After five years of crafting Christmas shows from cheesy Seventies Christmas albums, Venetia put her foot down and declared this year a cheesy Christmas free zone. Instead we offer for your listening pleasure some of the tracks we might ourselves choose to play on Christmas day, as we prepare and share a meal with friends and family and then repose in a food coma on the couch.

We wish all of you, our lovely listeners, very happy holidays, and hope our little show adds to your cheer and joy. And for those of you missing the Christmas theme, no doubt order will soon be restored and Marty will bring it back next year 🙂

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It’s almost the end of the year. And as has become tradition on our show, at this time of year we look back to the songs that made it to the top of the charts 50 years ago. This year, that means the tracks we play on this weeks show are all number one hits from 1974. Not all of them were number one in America, or on the pop charts – they may have been number one in Australia, or the UK, or on the R&B charts. But they all made it to the top of the list on some chart, somewhere in the world.

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On the third of November this year, Quincy Jones passed away at the age of 91 after a 70 year career in music. Acclaimed producer, songwriter, multi instrumentalist and film scorer, Jones produced and/or contributed to some of the biggest hits of the 1970s and helped shape the raw talent of some of that decades brightest stars, including Michael Jackson, Patti Austen and Chaka Khan. On this weeks show we pay tribute to the jazzy, funky, soulful musical genius that was Quincy Jones.

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This week the show went to air on December 1, which happens to be both World AIDS Day and JOY’s 31st birthday. Arising from a desire by JOY’s founder, John Oliver to bring community and comfort to HIV positive gay men isolated in hospital during the AIDS crisis, JOY first went to air on World AIDS Day in 1993. 31 years later, Australia’s first LGBTIQ radio station is still going strong.

JOY has a commitment to strongly feature LGBTIQA+ musical content across its programming. For niche shows like ours, it can be hard to do this every single show – a lot of artists in the 1970s were not as open about their sexuality and/or gender as they might have been today and there also may not be a lot of information about the personal lives of every band member, producer, song writer or session musician that never became a huge star. Nevertheless, every now and then we like to dedicate a whole show to featuring artists who we know for certain were part of our rainbow community. It seemed appropriate to do so this week. Happy birthday JOY – may we see many more.

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A few weeks ago we shared a show featuring tracks from classic Seventies debut albums. Well, there are so many to choose from that we had to do another show. This week we feature tracks from Foreigner, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Marcia Hines and more. All great artists, and all debuting in the Seventies.

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Soul – one of the great musical genres to come out of mid 20th Century America, and a sound that still reverberates through pop music today.  Sharing it’s gospel roots with jazz, funk, blues and even rock, soul can be a hard genre to draw a neat boundary around, but it’s one of those things that you know it when you hear it.  Tending to favour virtuoso vocals, horns, rhythm sections at the forefront and a passionate feel, soul was the secular sibling to gospel and originally exclusively performed by African American artists. But many white artists from around the globe who grew up loving soul, started incorporating a soul feel into their sound. This week’s show explores just a few of these soul influenced  tracks.

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Fifty years ago, on November 8, 1974, the first episode of Countdown went to air on the ABC. It would go on to have many Australians glued to their TVs for an hour a week, getting their dose of Australian and international pop music news, performances and interviews for the next 13 years. The impact of Countdown on Australian music culture cannot be overstated. It was an institution, a cultural phenomenon, and it helped to shape the musical landscape of a whole generation – a generation which included the hosts of this show. This week’s show celebrates the 50 year anniversary of Countdown’s first airing, featuring artists that performed during the Seventies.

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This week our hosts are taking a break from the themes and just picking a few tracks they feel like playing. As usual, it’s an eclectic but tasty mix. Some we’ve played before, some entirely new. But all guaranteed to satisfy even the pickiest Seventies connoisseur. Enjoy

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We’re super excited! This week we explore superb, superior, supreme Seventies songs with super either in the title or in the name of the artists. Why? Well, because it’s super fun. And we’ve certainly found some super tracks.  Proving, once again, that there is no decade like the Seventies for truly super music.

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Long live the cover version! Sometimes other artists do it better, sometimes they just do it differently, but it’s always interesting to hear a great song reinterpreted.  In the Seventies great cover songs could be released practically on the heels of the original. On this week’s show we explore just a few of these Seventies cover versions that had already been released in the same decade.

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