Zero to 180 - About - Zero to 180

About Zero to 180

Chris Richardson – pop music archaeologist – is the creator behind Zero to 180: Three-Minute Magic, a music history blog that celebrates the work of undercelebrated artists, as well as songwriters, musicians, producers, engineers, arrangers, and label owners, who have not always received their proper historical recognition. Zero to 180 (born December 12, 2012) serves as a forum for examining the “old fogie roots” of modern rock, pop, country, folk, funk, and soul — studio songcraft, typically, that is at least twenty years of age (i.e., one generation) — as well as offbeat aspects of the world’s popular music recording history that are worthy of a closer examination.

Zero to 180 completed a Silver Spring music history trilogy in 2017, with original research that chronicles the extensive recorded legacy of Track Recorders – including a special spotlight on the studio’s Chief Engineer, Bill McCullough – as well as independent folk & blues (later, rock & jazz) music label, Adelphi Records, founded by Gene Rosenthal in 1968. In 2018, Zero to 180 extended the research further, with a history piece dedicated to Silver Spring’s lesser-known DB Sound Studio (plus a sidebar tribute to Koob Veneman‘s affordable-but-decent-quality KAPA guitars and basses), while 2021 would see Silver Spring’s Central Recording Studio, founded by engineering/drumming extraordinaire, Kevin Morales, receiving the long-form historical treatment.

Richardson, who helmed the Twitter desk as a guest for Xavier University-affiliated King Studios during Cincinnati’s King Records Month for 2017 & 2018, writes extensively about Cincinnati’s King Records musical legacy. In 2019, Zero to 180 is honored to have provided the King Records Building Non-Profit Steering Committee with background research in preparation for a mayoral proclamation declaring January 5, 2019 to be “Bernard Purdie Day.” Richardson continues to contribute on the research front as a member of King Records Legacy Foundation‘s Repository Committee. December, 2020 would see Zero to 180’s “Cincinnati in Song” piece serve as a launching point for Steven Rosen’s feature article for Cincinnati Magazine — “Sing a Song of Cincinnati” — for which Richardson contributed a 500-word sidebar of Top Ten Cincinnati songs. More recently, in February 2023, Richardson was invited by the State of Arkansas to be part of a panel convened to celebrate the musical legacy and worldwide cultural impact of A&R producer, Henry Glover, who was originally from Hot Springs. The following year, at the 2024 International Country Music Conference held at Nashville’s Belmont University, Richardson tag teamed with Charlie Dahan, a professor in the Recording Industry department at Middle Tennessee State University, on a presentation that celebrated Henry Glover’s pioneering work in country music during the 1940s and 1950s.

The former Cincinnati schoolteacher got his library and information studies degree from University of Maryland in 1994, and – upon graduation – performed specialized cataloging work for federal libraries and information centers (as well as the Annie E. Casey Foundation) as a member of Costabile Associates. Richardson enjoyed his first Mid-Atlantic-area radio appearance in 1997 as Guest Programmer of the Day with veteran WHFS radio host, John Hall, on WRNR’s “Hall’s Bar & Grill” in Annapolis. Not long after, Richardson reappeared on radio as the Rocksteady Kid, programming classic sounds in 1960s & 70s Jamaican popular music for University of Maryland’s WMUC campus station. In 2004, Richardson enjoyed a pair of appearances with WKHS’s late, great Charlie Coleman programming all-truck driving song radio shows, and then again in 2011 with Coleman’s son, Martin Q. Blank. Richardson next appeared with WPFW’s long-time community fixture Andrea Bray in 2016, and more recently on Robbie White’s “Forbidden Alliance” program (WOWD FM – Takoma Park, MD – Jan. 15, 2023 & May 28, 2023), as well as “StageCraft” hosted by legendary producer Don Zientara and Alex Vidales of the Pilot Waves podcast (WERA FM – Arlington, VA – Mar. 15, 2023) and Mark Minsker’s “Lost Treasures” program (WOWD FM – Takoma Park, MD – Jun. 10, 2023).