket to Ride" said the song was from their forthcoming movie "Eight Arms to Hold You," which was the original title for the movie "Help!"

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 19

Today in 1948…The ABC-TV network began operation.

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 19

1979…The reality television series "Real People," with John Barbour, Sarah Purcell, Byron Allen, Skip Stephenson, and Bill Rafferty, began its five-season run on NBC.

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 19

1963…Backstage following a Beatles performance at London's Royal Albert Hall, Paul McCartney met the actress and television personality Jane Asher. Their ensuing romantic relationship lasted five years.

Keener13.com@keener13· Apr 19

1957…Five years before taking over "The Tonight Show" on NBC-TV, comedian Johnny Carson turned briefly to acting in a role on the "Playhouse 90" production of "Three Men on a Horse" on CBS-TV.