Lost Notes: Groupies

Stevie Wonder released seven albums from 1970 to 1976. It is an impenetrable run of albums and songs, one of the greatest in music history. Then, in 1979, he faced his first defeat of the decade. Reviews for “Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants” were harshly mixed. So in 1980 Stevie was due for a comeback. Lost Notes host Hanif Abdurraqib reflects on the album and Wonder’s call for the observation of Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. 

This season the poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib explores the year 1980. It was the brilliant, awkward and sometimes heartbreaking opening to a monumental decade in popular music. 

Our second of two Lost Notes bonus episodes for this summer. This one is about The Student Teachers. In 1977, a group of music obsessed friends got together and decided to form a band. Most of them were still in high school and almost none of them had even picked up an instrument before, but they lived and breathed the New York City music scene and wanted nothing more than to be a part of it. They worked in record stores, ran fan clubs, and spent every second they could together, hanging in clubs like CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City — clubs they’d eventually headline. 

Soon after they formed the band, they played a practice gig at one of their high schools and took off from there. They spent their days studying for physics tests and practicing for French finals and spent their nights drinking White Russians and rubbing elbows with their rock heroes.  In their two years together, they headlined their favorite clubs, went on tour, made recordings, got interviewed on the radio, opened for Iggy Pop and hung with David Bowie in the recording studio. As the decade came to a close and they got a little older, their love for each other dwindled, and the band imploded. But what a beautiful and wild ride it was. This is the story of the Student Teachers, in their own words. 

The new season of Lost Notes will be here in September. Meantime, this summer, we’re sharing a couple of bonus episodes. Fifty years ago, an unlikely musical group evolved out of the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party. They were called The Lumpen. And although they quickly gained a following for their air-tight funk, they were always meant to be much more than mere entertainment. Peter Gilstrap reports on the rise and fall of an unlikely R&B group born out of social upheaval.

As long as there have been guns, there have been songs about guns. But American culture's relationship with guns is changing. Does popular music reflect that? We take a look at the history of music's relationships with guns, and gun control activism, to find out.

In the early ‘80s, two teenage siblings in London recorded an album that fused Pakistani pop and British New Wave. It became a perfect harmony of the two worlds they lived in. This is the story behind their lost masterpiece.

Jazz pianist Billy Tipton has been celebrated by some as a trans pioneer – but his story resists an easy telling.

As a supplement to our episode on John Fahey, we share a conversation between Jessica Hopper and Carla Green about artist legacies in the era of cancel culture and #MeToo.

John Fahey’s guitar playing influenced the sound of the American underground for generations. But how does that legacy change when you hear from three of the women who knew him best?

The rock band Fanny ruled the Sunset Strip in the 1970s, and they were supposed to be the next big thing. They explain the price women pay for being ahead of their time.