Lost Notes

Lost Notes Season 4

KCRW’s acclaimed music documentary podcast, Lost Notes, returns for its fourth season. Co-hosts Novena Carmel (KCRW) and Michael Barnes (KCRW / KPFK / Artform Radio) guide you through eight wildly different and deeply human stories, each set against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of LA’s soul and R&B scene of the 1950s-1970s.

Crammed with rigorous and original research, delivered in lively and hilarious banter, and soundtracked by cratefuls of incredible music, Lost Notes delivers another knockout slate of first-rate music journalism, dressed in a characteristically gorgeous sonic setting. It’s a must-listen event for any aficionado of music history and great storytelling.

Lost Notes: 1980 (Season 3)

For the third season of Lost Notes, poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib explores a single year, 1980: the brilliant, awkward and sometimes heartbreaking opening to a monumental decade in popular music.

Abdurraqib looks at how the first full-length album from the Sugarhill Gang set the stakes for an entirely new genre of music; how record producers set out to bring Minnie Riperton back to life; and how Stevie Wonder delivered on the comeback he was due. Other episodes focus on Ian Curtis and Joy Division/New Order; South Africa’s Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba; the rise of Grace Jones; and the parallels between the deaths of Darby Crash and John Lennon.

Lost Notes Season 2

Celebrated  music journalist and author Jessica Hopper takes the reins of this newest season of the music documentary podcast Lost Notes. The author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic has unearthed an epic haul of untold music stories.

This season looks at artist legacies. How do they hold up? How do they change over time? Learn how decades on, a song can find new meaning, something different than when it was written. Find out what happens when we apply our 2019 politics to 1974’s songs. And hear from pioneering women who have been written out of music’s history.

Subjects this season include a profile of synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani, a reexamination of guitarist John Fahey’s career via the women who knew him best, an interview with ahead-of-their-time 70s female rockers Fanny, a dive into indie songstress Cat Power’s album The Greatest, and much more.

Lost Notes Season 1

The debut season of Lost Notes was hosted by Solomon Georgio and includes untold stories about The Shaggs, Captain Beefheart, New Edition, the rock anthem Louie Louie from journalists Susan Orlean, Kristine McKenna, David Weinberg and many others.