Hello again from the Nielsen family of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

It’s been three years since we last were asked to keep Nielsen radio ratings diaries. As before, Janet got one and I got one. Our week ended Wednesday. This time, we were promised $5 for completed diaries, up from the crisp $1 bill enclosed last time.

Some fun facts from my Nielsen radio ratings diary:

— I listened to radio on five days of the Thursday-to-Wednesday survey week that included Memorial Day weekend, down from seven days on a non-holiday week last time.

— Three years ago, I was still working. Now I’m retired with more time for music. WXPN radio streaming out of Philadelphia is my regular listen — 14 times totaling 22 hours, 45 minutes over five days. There you go, Bruce.

— On Thursday afternoon, the first day for the diary, I listened to most of my friend Larry’s “Testify!” program on the Give the Drummer Radio streaming sub-channel on WFMU radio from New Jersey. Same as before. There you go, Larry.

— Three years ago, I had to apologize to my friend JB for not getting his ’70s show into the diary. (I was at a wedding reception that Saturday night and was trying to listen to our son’s livestreamed concert from the University of Maryland.) Now JB’s show is no more and JB is no longer on Madison radio. That’s the way it goes these days, but I miss JB on the radio.

— Three years ago, I put my friend Vincent’s free-form show, Fufu Radio, into the diary. Had no idea whether Nielsen considered that radio — it streamed on demand on the Mixlr.com service — but I did. Technical difficulties beset Fufu Radio earlier this year. Hoping for its return. I miss Fufu Radio, too.

— I listened to three Brewers games, down from four last time. I most often stream their flagship station, WTMJ-AM of Milwaukee, through the MLB app on my phone. Been listening to the Brewers on the radio since they arrived in Milwaukee in 1970, but the vintage Panasonic RF-930 desktop radio I’ve used since I was a kid has been relegated to backup duty.

— A local radio station appears only once in this diary. On the last day of the survey week, I listened to the Brewers on their local AM affiliate for 20 minutes in the car.

Finally, again not in the diary but again worth noting:

Three years ago, I swam at a Y that piped in the local FM oldies station, which played virtually no Black artists. Now I work out at another Y that pipes in a ’60s/’70s/’80s oldies stream via satellite, playing no Black artists. I’ve mentioned that lack of diversity to my current Y. The young gent who responded seemed vaguely embarrassed and promised to look into their streaming options, but they’ve changed nothing.

Three years on, Green Bay radio remains a new music desert and a cool music desert.

Thank you for your interest in my radio listening habits.

We now return you to your regular programming.

Before they fade into fond memory, some scenes from the first Record Store Day of 2026. I visited both of our indie record stores in Green Bay. As usual, I waited until mid-afternoon, until the crowds had died down.

Record Store Day isn’t for me. I saw only two RSD releases of interest — live John Prine sessions at the BBC from 1973 and a bunch of studio outtakes and movie music from The Blasters. I’ve long had plenty of John Prine and Blasters records. No need to be a completist.

That said, I still like to go out and soak in the vibe of the day.

Shrink wrap left on old records is one of my pet peeves. That old Prange’s price sticker is cool to see, but I must ask again … who is leaving shrink wrap on records for 57 years? Tom Jones’ “Help Yourself” LP is from 1968, with this shrink-wrapped copy still in the bins at Rock n’ Roll Land as it was six months ago.

The DJ was winding down his Record Store Day set at Rock n’ Roll Land as I dug through the dollar records. He dropped this into the mix. You cannot go wrong with “Turn the Beat Around,” even if it’s this Gloria Estefan cover from 1994 and not Vicki Sue Robinson’s original from the dawn of disco in 1976.

Some records that caught my eye but did not go home with me … “Thunderball and Other Thriller Music” by Ray Martin and His Orchestra (1965), “Perez Prado’s Rock-Ambo” by Perez Prado and His Orchestra (1961) and “Songs Made Famous by Johnny Cash” by Living Marimbas Plus Voices (1970).

Heading across town to our other indie record store, I had “The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn” streaming in the car on WXPN radio from Philadelphia. It’s one of my favorite listens on a Saturday afternoon. Ben played this.

Sure enough, that LP was in the dollar bins at Green Bay UFO Museum, Gift Shop and Records. “Guantanamera” by The Sandpipers is from 1966.

So was “Some Girls,” the Rolling Stones’ tremendous 1978 LP. Part of it, at least. This is the alternate inner sleeve — the one hastily produced after a handful of female celebrities complained that their images had been used without permission on the original inner sleeve. It was sitting there in the dollar bin, but missing the outer record jacket.

Another surprise from the dollar bins was this copy of the National Lampoon’s “Radio Dinner” from 1972. There were two records inside the jacket, but “Radio Dinner” wasn’t a two-record set. There was a bonus copy of “Beatles ’65” inside.

Record Store Day wouldn’t be complete without a sighting of this record in the dollar bins. “Whipped Cream & Other Delights” by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass from 1965. This was the only copy I saw, though.

I spent exactly $1 on Record Store Day. I found two copies of “The Letter/Neon Rainbow,” the Box Tops’ debut LP from 1967 — this one and another with a 50-cent sticker on it. This one looked to be in slightly better condition.

Our spring record show — the Green Bay Record Convention — is coming up in a couple of weeks. I’m starting to wonder who’ll be selling records at it.

Jeff in the motorized wheelchair will be there. It’s his show. Clive with his record player? Rich from Atomic Records? Steve, also from Milwaukee? Mike from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? Vern from the lakeshore?

Gary from Minnesota won’t be there. He always looked like he could drop dead at any moment. Year before last, he did.

My friend Dave Benton won’t be there, either. We lost him last year.

Now Kent is gone. He died a couple of weeks ago. He’d held down the northeast corner of the room for more than a decade.

The picture above is from our fall record show in 2017. Kent looked over from his corner as I took a picture of the six sale crates on my table. I don’t think I ever saw him without that dapper-looking flat cap.

Once Kent found out that I love looking through oddball records, he’d always reach into his crates, grab a weird record no one was likely to want, hold it up and say “You need this record!” I’d just smile and shake my head. He’d smile, too. Our running joke.

What I never knew was that Kent once ran a record store. He never mentioned it.

Strawberry Fields Records opened in 1970 in Waukegan, Illinois, north of Chicago. It set up shop in a tiny storefront, half of a small brown brick building on Washington Street just west of downtown, not far from Lake Michigan. At the beginning, Kent was 21, maybe 22.

That’s a twentysomething Kent behind the counter at Strawberry Fields Records.

The color picture above is likely from mid- to late September 1972, judging from that copy of “Close to the Edge” by Yes prominently displayed behind the counter and hyped on a sign in the front window. It had just been released.

The sepia picture at left is likely from the summer of 1973, judging from that sealed copy of the National Lampoon’s “Lemmings” cast album on the counter in front of him. Looks like there’s an “Impeach Nixon” poster over there on the right.

In both photos, there’s an ash tray and a sales receipt pad on the counter.

That’s what record stores used to look like, kids.

(Both photos are from a Facebook group for those who once worked at Strawberry Fields Records.)

Locals loved the place.

In 2009, an online music forum commenter shared this memory of the store:

“They had a great selection of records as well as imports and audiophile LPs. You could order any record they didn’t have and get it in a few days. They also had a head shop in the back room.”

Strawberry Fields Records moved to a bigger place in the late ’70s.

Eventually, though, both the record and head shop businesses struggled against the rise of CDs and big box stores and/or the cultural headwinds of the Reagan-Bush era.

Strawberry Fields Records closed in 1990.

Kent’s obituary didn’t mention any of this. It simply started this way:

“Kent Alan Botsford, 77, lover of music …”

Rick McNeal must have liked this vaguely raffish portrait of himself because he used it as his social media avatar.

That’s good enough for me. We never met, even though both of us worked in the Green Bay media market for decades, Rick in radio and me in newspapers.

We never talked on the phone, either, but I knew Rick’s voice, oh, so well. He started working as the morning show co-host at WAPL-FM in Appleton — long THE rock station in our corner of Wisconsin — on April 28, 1985, and was there until July 11, 2024, a great run of more than 39 years. I listened to Rick for most of the last 34 years of that run.

Rick McNeal died on the last afternoon of February. Sepsis had set in after an infection. He’d been intensive care for more than a week, lapsing into a coma. He was 67, a year younger than me.

Rick retired in the summer of 2024 after a fall at home led to health issues that included cellulitis (a bacterial infection) and a blood clot in his left leg. Things snowballed after that. He subsequently spent much of the rest of his life in health care facilities.

Out of the blue, Rick sent me a Facebook friend request not long after he retired.

Don’t know how Rick came to know me. Probably via Twitter first. We had only a dozen or so mutual Facebook friends. One was Erin Davisson, a retired local TV news anchor with whom he’d worked on radio. If so, perhaps that was good enough for him.

Rick and I struck up a virtual friendship, chatting from time to time about our love of baseball, our love of Warren Zevon, remembering WAPL programs from long ago, and lamenting that the folks who worked at the local Fox TV station were Sinclair puppets.

Last summer, Rick’s health was such that his longtime morning show partner Len Nelson and other friends organized a benefit show at a local bar and grill to help with his medical expenses. I happened to drive past while the event was going on. It was a jam-packed zoo, cars parked for blocks, glorious testament to how much Rick was loved.

I’m a comedy nerd. I’d enjoyed Rick and Len in the morning. Rick was a gifted comic, a gifted satirist, and Len a perfect straight man. As with many radio shows, the comedy bits were hit and miss — enjoyable when they hit, groaners when they missed. The degree of bad taste of all that was always a highly subjective matter.

I hope Rick would have laughed at one of my lingering memories of his show. I was listening — my radio sitting on top of the toilet as I showered on the Monday morning after Thanksgiving in 1994 — when they broadcast the news that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had been murdered in prison.

We were kindred spirits, two retired media guys for whom old habits died hard. I’ve long combed old newspapers to come up with today-in-history social media posts. Rick regularly posted irreverent material to his Facebook page, sometimes recalling his life and times as a DJ.

On Jan. 20 — National DJ Day — Rick posted:

“I feel like a bit of a pretender because I barely jocked any discs during my day. I just sat in front of a microphone and prattled on endlessly with a bunch of useless, mindless bullshit.”

Hey, man, that’s what everyone loved hearing for 39 years.

Even as his health declined, Rick continued concocting “Unverified Facts” and sharing “This Day in 21st-Century Weird-Ass History” on his Facebook page as if he was still doing the morning show. The last such post came 10 days before he died.

I’ll miss shooting the breeze with my Facebook friend.

My friend Norb, a keen observer of the local scene, nailed it with this post:

“Commenting on his passing feels a bit reminiscent of that episode of ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ where Chuckles the Clown is shelled to death by a rogue elephant and his eulogy winds up including his signature phrase — ‘A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.’ In some strange way, I feel that Rick would approve of the comparison.”

Thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to read and enjoy and touch base since that first night, Feb. 25, 2007. A bunch of you have been friends for almost that long. It’s much appreciated.

Nineteen years, though. That got me to thinking back. Way back.

What were my first 19 albums?

These are records I bought during junior high school in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, from 1969 to early 1972, when I was 12, 13 and 14.  I listened to WOKY, a Top 40 AM station out of Milwaukee. We all did, although FM radio was starting to take over as 1972 arrived.

1. “The Best of Bill Cosby,” Bill Cosby (1969). From a time before Bill Cosby was problematic, or at least a time before we knew he was problematic.
2. “Green River,” Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969). I loved Creedence. “Cosmo’s Factory” (1970) also would be on this list, but I bought that for my friend for his 13th or 14th birthday when I really wanted to buy it for myself.
3. “When I’m Dead And Gone,” Bob Summers (1970). I won this record by calling long-distance to WOKY radio in Milwaukee and answering a trivia question. I knew CCR were the Golliwogs (and the Blue Velvets) before they became Creedence.
4. “Tap Root Manuscript,” Neil Diamond (1970). “The African Trilogy (A Folk Ballet)” that made up Side 2 was my introduction to world music.
5. “The Best of the Guess Who,” the Guess Who (1971). Didn’t have all the 45s, so I bought this and got a cool poster with it.
6. “Shaft” soundtrack, Isaac Hayes (1971). A life-changing record. My introduction to soul and R&B deep cuts beyond the songs in the Top 40.
7. “Wild Life,” Wings (1971). The first album on which I took a flier, curious to hear what one of the Beatles was doing. Quite honestly also hoping to bump my most modest cool factor among my friends by having it. The results of doing so were inconclusive.

In January 1972, I packed up those seven albums and we moved. I went from junior high school in Sheboygan straight into high school in Schofield, Wisconsin, 122 miles northwest, in the dead of winter.

These are records I bought there from early 1972 on, when I was 14, 15 and 16. I listened to WIFC, the local Top 40 FM station, which flew its freak flag by going free-form after 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. at night. Most of us listened to WIFC, but we also had WRIG, a Top 40 AM station that was more white bread.

1. “Nilsson Schmilsson,” Nilsson (1971). Almost certainly bought this after “Coconut” hit the Top 40 in the summer of 1972.
2. “The Mothers: Fillmore East, June 1971,” Mothers of Invention (1971). We played this album at parties for comic relief. I probably didn’t buy this until 1973.
3. “Killer,” Alice Cooper (1971). Pretty sure I bought this before “School’s Out” because I vividly remember the 1972 calendar that came with it. We heard many of its cuts during WIFC’s late-night free-form hours.
4. “School’s Out,” Alice Cooper (1972). I vividly remember the WTF moment when I took off the shrink wrap, slid out the record and found a pair of paper panties wrapped around the vinyl.
5. “Golden Decade, Vol. 1,” Chuck Berry (1972). He’d hit the charts that summer with “My Ding-A-Ling,” a novelty song. That is not on this two-record set. I bought it because I wanted to learn about how he built the foundation for rock ‘n’ roll.
6. “Son of Schmilsson,” Nilsson (1972). First time I bought a follow-up album that was disappointing.
7. “Dark Side of the Moon,” Pink Floyd (1973). You heard it everywhere. Everyone had it. So did I.
8. “The Beatles 1962-1966,” the Beatles (1973). I knew many of their hits, but I didn’t have any Beatles albums. I figured this was a good place to start.
9. “The Beatles 1967-1970,” the Beatles (1973). Likewise. I quickly came to like the blue record more than the red record.
10. “Who Do We Think We Are,” Deep Purple (1973). “Smoke on the Water” came out as a single in the spring of 1973. I loved it. So I eagerly, optimistically bought the follow-up album. I should have bought “Machine Head” instead.
11. “Brain Salad Surgery,” Emerson, Lake and Palmer (1973). Bought this after “Karn Evil No. 9” hit free-form radio. Quite a trip. Not a lot of kids from central Wisconsin were listening to prog albums at that time, but “Dark Side of the Moon” had made that more acceptable.

That’s 18 albums. I’m fairly certain about all 18. I still have them all, although the Bob Summers album is a replacement copy. (The one I won from WOKY had a “DJ Copy” sticker on it. It probably went away in the Great Record Purge of 1989.)

But what’s the 19th album? It could be …

— Another Creedence record. Can’t remember when I bought “Cosmo’s Factory” for myself. Also could have circled back for their self-titled debut album from 1968 or “Bayou Country” or “Willy and the Poor Boys,” both from 1969.

— “R.E.O. T.W.O.,” REO Speedwagon (1972). “Golden Country” and “Like You Do” were the album cuts we often heard during the late-night free-form radio hours. “Like You Do” was one of my favorites.

— The self-titled debut album from Clicker (1973). Clicker was a Wisconsin rock and cover band that got airplay on WIFC and played lots of gigs at local roadhouses and schools. If this is indeed the 19th album, it’s me taking another flier and quite honestly hoping to bump my cred among my friends by having it. The results of doing so were again inconclusive.