The Day The Music Died Vs. The Days The Music Lives: Laurie Kaye and Kevin Alexander on JUST PRESS RECORD

When Laurie Kaye was a kid, in - let’s just call it a less-than-perfect home situation, she’d often retreat to her room and hide under the covers. You know the stories. You know where this is going.

Laurie, like a million other kids, hid away with her transistor radio and headphones on, cranked up. She learned how to be anywhere in the world and still find her own private world. Her radio was life-saving AND life-altering.

So now, imagine the feeling when in high school, she wins tickets to a Rolling Stones concert and the radio station says she has to come in to pick them up. She gets there, but then finds herself meeting B. Mitchell Reed at KMET, one of her favorite transistor radio DJs, and being put on the air to answer interview questions about herself.

And, as if that wasn’t enough - after they cut to commercial, B. Mitchell Reed told her “Laurie, you have a GREAT voice. You have to work in radio!”

It’s like the path chose her.

Kevin Alexander grew up obsessed with his radio too. On a field trip, a friend explains the magic of Talking Heads, and a listen to a tape launches him into a collector’s obsession.

By high school he’s working at a record store and feeling like he’s found some mix between his outer and inner sanctums. He’s also increasingly aware that he’s making no money from this job because he spends all of his time stocking up which albums he’s going to buy come payday. It’s like the record store owners knew (ha!).

But between the field trip tape and the record store “mandatory plays” vs. employee-picked vs “why are all these customers asking for this band I’ve never heard of” work, Kevin started becoming obsessed with the hunt for his next transcendent, musical experience.

Music is a climb, but it's also a drug. Granted, a good drug, but the kind where each new discovery creates a hunger for the next one. Laurie and Kevin both found themselves pulled deeper into the clouds of curation - not just collecting for themselves, but becoming the voices that guide others up the mountain.

Both Laurie and Kevin were learning the same lesson: being a receiver of great music eventually turns you into a transmitter. The transistor radio kid becomes the DJ. The record store clerk becomes the curator.

The peak for Laurie came in a cloud of catastrophe. What she expected to be the best day of her life, or at least the highlight of her career, was a sit down interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono that would be edited for radio. It was recorded on December 8th, 1980.

The interview went exceptionally well. She had personal invites for hang-outs and follow-ups from John and Yoko. She was over the moon when she left the hotel. She also noticed a weird guy asking her questions when she left that she all but had to run away from.

A matter of hours later she found out that the weird guy outside had shot and killed John Lennon. The best day turned into the worst, and the details of it all, it still haunts her. Music was just devastatingly life-altering this time.

Kevin (fortunately) didn't peak in any similar way. But what Laurie's story made him (and me) reflect on is how fragile and precarious our highest moments are. The same forces that elevate us - discovery, connection, trusted voices - can amplify both triumph and devastation. Nobody wants to endure tragedy to be historically significant. That moment chose Laurie too, and the heartache still stings.

What Kevin did point out, and what Laurie agreed with, is how both of them are obsessed with finding sounds for others who need them. They've become part of what I call the "village of voices" - the DJs, record store clerks, cool friends with the perfect tape at the perfect moment.

When Kevin writes his On Repeat Records newsletters, much like when Laurie was on the radio (and getting the stories for her book, Confessions of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Name-Dropper), they're performing the same ancient guide function - they’re helping people find the sounds they need for whatever moment they're in. Whether that's climbing toward your dreams or surviving your worst day.

Because music isn’t just an inspirer, it can also be a protector, a healer, and a bridge across people and generations.

I wanted Laurie Kaye and Kevin Alexander to meet for a million different reasons. But, most of all, I wanted them to meet because they love this artform known as pop music like few others I know.

Yes, Laurie’s had her brushes with terrible times, but she’s also got a laundry list of incredible stories that would make any music fan (especially me and Kevin - I mean, she was at the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense recordings while ghostwriting for Dick Clark!) smile. The same music that saved them as kids became their life's work - and their gift to others.

Music transmits a power Laurie and Kevin are wired to receive. Their life of reception evolved into a life of sharing it too. And how else does more love get spread across the world?

Out now on Cultish Creative YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, watch Laurie Kaye meet Kevin Alexander for the first time ever and hear all these stories and more: