Hard as it is for me to believe, today we begin our 25th year of doing Forgotten Hits.
It all started out innocently enough over Thanksgiving Weekend, 1999, as an emailed newsletter to 35 friends I'd met in the AOL Oldies Chat Room ... and quickly blossomed from there.
Word of mouth rapidly expanded the list ... oldies deejays got onboard and started featuring some of our articles on the air ... even WE were appearing on some of these programs, at one point as often as three or four times a week! (I was having to take time off from work to keep up with the schedule!) The subscription list kept growing and soon it became too large to email to, even breaking it into multiple segments each day to stay within the allowable "non-spam" limits. Some of those most popular early articles are now posted on what we refer to as The Forgotten Hits Archives Website ...
(Unfortunately, this site is now "frozen in time" ... it doesn't allow us to make any changes or updates ... so we'll slowly be phasing it out by putting up dedicated sites for some of these key articles, fan polls and countdowns ... but that's going to take awhile so for right now, I'd advise you to check it out while you still can!)
In 2008, at the suggestion of many of our supporters, we started this website ... and have been posting nearly every day since. (I thought I might do this for five years if the interest held up ... I never would have dreamed that fifteen years later we'd have done some 5000 posts and welcomed more than 6.5 million viewers of our on-going ramblings!)
Over the years, radio stations all over the world have picked up on our special features and run countdowns and themed weekends around them ... that's what they're there for. If you see something you like, drop us a line ... and we'll do our part to help support you and steer listeners your way. We've worked long and hard to develop features to make your station stand above the bar in the way of oldies programming.
Our very first post (posted on February 9th, 2008 ... the 44th anniversary of The Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show) posed the question: "Is The Music Of The Beatles Still Relevant?"
Interestingly enough, we now find ourselves 15 years later, with The Beatles having just had a Top Ten Single with the recently released "Now And Then" and the re-release of their Greatest Hits compilation CD's ("1962 - 1966" and "1967 - 1970") back near the top of the best sellers list. (I'm thinking the answer is a resounding "YES!!!")
http://forgottenhits60s.blogspot.com/2008/02/is-music-of-beatles-still-relevant.html
Virtually everything we've ever posted is still their for the taking ... so please, feel free to browse from time to time ... I guarantee you, no matter how long you've been with us, you've still got a LOT of catching up to do!!!
Forgotten Hits has changed some over the years ...
Originally we focused on the songs that we all remember but that radio wasn't playing anymore ...
We campaigned long and hard with oldies radio stations across the country to expand their playlists beyond the same 300 songs that EVERY station in the country was playing again and again and again and stop insulting their listeners by denying them the opportunity to hear all the other hits they also know, love and remember. (At one point in time, we had over 200 oldies radio DJ's on the list, encouraging them to push the boundaries and start featuring at least a "forgotten hit" a day to show their listeners that they truly represented the oldies community and understood what this music meant to them.) Unfortunately, most maintained that (according to their high-paid consultants) they were playing the songs that everybody wanted to hear. It was flat out insulting that they thought their listeners couldn't handle more. They just never grasped the passion that we feel for this music ... and that's a shame.
Today, you'd be hard pressed to find very many terrestrial oldies radio stations around anymore ... but the internet has picked up this slack in droves, offering unlimited playlists of tunes ... ALL the hits (and some that should have been) ... even a wide variety of songs that I've never heard before! (lol) Every once in a while a new station will pop up (like Me-TV-FM) that embraces and focuses on more of these "forgotten gems." And a station like Rewound Radio presents the best mix of oldies we've ever found on the net. (So yes, we DO feel a bit vindicated!!!)
Today, we tend to feature more of YOUR comments and memories of these glory days ... but still pay tribute to the artists who created all this great music in the first place. Our brand new "60 YEARS AGO TODAY" feature is now underway and it will slowly reveal the impact The British Invasion had on all of us as it happened here at the time.
Forgotten Hits is a community ... it works BECAUSE of the interaction between all of our readers ... and we welcome everything you're willing to share. As many of our radio supporters have referred to us, we ARE Oldies Nation ... it has always been ... and will always be ... all about the music.
So thanks to each and every one of you who have stopped by to check us out over the years ... and special thanks to those of you who make it a habit to stop by every day ... we are proud that you have made us part of your daily routine.
Kent Kotal
Forgotten Hits
60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
11/26/63 – Jack Ruby is formally indicted for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by the grand jury in Dallas. He will be found guilty of this murder on March 14, 1964
