The hits from coast-to-coast

Casey Kasem died this weekend. (For those of you outside the US, he was a radio DJ who hosted a wildly popular syndicated Top 40 countdown show for many years).

Kasem’s legacy is interesting on a couple of levels. For one thing, he was, in today’s terms, one of the original content curators who highlighted the “best” of various musical genres.

Moreover, he was able to hold people’s attention and tie these rather disparate forms of music together because he was a great storyteller. Whether you liked ballads or rock or dance music, he told tales about the songs and the artists that everyone could relate to.

Two retrospectives on Kasem summarize his place in American culture particularly well – one from the Philadelphia Daily News and another from the New York Times.

And if all this is too heavy for you and you just want a laugh, I recommend the tirades that Kasem’s poor, beleaguered producer surreptitiously recorded -- Snuggles the Dog and the full blooper collection. (Make sure there are no kids within earshot).