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Season 1

Tales of...Times Square: The Tapes

Listen to season 1 now.

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An audio landscape of pre-Disney Times Square in the 70s and 80s. Restored interviews from Josh's crumbling cassette tapes for his landmark book, Tales of Times Square.

#1: Almost George

But almost doesn’t count. When Josh auditioned for Beatlemania in 1977, he was just one hopeful in the callbacks for George. Thousands of Beatle manqués descended from the hinterlands to audition for the Broadway show. There were only four parts, but no shortage of broken dreams.

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#2: Midnight Jerry Leiber/Part 1

THE IRVING BERLIN OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. We worked on a book in which he would tell off the world, to be called Kiss My Big Black Ass. It remained unfinished. But Jerry Leiber blew my mind. And he was one bitch of a chef.

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#3: Midnight Jerry Leiber/Part 2

THE IRVING BERLIN OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. We worked on a book in which he would tell off the world, to be called Kiss My Big Black Ass. It remained unfinished. But Jerry Leiber blew my mind. And he was one bitch of a chef.

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Season 2

Tales of...My Dead Heroes

Listen to season 2 now.

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Josh's dead heroes. Unheard tapes with Godfather author Mario Puzo, Broadway composer Cy Coleman, rock 'n' roll super-songwriters Jerry Leiber (Leiber & Stoller) and Doc Pomus, and people who made my world go 'round. 

#17: Doc Pomus Comes Back/Part 2

THE GREAT BLUESMAN TELLS IT STRAIGHTDoc Pomus no longer had to cater to the teenage rock ’n’ roll market. He…

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#16: Doc Pomus Comes Back/Part 1

THE EARLY STIGMA OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL After a dormant decade, the great songwriter Doc Pomus was back in business…

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#15: The Fall of Al Goldstein/Part 2

FROM PARADISE TO THE GUTTER The Great Pornographer went from Upper East Side family man/pornographer-next-door to Bowery bum. The First…

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About the podcast

Writer-guitarist Josh Alan Friedman was born in New York City in 1956. In a town of 50,000 writers, Josh was the only one covering the pre-Disney Times Square beat, for the men’s magazines of the era. He always marched to his own drummer, appearing in National Lampoon, Soho Weekly News, New York and High Times. By 1987, he’d had enough and followed his wife Peggy to Texas, a year after Tales of Times Square—the subject of our first season’s podcast—was published.

This seasons podcast presents Tales of...Josh’s Dead Heroes. Short stories, memories and the voices of Doc Pomus, Jerry Leiber, Cy Coleman, Mario Puzo, Keith Ferguson, Joel Dorn and Tiny Tim.

More about Josh's books and music