Steve Martin & Edie Brickell "Sarah Jane & The Iron Mountain Baby"

"Really?  A banjo record?!?"

I try not to look too hard at the voting for the Top 25 of 2013 while it is in process, so as not to make a big deal of anything, until the full picture has developed.

But I did take one peek this year.

After the voting period was halfway over, "Love Has Come For You" by Steve Martin & Edie Brickell was in the lead.

I was pretty surprised by this.

Albums that make the top of the list are, by nature, consensus records.  A large portion of the audience, with varying musical tastes, must feel connected to the record.

Records with a broad palette of influences do well.  Genre records rarely top the list.

And other than rap music, country music is the genre most often cited as an irritant by our listeners.

There is no getting around it.  "Love Has Come For You" is a banjo record.

Mind you, it's a really delightful, beautiful, warm and inviting banjo record.  But for a prejudiced ear, it's simply a banjo record.  With the banjo up front enough to be an immediate turn off to those who dislike the sound.

Ultimately, a less surprising album (Tedeschi Trucks Band's "Made Up Mind") surged in the voting and became number one.

But it's pretty impressive that a record that could potentially be viewed as niche-y, found such a wide audience.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Steve Martin & Edie Brickell "When You Get To Asheville"

When I hear the first line of "When You Get To Asheville," I immediately think of "Your House" and the story I wrote about yesterday.

"When you get to Asheville, send me an email."

It's such an interesting opening line, because it does nail the song down to a time and place.  It couldn't have been written 20 years ago.  And probably wouldn't be written 20 years from now, when we don't use email anymore because there is some kind of future-communication.

And, unlike Alanis Morissette, I get the feeling that this reference by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell is fully intentional.

The Old-Time/Bluegrassy/banjo sound is an immediate throwback.  Whether it was recorded 40 years ago or 40 minutes ago, it can sound old.

Starting of a Pop song or a Rap song with a mention of "send me an email" would be perfectly appropriate and uneventful, as that music is crafted to sound "here and now."

But starting off a banjo song with "send me an email" catapults the Old-Time-sounding song, and the story, firmly into the present.

It's a clever move.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Fleetwood Mac "Sad Angel"

Barbara said something really funny on the air the day the new Fleetwood Mac single came in.

She was live on the air and said something to the effect of, "I haven't heard this new Fleetwood Mac single yet, but we're going to play it during What's New For Lunch . . . unless it's horrible."

Barbara had done a calculation that she and I and other DJs have done thousands of times before.  The equation is:

New song + Band's fame + audience anticipation + quality of song = We will/won't play this song.

For instance, a brand new song, by a band we and the audience have never heard of, must compensate by being a really superb tune to get played.

Or, a new song from Steve Martin & Edie Brickell (who are well known, but not quite music superstars) + high quality song gets a definite shot on the air, because audience curiosity is high.

And conversely, a new song by a superstar band, that the audience didn't expect to hear from, can get by with just an okay song, because again, the interest is really high.

I'm not crazy about this new Fleetwood Mac tune, but they haven't put out a new song in 10 years, and it's not horrible and the audience interest is really high.

Maybe it will grow on me and on the listeners and get a lot of airplay.

Or maybe we'll play it a lot at the beginning to let the curious people hear it, and then it will fade.

Who knew there'd be so much math in music?


Hear the song on Youtube.

Son Volt "Hearts & Minds"

Sometime shortly after I have become Program Director at MVY, I was down at the Pub where I hung out.  One of my buddies was saying to a third guy:  "Did you hear that PJ got promoted at MVY?"

The third guy shrugged.  "MVY?  I stopped listening to them since they went country."

Went country?

The previous month, we'd done an On The Road trip to Merlefest, the premiere East Coast Americana music festival hosted by Doc Watson.

We gave it massive coverage on the air, playing cuts from bluegrass, country, roots and Americana artists not typically found in large supply on our station.

Was it wall-to-wall country?  No.  But here in the Northeast, a little country goes a long way.

It's always important to keep a good balance, and air only a moderate supply of songs that push away from the center-boundary of what is mvyradio.

If you look back at the old entry about how we choose songs for mvyradio, you'll see that I expressly mention that we're okay when we have a couple of Country-leaning songs.  Anything over that, and we risk sounding "too country."

So what do you do when there's a plethora of great, mvy-friendly country music out there?

We're suddenly deluged with great albums that can't really be ignored, by Son Volt, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, and Steve Earle.  Not to mention the banjo and dobro inflected likes of The Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and Jerry Douglas.

I guess the answer is, you go with it. 

We can't not play the Steve Earle.  Or the Emmylou & Rodney.  It would be weird for MVY, long-time Earle and Harris supporters, to suddenly ignore a critically-praised major release of theirs.  And the curiosity factor of the Steve & Edie record alone is reason to play it---it's the kind of oddball release that listeners expect to have a place on our eclectic indie station.

I say this all the time to listeners who complain about hearing too much of one new song or another:  Songs come and songs go.  If you don't like this one, don't worry, it will run its course and fade. 

Three months from now, many of these songs will be gone from our "current" playlist, and the balance of the station will be restored, or will perhaps lean in another direction that we'll have to course-correct for.

In the meantime, we haven't "gone country."  We're just enjoying the twang.


Hear Son Volt on Youtube.


Hear Buddy & Jim on Youtube.


Hear Emmylou & Rodney on Youtube.


Hear Steve & Edie talk about their record on Youtube.


Hear Steve Earle on Youtube.

The Lemonheads "Great Big No"

"The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people.  Things are going to start happening to me now!"  --- Steve Martin in "The Jerk"

I don't exactly know what I was thinking was going to happen, but that wasn't stopping me.

They'd just announced that they'd be shooting scenes for a new music video during the next song.  So I was going to be in it.

Fortunately, it was 1993, I was young, the crowd was young, and pushing your way toward the front wasn't a faux pas at a Lemonheads club show, in the same way it might be at, say, Symphony Hall.

We were in Atlanta for a Redd Kross/Lemonheads double-bill, and I was determined to have my presence recorded.  I wormed my way as far forward as I could, right in front of Evan Dando and hoped for the best.

And I waited.

Well, I mean, I jumped around up front for that song, then retreated back to where my friends were and enjoyed the rest of the night out in Atlanta.  Then I went home and kept my eye on MTV.

I used to watch "120 Minutes" religiously.  I'd tape it even, if I thought I was going to miss it.  But I definitely taped it when I heard that The Lemonheads label was finally getting around to releasing "Great Big No" as a single.

So here's the thing . . . I am in the video, but you really need a good pause button to find me.  You can't really do it on Youtube.

Right around the 1:22 mark, there's a shot where the camera looks over Evan Dando's shoulders, into the crowd.  I'm there!  I swear I am.

Surprisingly, my phone did not ring.  No agent called because they had "discovered" me in a crowd shot that lasts for 2/10ths of a second in a video shown after midnight on a Sunday night by a band releasing its fourth single off a record.

Despite Navin's promise, things did not start happening to me.

But it's still pretty cool.  Look Ma, I'm on the internet!


See the video on Youtube.

Steve Martin "Atheists Don't Have No Songs"

In the days before "Blog" was a word, the first radio station I worked for had a really beautiful website, that had a whole section devoted to articles that the staffers wrote, about music and culture and comedy and such.

I remember writing this piece about the incredibly diverse talents of Steve Martin.

Can't remember if I mentioned the banjo playing.

Martin is up for a Grammy in the Bluegrass category, against such perennial stalwarts of the genre as Del McCoury and Ralph Stanley, and maybe your first thought is, is this a joke? Does Martin really compare.

Well, yeah, you could listen to this song and call it a joke---because it IS frickin' hilarious.

But listen again, and ignore the words. Listen only to analyze the composition, the voice parts, the construction of the song.

It's actually a very impressive example of the genre.

So yeah, the song is jokey, but the nomination is no joke.


Hear the song on Youtube.

mvyradio will be watching The Grammys this Sunday, and tweeting our thoughts. Join us!

Steve Martin "Best Love"

There are several "alternate History of The Beatles" projects out there in the film world.

One imagines that John Lennon faked his death and is still alive.

And other sends two time traveling Beatles fans back to the Sixties to prevent John from meeting Yoko, who they blame for breaking the band up.

And with altered history/reality movies being all the rage (Inception, The Adjustment Bureau, Source Code), I can see how my brain got a-spinning when I heard this new Steve Martin tune featuring Paul McCartney.

I started to wonder about that fateful day when Paul met John and they hit it off, going on to form the most creative, productive, influential songwriting partnership in music history.

What if they hadn't liked each other?

I mean, it's not impossible. John could be abrasive. Paul had an ego.

What if, on that one day, one of them rubbed the other the wrong way, and instead of playing off each other creatively, spurring each other to greater heights, they just bounced each other in opposite directions?

What would have become of them?

Well Paul, even without John, would still have had his incredible gift for melody. Though he may never have been challenged by an equal or by the pressures of mega-fame, to create a "Sgt. Peppers," he certainly would have seen success writing ballads like "Yesterday" and crowd-pleasers like the Wings track "Jet" (he didn't need John, George or Ringo for those).

Okay, so alternate-Paul has some mid-level success. He's not a Legend, but he's a moderate star through the 60s and into the 70s. The 80s and early 90s are a fallow period (they kinda were for the real Paul, too). But alternate-Paul doesn't have to carry the torch for The Beatles (who don't exist in this reality) and he doesn't have to trot out the hits on stadium tours.

So alternate Paul returns to his roots. As a young lad he loved the music of Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins and Eddie Cochran. It's a style he has a knack for. And his heritage, combined with his authenticity, leads to a small Paul revival in his mid-60s, as a Brit who can make American roots music.

Delving further, alternate-Paul rekindles a passion for Bill Monroe*, and proves to be a credible mandolin player. His surprising bluegrass release turns heads and garners new fans.

And if all this fiction were fact, the alternate-Paul's record might sound a bit like this Real-Paul guest spot on the new Steve Martin record** on the song "Best Love."

Real Paul sounds pretty in the pocket here, like he'd been doing this all along.

Maybe Paul wasn't dead. Maybe the Real Paul was in an alternate reality all along.



* Real-Paul does cover Monroe's "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" on his "Unplugged" album


** Stand-up-comedian-turned-actor-director-writer-turned-author-turned-40-years-into-his-career-credible-Bluegrass-success seems like a few alternate reality stories of its own.

Paul Simon & Steve Martin "Silver Bells"

Instead of the usual Weekend Post, on weekends in December, I think I'll post some fun, weird holiday tunes.

I'll default to the wonderful folks at the AV Club, for the story behind this one:

The origin of this semi-legendary bootleg is a bit of a mystery. Most sources claim that it’s an outtake from an episode of Saturday Night Live, but Martin and Simon were never on the same show at the same time. Further complicating things, Billy Joel—in a magazine interview from 2001—claims that it’s him playing the piano, and that it wasn’t for television at all, but merely the three of them, lubricated on wine, goofing around in a recording studio. Whatever the case, it’s hands-down the funniest version ever made of this classic carol.

Steve Martin “King Tut”

Five songs I’m looking forward to hearing again, in Newport.

I had already established that my parents didn’t know everything. But who knew that it went so much deeper than that.

Previously, I had realized that my parents didn’t know everything there is to know about everything. And I had come to terms with that. I mean, the amount of information their two brains could hold was finite. I could forgive them for that.

But my head was really turned around when I learned that not only did they not know everything, there were things that they didn’t know, that other people knew.

It was around 3rd Grade that I started making friends that weren’t just based on who my neighbors were or who my parents’ friend's kids were. I was making friends with kids in school, who’s parents were (gasp!) different than mine.

And not just different. Younger.

I mean, my parents weren’t physically older than the parents of kids I knew, but certainly some of those parents had a much younger sensibility than my parents.

So it was a whole new world.

I can remember romping around this big, old, drafty, wooden, Colonial house where my best 3rd Grade buddy lived. They had twisty weird staircases, and a dumbwaiter, and a carriage barn. And a shaggy dog.

We didn’t have a dog. Too hairy.

And his parents seemed funnier. Or, funny in a way that my folks weren’t anyway. And certainly much cooler.

His Dad had records. Current records.

My Dad had records, but they were mostly from a decade earlier. I don’t know if I ever heard my Dad say, “I’m going to the record store.”

I can remember crashing up one of those uncarpeted back-stairs, headed to a room that my friend’s Dad was painting. And on the way up, I could hear talking. But it was big echoey talking, with an audience.

The Dad was painting this room, and had a record player there, with Steve Martin’s “Wild & Crazy Guy” on while he painted.

The pop culture stream had trickled down far enough that a third-grader like me knew the phrase “Excuuuuuuuuuusssssssssssssse Meeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!” But that’s all I knew about Martin, really.

We didn’t have comedy records at home. So the whole idea of putting talking on a music player machine was enough to blow my mind.

And what he said, captivated me.

Why? I’m not sure. Because here in 2010, I can tell you with no uncertainty, that I had no idea what Martin meant when he said, about his girlfriend, “If she is like a cat, I have kitty litter. If she is like a dog, we do it on the paper.”

Definitely no idea what that meant. But I thought it was hilarious.

We listened to that record on my next visit, and the next and the next, until I could recite whole parts of Martin’s routine, whether I understood it or not.

But the coup de grace of the record was something I could wrap my head around: a song.

For all of the wildness and the craziness of the rest of the record, the simple, catchy rhymes of “King Tut” were what resonated with me.

It was the bridge between the Beatles songs and Broadway tunes I could get at home, and the slightly dangerous, out of control comedy shared by these people who weren’t my parents, yet seemed to know so much.

(ed. note: I don't really expect him to play this tonight . . .)