The Wallflowers "Letters From The Wasteland"

I'm on vacation this week, so please enjoy a week's worth of mini-stories . . .

I couldn't help but notice that most all of this week's posts were based on disparaging comments.  No wonder they had been previously abandoned!

One to make you smile . . .

While the radio station still regularly plays songs off of CDs (and occasionally even LPs!), most of the songs that get repeat airplay are available to the DJs on a computer in the studio, in high-quality MP3 form.

On the postive-side:  Convenience.  You can quickly find a song to play if you need one.

On the negative-side:  The various information fields in our computer database program only allow so many characters.

That means, when you look on the computer display, this song shows up as being titled:

"Letters From The Wastela"

So if you hear an DJ announce this tune as "Letters From The Wastela," you can laugh, knowing that this is some green newbie, who grabbed a song they weren't familiar with, and just botched the title!


Hear the song on Youtube.

Patty Griffin "Rain"

I'm on vacation this week, so please enjoy a week's worth of mini-stories . . .

Around the time this song came out, my friend Martin asked me what I'd been listening to.

I sent him a bunch of names, and he sent back his reviews.

About Patty Griffin's "Rain," he said something to the effect that this was the music that depressed mid-Western housewives would listen to.

And despite the fact that I am not bored, depressed or a housewife---I did and do love this song and love Patty Griffin's voice.

But even today, because of Martin, when I hear "Rain" I can only think of Julianne Moore in "The Hours."



Hear the song on Youtube.


See the movie clip on Youtube.

Bruce Springsteen "I Ain't Got You"

I'm on vacation this week, so please enjoy a week's worth of mini-stories . . .


I don't know why this sticks out in my head, but when I hear this song I think of Andy Rooney.

For some reason he was going on about the "young bands of today" or something during a "60 Minutes" segment, and he started talking about this fairly obscure (and certainly not widely popular) Bruce Springsteen song.

Rooney was annoyed by the lyric "I've got more good lucky honey than old King Farouk."

Andy was miffed because, in fact, King Farouk wasn't lucky at all.  He was penultimate King of Egypt and Sudan, who was overthrown and died in exile.

And you call that lucky, Bruce?

Kids these days!


Hear the song on Youtube.

J. Geils Band "Whammer Jammer"

I'm on vacation this week, so please enjoy a week's worth of mini-stories . . .

Kids can be so cruel.

One time, in the high school basketball locker room, we were listening to the J. Geils Band, and I said, "What kind of a**hole would want the nickname 'Magic Dick.'"

And one of the guys in the locker room looked at me, deadpan and said "What kind of a**hole would want to go by the nickname 'PJ'?"

Sans comeback, I quietly returned to straightening my non-magic jockstrap.



Hear the song on Youtube.

Dan Zanes "Wonderwheel"

I'm on vacation from the station this week, but I can't call it Every Day I Write The Blog, without posting, you know, every day.

So went through my notes and have pulled out a number of ideas I discarded because they seemed a little thin.

But, knowing that brevity is the soul of wit . . . I give you a week's worth of mini-stories:

The first time I met Dan Zanes, he told this story about how he had written a new song that he played for his Mom.

When he asked if she liked it, she replied that it was good, but (referring to one of her earlier charming successes) "it's no Wonderwheel."


Hear the song on Youtube.

Soul Asylum "Somebody To Shove"

Here's another Weekend Post:

After "Runaway Train" Soul Asylum was treated like a pretty middle-of-the-road rock band.

But before (seconds before) they had a commercial breakthrough, they were a punky rock band, capable of "Buzz Worthy" MTV clips.

Fun video fact:  The guy who directed this, went on to direct huge action pictures, like "300."


See the video on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Tin Machine "Under The God"

Here's another Weekend Post:

By the time I was hosting "What's The Alternative?" (in the mid-90s), this David Bowie side project was an already largely forgotten anomaly.

But I thought it kinda rocked.


Hear the song on Youtube. Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

George Harrison "Taxman"

Especially if you've been doing radio for a long time . . . there can a be a resistance to trying to program for the holidays.

We talk about this often, around Martin Luther King Jr Day.  Sure, we can play "Pride (In The Name Of Love) and versions "We Shall Overcome," and whatever.  But doing that year in and year out seems a little boring.  On the other hand, there are only so many King-associated songs in existence (and believe me, we've used them all).

The same can be said for 4th of July songs.  Labor Day (work) songs.  Memorial Day songs.  Etc. Etc.  After a while, it feels like you are doing the same thing, year in and year out.

If you've been a DJ for 20 years, you may just feel like completely forgoing the process of musically acknowledging the holiday at all.  It's not like you're required to play songs for Thanksgiving ("Cold Turkey" by John Lennon, again, anyone?).

That being said, I never get tired of hearing this one as April 15th approaches.

So as you head into the weekend, freaking out because you haven't started your taxes yet, please enjoy some George Harrison!



Hear the song on Youtube.

Brandi Carlile "That Wasn't Me"

Do you ever have the nagging feeling that you're just wrong?

I feel that way about Brandi Carlile.

Despite having had her on the station for interviews, and for live-streamed concerts, we've never added a song of hers into rotation.

I always felt like there was something missing.

And I do hear about it from listeners.  AND staff members.  "Why doesn't mvy play her?  It seems like a perfect fit."

And no doubt, Carlile is, in so many ways, right up our alley.  A great writer with a strong voice, who has underplayed her image in favor of her musical strengths.  She gets good reviews, she sells records and concert tickets, and she charts on radio stations with playlists nearly identical to mvyradio.

But I always felt like there was something missing.

Sometimes, having a powerful voice is actually a drawback.  Sometimes, really going for it with your voice, doing vocal runs, messing about in the upper register, trying to nail the drama, is a drawback.  Going from acoustic quiet to high vocal yodeling is a technical vocal achievement---but it gets under my skin, for some reason.

Just because you CAN hit those notes, doesn't mean that you need to.

Maybe that's why "That Wasn't Me" is the first song by Carlile, that I can imagine mvyradio adding.  There's vocal prowess, but restraint.  There's dynamics, but not histrionics.  There's something subtler in the delivery here.  She's not firing all her guns, and the song is more effective for it.

There's a phrase that Barbara Dacey uses a lot.  "Leave room for the audience."  If the performer is spraying you with a firehose, it's hard to do anything but put up your hands and attempt to push back.  But if there is more open space, there is room for the listener to step inside and feel part of the conversation.

I feel like I can get inside "That Wasn't Me."

So maybe what I was missing in Brandi Carlile all along wasn't her, it was actually me.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Rolling Stones "Moonlight Mile"

The hallway outside the mvyradio On-Air studios is filled with framed "Thank Yous" from labels and artists.  Replicas of Gold records from Dave Matthews and David Gray and Bruce Cockburn, acknowledging mvyradio's role in getting the music out to the people.

Also in the hallway is one large movie poster, with two indecipherable autographs on it.

"Moonlight Mile" is the film.

And one of the scribbles belongs to some unknown artist named Jake Gyllenhaal. 

Okay, so the Academy Award nominee isn't exactly unknown now, but he was the day he came to the station to talk about the movie with the other person who scribbled his name in black sharpie, director Brad Silberling.

This is back in 2002, before Gyllenhaal had been in "Brokeback Mountain" or any other mainstream success, and even his cult success (2001's "Donnie Darko") was only just then starting to attract attention.

As they explain in the interview (link below), the movie "Moonlight Mile" was finished, and they were gearing up to head out on a promotion junket, but at the moment they were enjoying a little time on the Vineyard.

In a kind of fascinating coincidence, Brad and Jake had discovered---while initially meeting to discuss Jake's possible involvement in the movie---that they each had a family place on the Vineyard, and that those houses were right next to each other!

So there they were, enjoying a little downtime, when Brad got a finished copy of the Soundtrack to the film, which is what he was REALLY excited about.

Let tell you about celebrities on the Vineyard---there might be a lot of them here, but when they are here, they are on vacation.  NEVER do they call up the radio station to do some unsolicited promotion of their work.

So even though we really didn't know who these guys were, when Brad called to ask if we'd like to have Jake and him in to talk about the movie Soundtrack, we said sure.

I won't go into the details of the interview, here---you can listen below.  Suffice it to say there are some great anecdotes about Soundtrack artists Robert Plant, Fran Healy from Travis and movie co-star Susan Sarandon.

And it's fun to hear this unknown indie-film actor talk about signing on to an unnamed blockbuster (see if you can guess what it was).

What made me so affectionate toward these guys, Brad in particular, was that they were really at our studios to talk about the music, not the movie (which, by the way, is great, totally worth renting).  There's no particular reason this film needed to be named "Moonlight Mile."  It could have been really ANY song from the 70s (when the film is set).  But he picked a beautiful, obscure Stones classic---the kind of song that we choose, to define mvyradio.

We felt simpatico.  And when they left we wished them well, hoping that maybe these guys would find some success in a tough business.

I guess it worked.

Hear our interview with Jake Gyllenhaal and Brad Silberling in the mvyradio archives.



Hear the song on Youtube.


"Moonlight Mile" trailer

See the trailer on Youtube.