i really enjoyed reading this book, it was cool to read some of the music history and trivia in the book. It was a good read and made me really nostalgic.

This was very short, but also very enjoyable. I've always been a music junkie, so this is the kind of book that I geek out over. It was fun to learn more about a lot of these songs that I didn't know before. I'm looking forward now to reading Volume Two.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for a fair review.

100 per cent a walk down memory lane, hot after hit after hit dissected... sometimes with familiar stories (you can skip over them), other times with tales you've never heard and probably wouldn't believe if you had. It took me a while to get through the entire book, mainly because there were so many songs mentioned that I wanted to listen to after reading. Recommended!

If you spend time listening to oldies stations on the radio – or the equivalent playlists on Spotify and other streaming services – you may have noticed that they all tend to repeat the same small percentage of the available music from bygone eras ad nauseam, never broadening their selections to encompass a wider variety of tunes. The goal of Sophie’s second book this month – Lost or Forgotten Oldies by Rembert N Parker – is to reacquaint you with popular songs from the past that have been left off the oldies rotation and are thus passing into obscurity.

There are 70 songs included here, each one receiving its own short chapter that talks about the artist behind it and the history of the song itself, although with only a page or so per record, the chapters are more introduction than thorough analysis. The digital edition of the book also includes direct links to YouTube videos where you can listen to the records for yourself, although sadly a handful of these links were already broken. There is a wide variety of genres included although the earlier chapters did lean heavily toward Northern Soul records which made it less to Sophie’s taste but no doubt more to the taste of others.

Sophie did question whether or not many of the records included could really be classed as either lost or forgotten. Billy Joel’s “Allentown”, Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”, and Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” are all songs that, in her opinion at least, have never been forgotten and Sophie hears them all relatively frequently. Those records are in the minority, however, and the majority were indeed songs she was completely unaware of.

This is a great book for broadening your oldies playlists so that they include more than the standard “best of” hits, but don’t expect too much depth from the text. Lost or Forgotten Oldies Volume 2 is also out now.

I have to say I was a little disappointed in this book. The author speaks about lost or forgotten songs not being played on oldies stations, which I agree with. But when you get down to it he only lightly touched on the Doo-Whoop groups, no one plays, “Earth Angel” by the Penquins, or the Five Satins “In the still of the night” man “Blue Moon” by the Marcels, that was a song. Those are just a few he only mentioned a couple of groups but I thought he was going to talk about songs not being played. He speaks of the Beach Boys, but not of Dick Dale, The Surfaris, Ventures, Lesli Gore or even Diane Ray “Please don’t take the lifeguard away” talk about a forgotten song. Most people young ones for that matter don’t even know who any of these people are much fewer singers like Bobby Darrin, Brook Benton or Stax groups The Charmels, The Emotions, just to name a few. Anyway, I am rabbling for a book that I was hoping to be more than what it was for me. A lot of the groups and songs he did mention I had heard of but then I am into music, there were a few I had not.

An absolutely brilliant book, especially for us growing up and listening to 'pop' music in the 60's!

Also, I am impressed with the research. If there is a Volume 2, count me in.

Perfect for just "dipping in and out".

This is a likeable book but I suspect, as a Brit, I’m not the intended audience. Many of the tracks covered were such massive and enduring hits in the UK that they can hardly be called ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’, while other tracks and artists are totally unknown over here.
Parker is not a great writer, but he is clearly a great enthusiast when it comes to pop music. It’s endearing to see someone living the dream, publishing their own mixtape in book form : wouldn’t all music fans love to do that?
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this digital review copy.

Though I found the writing style of the author hard to follow i enjoyed reading this book, it brought back many memories, and recommend for nostalgia lovers

This collection was interesting, maybe better suited to a blog or other online medium. Often it includes lesser-known tracks from established artists. There are links to some tracks, but then the Wikipedia articles the author used for some of the trivia are not hyperlinked. The typos were also quite off-putting to this professional editor. :) I added some tracks to Spotify and Pandora though!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC.

I don’t recognize all of the songs but learning the history makes me want to links provided for some of them. People will recognize some and not others but the history given will keep them reading,

I actually really enjoyed my flip-through of this book. I listened to a good chunk of songs I hadn't heard before by artists that I knew for other hits. It was a fun dive into an era of time when I didn't yet exist. It definitely saddens me to know how much music exists in the world and gets shoved aside simply because it's not popular enough to stay on mainstream radio. There's so much history wrapped up in the music industry since the start of it that I may never get the chance to listen to just because there's so much to unpack.

This was a nice selection in my opinion and it was fun to read about some musical acts I never really knew. Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to download it and read it.

This had some interesting background information on a lot of groups I did not know a lot about. Some of the information was very interesting and surprising. This is a pretty fast read. If you are into music trivia you will probably enjoy this book.

Found the format a little disjointed and I thought some of the information bitty. The British acts had some errors but can't comment about the U.S. as I lacked the in depth knowledge. Also the book was rather short. However there was some fascinating bits to it, so it did redeem itself somewhat.

This book gave me a good trip down memory lane. It's a very quick read. Many songs that I had completely forgotten about. My wife and I shared the reading, quizzing each other on the different songs by using the clues provided by the author. We had some very good laughs!
This book will help you for that upcoming bar trivia contest, or on your next internet battle on Song Pop.
I just wish that it was longer. The brevity of the book is the reason that I am not rating it higher.

I had requested this book in my hopes of remembering/rebuilding my father's old LP collection. My first memories were of playing his records (and of course getting yelled at) and he had a lot of oldies. I can remember the album covers/record labels but am still on the hunt. While a fairly simple book with list of great songs and history, I definitely was not familiar with most of the songs and had a lot of fun looking them up for a listen.

Lost or Forgotten Oldies Volume 1 from Rembert N Parker really failed to deliver very much at all for me. As much as I hate giving poor reviews, this one gets a slight bump simply because there isn't anything to dislike about it, just nothing particular to like. And it is about music.

As far as the songs included, it was an okay list. Not very many I wasn't familiar with but quite a few that probably don't get in rotation on any oldies stations, at least not broadcast stations. But that is why we have other types of stations as well as streaming options. If you want to find songs that take you back to a period in your life, there are plenty of lists of the charts from every year, do so. And just to be clear, not every song that charted was necessarily one that a lot of people want to remember. Many charted because the artist's previous single did very well and there was a residual effect on the follow up single, which may well have been mediocre at best. Tommy Roe following up Dizzy with Heather Honey comes to mind. And he had previous hits as well, so his follow up was even more skewed than many others.

As for the information on each song, there wasn't much that wouldn't be readily available from Wikipedia or a general pop music site. You could look up online, read online what is included in this book, and then find the next song you wanted to hear in the time the song you were reading about played. I expect a book to offer some cohesion and some gems of information not readily available with a 30 second search. this book doesn't deliver.

If you only ever listened to top 40 and never really got into music beyond background to your life, you might enjoy this. If you bought records growing up and read liner notes and music magazines, you will likely be disappointed with this. I wouldn't even recommend this as an introduction for a younger person because these are not the strongest songs for that purpose, even avoiding the #1's. These are apparently Parker's favorite non-number 1 songs, which makes you question whether you really want his input on what you listen to.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

It's a bit on the skinny side. I can think of a bajillion songs, many one hit wonders, that no plays anymore. I remember a few of the songs mentioned in the book from the 60's and 70's. Mostly I just remember the singers or bands. Just wasn't impressed. Sorry.

Thanks to Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for the advanced copy of this title. This was a quick read and I enjoyed learning about some new songs and reminiscing about some others. This is a perfect book for wasting an evening with the Spotify app. Better editing is needed, I found multiple typos.

Short history of a group of oldies that you never hear on the radio. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt slim and unfulfilling. It seems to be a bunch of blog posts in book form. I appreciated the links to where the songs could be found, but I don’t feel as though the brief bios of the artists tell me anything about why these songs have been forgotten.