Little Feat "Don't Bogart That Joint"

Baseball is a slow game.  So despite the excitement of the World Series, there was plenty of time between innings and between pitches, to think about songs that would make fun (but ultimately stupid) music cues for some of the players.

Since Xander is from Aruba, which is part of the marijuana-friendly Netherlands, I'm most certain that he never bogarts a joint . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Little Feat "Willin'"

While PJ is on vacation, he's writing about songs that taught him something . . .

Like Wednesday's post, "Willin'" provided some geography education for this young music listener.

I couldn't understand what the hell Lowell George was saying in this song, so I went searching for the lyrics.

And in the process, I learned a little about the Southwestern U.S.

"And I been from Tuscon to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah."

Someone even plotted out a "Willin'" map! 


Hear the song on Youtube.

Little Feat "Rad Gumbo"

To the point of yesterday's post . . . there are even more songs about Gumbo, than Chili!

The mvyradio Big Chili Contest is today. See you there. Or follow it on Facebook!


Hear the song on Youtube.

Little Feat "Cold Cold Cold"

The good thing about working for an independent radio station is that there is no corporate overlord who is telling me how to program the station, or what songs we should be playing.

Corporate, mainstream stations have lots of rules about what they will play and won't play, and on some level, it's understandable. If you need to capture a mass audience to make it in the Big City, you can't take chances, you can't make choices that might alienate the "political" center of your listenership and you can't be to niche-y.

So if a great song has some kind of cosmetic problem, that's just too effin' bad. It's not going to get played on the Big City station, even the cool Triple A Format stations that are similar to mvyradio (but corporate owned and in large markets). If it's too slow and could drag down the station's tempo, it's out. If it's too folky or too country or too urban, no way. And God forbid that it's too long.

Even stone cold classics like the 6 minute "Tangled Up In Blue" aren't likely to make the daytime playlist of a Big City station. There is science and statistics behind this choice---if you have pushed the attention span of your audience too far, you're going to lose them to the channel-changing button. So you find what the median threshold is, and you make sure you don't cross it.

You're unlikely to hear a song ramble past the 4 1/2 minute mark, on a Big City station.

But we have the good fortune to be in a small market, where, if our ratings change two 10ths of a percent, we will not lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. We're a niche radio station that only appeals to a single digit percentage of the local audience, but because we're streaming on the web, we can actually program to that very small niche of folks, in every city in the world.

It provides a lot of freedom.

The freedom to occasionally play Little Feat's "Cold Cold Cold/Tripe Face Boogie" which is nearly 10 minutes long.

I only play this song a couple of times a year, but I LOVE to do it, because it always garners a couple of reactions.

When I play it, without fail someone calls the request line, freaking out. "I can't believe you're playing this! I haven't heard it on the radio in 20 years!" We can actually take advantage of the adventurousness-less of corporate stations, and make ourselves stand out.

The flip side, of course, is that the corporate stations are not entirely wrong.

Because also, without fail someone calls the request line, distraught: "What are you playing!?! Uggghhhh . . ."

There is a large percentage of the audience that just isn't going to stick with a song that's 10 minutes long.

I'd say, "Who needs em!!!" but that would be cold, cold, cold.

Little Feat “Dixie Chicken”

You can go on and on all you want about the nobility of artistic pursuits, and yes, I suppose you are right, there is something noble about the “pursuit.” But let’s face it, the artistic life is a daily slog against indignity upon indignity.

You could be the Juliard trained actor, who becomes typecast as “that guy in the talking Hot Dog commercial.”

Or the brilliant but undiscovered novelist who’s paying off his English degree, writing obituaries for the newspaper.

Or the budding fashion designer, who’s hired to make a line of sweatpants.

Sometimes, as creative and as talented as you might be, you will need to use your talents in the most common, unimaginative way possible, to be able to pay the bills.

Which is how a musician ends up at a piano bar.

Sure, I bet he took years of music lessons, spent countless hours practicing, played in bands, wrote original music, and made demo tapes, propelled by a dream of being a recording artist or a sessions man or a composer.

Instead, he was in a Key West bar, taking requests for Jimmy Buffett cover after Jimmy Buffett cover after Jimmy Buffett cover.

I watched him working for every dollar, trying find some life in the songs he’d probably sung a million times, probably sang every day, probably weren’t intended to be played as solo piano songs (“Fins”? I think not).

And the requests were crushingly banal. “Piano Man.” “Margaritaville.” “The Pina Colada Song.” And the dispiriting (ignored) requests for “Freebird.”

I don’t want to sound like my idea is the most original in the world either, but I will tell you that the look on his face was worth the five bucks I put in his jar, before he ever played a note of “Dixie Chicken.”

Clearly, it was a respite from the predictable requests of the day. Clearly he loved Little Feat. And clearly, he was going to wring every note out of this favored request.

Little Feat can stretch out a song, and this guy was going to take full advantage of that leeway. He sang with gusto. He wandered down noodling musical alleyways, circling back to the melody before he had fully lost the crowd (most of whom didn’t likely know the song anyway). He made the most of his mini-vacation, before returning to his reality of having to play “Your Song” for the hundred-thousandth time.

But hey, when you have given your life to artistic pursuits, five dollars worth of dignity is more than enough to carry you through to the next day.



Check out this awesome live TV appearance, featuring Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Jesse Winchester!