JonathanMosen's blog

Voting closes in Mushroom Fm's holiday countdown and Christmas party this Thursday at 11:59 PM North American Eastern time. If you haven't voted yet, it's an accessible process that won't take you too long. Visit https://MushroomFM.com/countdown2023 and be sure that your friends and family do too.

There’s still time to vote in Mushroom FM’s holiday countdown and to receive an invitation to our Christmas party. But time is running out rapidly with votes closing this Thursday at 11:59 PM North American Eastern Time.

Hi everyone and merry Christmas!

Boy, have I got an incredible combination for you! Exercising your hard-won right to vote, holiday music and partying! Yes, our countdown is back for yet another year, due to popular demand. It's tradition, you know.

Mushroom FM runs a really fun tradition every year where we ask listeners to vote for their top 10 holiday songs, and we play the top 100 as tabulated by a fancy algorithm.

Following our very popular look at offshore radio, starting this weekend we begin bringing you the original rockumentary. It’s “The History of Rock and Roll”.
Three versions of this series were produced, in 1969, 1978, and 1981. We’ve played you one of the later versions some years ago, but over the next year, we’re bringing you the original from 1969, narrated by Humble Harve Miller.

If you want to go deep into the roots of rock and roll, this is the version of the documentary you want to hear and it’s programming you won’t want to miss.

Understandably, when people think of 22 November 1963, most people immediately think of the assassination of President Kennedy. On the other side of the Atlantic, a band that was still little-known in the United States but which had Britain in the grip of an unprecedented mania, released their much-anticipated second album. It will be 60 years ago on Wednesday 22 November that the “With the Beatles ” album was released.

I’ll be devoting the Mosen Explosion slot to a celebration of the album. Learn about each song, who wrote it, how it was written and recorded.

It’s Jonathan Mosen, taking on the daunting task of filling in for the venerable melissa Riccobono this week on the Song Remembers When.

Over the last five and a half months, we’ve brought you one of the most comprehensive examinations of offshore radio ever broadcast. This is been very popular and we are glad so many people have enjoyed it.

This series concludes this week, with legendary British broadcaster Keith Skues examining offshore radio jingles, and playing plenty of them. While jingles were a well-established element in North American commercial radio, they weren’t regularly used in Europe until the offshore era.

Our look at offshore radio moves into the 1980s, with the story of the last truly influential offshore station, Laser 558. It broadcast to Europe from international waters, produced remarkably good audio for an AM station, and promised listeners that you were never more than a minute away from music.
The station put together a documentary celebrating its first year on-air from the MV Communicator. It was to close a few short months later.

With the re-release of the Beatles 1962-66, and 1967-70 compilations, we are about to get an extraordinary number of remixes of some of the most loved songs in popular music. There are 36 new stereo mixes in addition to the Beatles tracks that have been remixed over the last eight years, plus even more new Dolby Atmos mixes.

Not only will I play you all the new mixes, I'll go in-depth and tell you the stories behind the songs. How they were recorded, and how and why they were written.

It has been an absolutely incredible couple of weeks for Beatles fans. And I, for one, can’t stop playing “Now and Then” on repeat. But there’s more to come.

Since 2017, Beatles fans have been given numerous sonic treats as much of the band’s later work was remixed using today’s technology. Not only have there been new stereo remixes, but those with the technology to hear it have been able to feel like the band was playing in our living rooms, first with 5.1 and then with Dolby Atmos mixes.