This week our theme is "Rip It Up & Start Again," and we investigate the history of Post-Punk music.
Our guest is Simon Reynolds, a British pop music critic, and the author of the book which gives our show its name. His book aims to retrofit the reputation of the rock music of the early 80s, describing the sonically disparate artists who created something new in the wake of the first punk movement's self-destruction. Download this week's show (MP3 Audio)
The most fun I ever had doing a Sound of Young America interview was when I talked to Jimmy Pardo. I know, you wouldn't expect much from the former host of a TV show called "National Lampoon's Funny Money," but Jimmy is the funniest extemporaneous speaker I've ever linked up with. He also has a wonderful old-timey quality that makes you think he should be drunk and hosting "The Match Game" with one of those long skinny microphones with the ball at the end. A charming combination.
Anyway, Jimmy's teamed up with Matt Belknap of AST Radio to produce "Never Not Funny," a new podcast. It's as funny as I have come to expect from Pardo, and it's set to feature a sort of rotating panel of comedians alongside him. I added it to my subscription list, which is a pretty exclusive one.
In Rob Cordry's Wednesday report on the Daily Show entitled "Racist Like Me", he ends his report saying people might say of him that "he's a pretty decent guy, unless of course, you're one of these things. In which case I hate your guts." The screen then shows a long, very fast scroll of group names.
I know this is in danger of becoming the Fresh Air blog instead of The Sound of Young America blog, but what could be more charming than Terry Gross's awkwardly dork approach to interviewing admirably hip guests?
She interviewed Ben Karlin, former Onion editor and current Daily Show and Colbert Report boss.
One great thing about David Mamet is that he'll just bust out saying some ridiculous stuff. Like anything that comes to his head. Only he's such a verbal genius, that anything he says comes out sounding completely correct, and absurdly pithy to boot.
When I was studying acting, the best book I read on the subject was Mamet's, which is saying something because he didn't even try to hide his contempt for actors. His basic stance was that an actor's job is to say the words loud enough for the audience to hear. I'm not exaggerating, either, that's really his thesis. It has sub-theses, like how acting training is just a hustle run by failed actors, but that's the main thrust. It was GREAT.
He was on Fresh Air a couple weeks ago to talk about his new TV series "The Unit," which is co-created by Shawn Ryan ("The Shield"). I haven't seen the show, but this kind of made me want to. On the other hand, though, who wants to see something written partially by David Mamet, and partially by Another Guy?
The interview STARTS with Mamet saying: "The trick is to leave everything out. That's the whole trick to drama."
What's Guest's new movie about? A small, independent movie that starts getting Oscar buzz and then finds itself in the running against huge pictures. There's a Siskel and Ebert team who review all the major films of the year, and they review this little indie movie... I'm in the big studio movie, playing a cop. It's called — actually, I probably shouldn't give any more away, I'm just so excited about it!
Our beloved pals at Found Magazine just announced another of their world-famous nationwide tours. At each stop, they share and gather found materials... notes, pictures, letters, lists. Here's the text of a found note they shared in their announcement:
BOCCE is good for letting go of your problems. It is a beautiful day, let go of your problems as you let go of your balls. Clutch the balls and really work them over in your palms until you have gathered up all of your negativity and let the balls spread it back into the earth. The earth is there for you to talk to and let go of your balls on.
Also, founder Davy Rothbart is a contributor to This American Life, and his piece on meeting Mr. Rogers re-runs this week on public radio stations across the country. You can hear it online here. The first time I heard it (I didn't know Davy then), I cried. Also the second time.
One time, I went looking for a "crime blotter" on the SFPD website, becuase there was a string of shootings outside my house. Well, no dice, but I found something much, much, much better. The Northern District Community Newsletter is sort of a like the greatest episode of Law & Order ever filmed. It's a newsletter, maybe written by a cop, I dunno. It starts out with some newslettery stuff (hiring announcements, community fairs, that kind of thing), and then moves on to the AWESOME PART: crime stories. Like this one, picked at random:
Friday December 30, 3:25 AM, Prositution Arrest: Officer Kennedy and Officer Paulsen were working in plain clothes in the area of California St. and Larkin St. They observed a woman whom they recognized from a myriad of prior contacts for prostitution related activity. They observed the woman for a short while. She hailed several cars and eventually got one to stop, most likely because her diaphanous blouse commanded a certain amount of attention. The officers observed as the woman entered the car and the driver left the area. The officers followed the car and found the couple engrossed in hedonistic activity. The officers interceded and the couple was arrested. The man was released on a citation and the prostitute was booked at county Jail due to the fact that she would have plied her trade in perpetuity had the officers not removed her from the streets.
It's in PDF form, and I had to retype that one, or I'd post more. They are wonderful. The word "scallawag" is used liberally. Amazing, amazing stuff.
I pretty much despise all personal blogs. Who cares? And lord knows I avoid MySpace blogs like the plague. Why look at MySpace when you don't have to?
But then I read Jen Kirkman's blog, which is wonderful. It's about her life in Hollywood as a comic and sometime actress... she's got brilliant things to say, and she's fantastically funny. When I was reading her stuff, I thought to myself "Why is Sandra Tsing Loh Sandra Tsing Loh, when Jen Kirkman could be Sandra Tsing Loh?"
Then I remembered that I have a radio show of my own. So I asked Jen if she would be interested in doing some sort of commentaries for The Sound. She's into it. I think we'll be doing it by phone... working title, "Your Friend in Hollywood, Jen Kirkman." I think the intimacy of telephone sound will work great with her personal stories.
Anyway, check it out, let me know what you think.
Oh! And her show, "Dork Days," is running in LA on April 10th:
Monday, April 10th @8PM Dork Days! *new version* FREE!!!! Laugh and cringe at Jen's failed mission to achieve child stardom in the 1980's before nuclear war hits. The Comedy Central Stage at the Hudson Theatre 6539 Santa Monica Blvd Hollywood CA 90038 reservations are a must!! call now! (323) 960 5519
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Wired has a very interesting piece on the financial challenges brought up by public radio's embrace of podcasting. It's sort of encapsulated by this quote, one listener's response to a local station pledge drive:
"Why would I sit through all of that if I can get what I like for free online, listen to it on my own time and not be guilted for weeks into giving money?" says Michaels, a real estate agent who says her husband donates to the station on behalf of her family. "I've even found a whole bunch of NPR shows online that aren't on NPR here, which is so great."
Many local NPR stations have basically been run as NPR (and PRI, and APM) conduits for the past ten or fifteen years, and they're now realizing that in the 21st century, radio stations no longer have exclusive license to audio content distribution. No longer does being "Your NPR News Source in the Tri-County Area" mean that listeners must turn to your station if they want interesting and informative news audio.
I'm a big advocate of podcasting, and of public broadcasting (as you might imagine, me being a podcasting public broadcaster). Everything's very much in the air, but this is how I think (hope?) things will shake out:
As NPR's non-station audience grows (naturally cannibalizing some local station audience), it must significantly cut the huge fees it charges stations for programming. Its online and sattelite presence will provide lots of underwriting revenue (that's the stuff that's like advertising, but isn't) , and potentially lots of private and public revenue (like the huge Jean Kroc bequest) as well.
Radio will remain a vital medium for many years to come, just as newspapers have. It's ubiquity and ease-of-use will not go away, though that advantage will decrease over time.
Stations will be forced to develop programming that means something to their audience, then distribute it through all the means at their disposal, if they want the audience to continue to care about them enough to give money.
"Audience" may not continue to mean only "local audience," as more stations will undertake the KPIG/KCRW model, by combining local community relevance with strong brands that promote broader (inter)national community relevance.
Stations that produce their own high quality programming (like WNYC and KCRW) will thrive.
Smaller independent program producers (that's me!) will view the radio audience and radio stations as great promotion for their podcasts, raising money directly from underwriters and listeners. Currently, TSOYA charge a big fat nothing to the stations that carry the show or our specials.
One big question here is where the non-government, non-corporate money will come from and go to. What will people care enough about to make a contribution to?
In our TSOYA Census, about 60% of the respondents said they would be willing to give directly to The Sound of Young America. Consider, though, that only about 200 of the most enthusiastic listeners responded to the census -- it's a self-selecting group.
Personally, I've given directly to Chicago Public Radio to support webstreaming of This American Life before. I've thought recently about giving some to KCRW, since I love The Business and The Treatment so much. But if people do give to content producers, will that keep them from giving to their local stations?
Tod Maffin, a CBC broadcaster, points out that "traditional" public broadcasters (those, like the CBC or BBC, supported by government funding) are in a great position, since the podcasting revolution simply gives them expanded opportunities, with only a modest added financial burden.
Of course, all of this comes at a key juncture for The Sound of Young America, as I leave KZSC (where I was bound by university policy not to have any income from the show), so I'm very interested to hear your thoughts about what kind of listening you've done in the past, what you plan to do in the future, and what you think The Sound should do.
And that is why I believe I should abandon this essay and go make a sandwich. I believe the best sandwiches are made on toast. I believe they include hummus, and sprouts, and perhaps a tomato. But, above all, I believe the best sandwiches are served with a pickle.
Here’s a wonderful interview with Spike Lee from NPR’s Morning Edition. He talks a bit about The Inside Man, and is as stand-offish as he often is. He’s such a cool cucumber, he just refuses to be anything but serious and aloof about his work, but he cracks, eventually. He gets to some real answers to tough and interesting questions, like the rape scene in She’s Gotta Have It, which he says is the one scene in his films he regrets. When he’s asked whether he’d cut it out for DVD, he offers an emphatic no: “That would be the punk move.” He compares it to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, or the Mammy in Gone With the Wind: “It’s done. It’s done.”
He closes with a great plug, "Thank you, and I really feel good about Inside Man, and I hope people come out and see it." He's nothing if not a straight shooter.
Call the listener comment line at 206-984-4FUN and leave a message. Say: "This is ______ (first name is fine) from __________ and you're listening to The Sound of Young America."
If you'd like, add one sentence about why you listen. "I listen because ________."
Word on the street is that this is selling out quickly, but there's an all-star tribute to Mitch Hedberg going down in Minneapolis at the Orpheum Theater. More information here, and according to the site, "Nick Swardson, Patton Oswalt, Mike Birbiglia, Zach Galifianakis, and Dave Mordal are all on board." Doug Benson tells us via AST that he's in, too. Tickets are a totally reasonable $35, and the money goes to charity, including his memorial foundation. He was a brilliant and broadly loved comedian, and it's nice to see all these brilliant comics turning out to support his family.
Last year, we did a show the day his death became public. My guests were both comics -- Marc Maron shared a manager with Hedberg, and Al Madrigal had just gotten off tour with him a few weeks before. I talked about Hedberg with both, and we played some of his brilliant, brilliant jokes. MP3 Link Like this post? Click here to subscribe to the blog.
For a while I interned with a public radio show here in the Bay Area. My boss, the producer, had left a career in publishing to join the show. She had done pretty much everything in the book business -- among her titles was novelist, editor and most recently, literary escort. This is not a high-class prostitute, but rather the person responsible for getting authors where they need to be while on book tour.
She met lots and lots of famous authors, and had lots of insight into their personalities, at least while they were on book tour. There were some positive surprises -- the shock-jock Mancow, for example, was really, really nice, and took her and her son out to dinner.
But I was never more jealous of her than when she mentioned in passing that she had once escorted Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner. Can you imagine anything more fun than that? And she said it totally lived up to it's billing.
I love Mel Brooks because he allows a passion for anything-goes humor and a brilliant intelligence to exist in concert. His jokes are usually smart even when they're dumb.
20th Century FOX released an amazing box set of Brooks' films today, and side-by-side, you can see how formidable his body of work is. It isn't a complete collection (we all miss The Producers, no one is lamenting the loss of Life Stinks), but it's a great one, with eight films, several of which weren't on DVD at all before. It includes Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, To Be or Not to Be, History of the World Part 1, The Twelve Chairs, and High Anxiety. I've never seen Twelve Chairs (should I?), but the rest range from really funny to All Time Classic.
Anyway, it's pretty cheap at Amazon, considering all the laughs you're getting...
and by the way, call your local library and find out if they have the mid-90s PBS special Caesar's Writers, about the writing staff of Your Show of Shows and the Sid Caesar Hour, two 1950s TV sketch series. The film features a lot of brilliant footage from the shows, and interviews with the writing staff, which included Neil Simon, Brooks & Reiner, and (relatively briefly) Woody Allen among others.
There was a lot of great stuff on The Dana Carvey Show, the late-90s primetime sketch series. This was one such great thing; it features Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert.
Thought I'd offer a little roundup of some of the press the show has gotten over the years... if you'd like to interview me for your media outlet (be it podcast, broadcast, print or online), I'd be happy to help.
Santa Cruz Sentinel Profile (April 2005) Wallace Baine wrote this piece which I think totally "gets" the show and is really wonderful. A lot of background on the show, with a sort of David & Goliath angle. I understand it made the rounds at NPR.
Salon.com's Audiofile (11/05) This is the most laudatory article ever on the show, and it was in Salon! I flipped out when I heard about it.
Extensive Interview on JustAsLoude.org (6/05) This is a listener's blog -- a pretty exhaustive review of where the show stood at the time, not to different from where it stands now.
We've also appeared in a few places that have no or pay-only archives. The San Jose Mercury News... the Monterey Herald... Podcast411. That's all I can think of, if I'm missing something, I'll add it here.
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A friend of mine, we'll call him B, was booked to do a late night TV show, which we'll call TLLSwCF. This is a big break for B, who's never really been on TV (outside of a few here and there tiny things, and maybe Premium Blend, I can't remember).
So anyway, he goes and tapes the show, and to hear him tell it (and he's not one to misrepresent these things) does very well. Big laughs, a few applause breaks, etc etc etc. This is great news, because he has a very unique style that isn't what you see from your airplane food type comics, and this very middle-america audience ate it up.
So it was really cool. He was really happy. Wasn't sure if CF saw it, but the writing staff all came and talked to him about how great he was, and how happy they were to see him on the show. Kudos all around.
The day the bit is scheduled to air, he finds out that an executive at the network (which we will also call by initials: CBS), saw the tape of his performance. She is not offended by the performance, there is no political material in the performance, he did not swear. But she thinks it's weird. Over the objections of the staff of the show, including the booker who booked B in the first place, she bans it from being shown on the network. In fact, she won't even allow B's agent to have tape of it, so he can put it in B's reel for booking purposes.
B talks to the folks from the show, and they're all steamed, but they can't really do anything. In fact, the booker was reprimanded by the exec for booking B in the first place.
B is understandably frustrated, not to mention saddened, that his big break has gone sour because one exec (not nameless, but name's not really important) banned him from network TV. He can only hope it'll happen again -- and given his talent and commitment, I think it will.
Man, that's totally fucked.
Here's the question for me...
TLLSwCF is the last show of the broadcast day. After it goes off the air, we go to Taxi reruns or something. The comedy segment is the last segment of the show. The only thing left after it is the credits. This comedian killed in front of a middle American audience, and he's built a significant live audience by being a brilliant and unique comedian. Those qualities even earned him a development deal.
When will TV programmers realize that in the 21st century, the business is about putting on something that people will love, not about putting on something that is C+ for everyone? If they can't do it at 1:30 in the morning, when can they do it?
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There was a local guy who showed up at all of the social events with his dog. He had trained the dog to stand on his arm. No one really knew what his deal was, but everyone called him "Dog Dude". I guess he's there every year. Anyway, at the UCB party his dog was walking around the kitchen and I figured out how to get it to stand on my arm. The dude saw me doing it and just said, "Go for it, man." So I walked around the party very drunk with this dog standing on my arm.
So, Weinbach and I loaded up on one of those carts that are normally reserved for the disabled and elderly. The driver hit the gas and we were on our way. We thought we might be going all the way to another terminal. Nope. Six gates. They had someone drive us, two young, healthy looking lads, five hundred feet.
I also got kicked out of the HBO hospitality lounge on account of my baby. The industry doesn't like babies all up in their business, I don't blame them, but I can't help but resent them.
I'll tell you what though, about nine of us went snow mobiling one morning. If you consider that a social event, that was the best. It was like a video game or an action movie or something, sort of. It was very fun. We rode through the mountains and ate burgers at this log cabin and raced at the end. We met a mysterious man named the Red Zinger.
Despite my apparent feud with Patton Oswalt, he remains The Sound of Young America's #1 comedy pal, and we're proud to have him as such. He's one of the funniest comedians working today, if not the funniest. Amazing cascades of hilarious verbiage follow him wherever he goes... I'm thinking of, say, his description of Cirque du Soleil, which involves "a hedgehog with a boner on a tricycle." That's the kind of diction that comes from years of craft and dedication, and also being a genius. Anytime he's on the show, he demonstrates that he has both. Anyway, he performed at the 826 Valencia benefit this weekend (which, by the way, was wonderful... see Ian Brill's writeup), and slew an audience of (literally) thousands.
Anyway, Patton's on tour all the time, so if he comes to your town, catch him. He's coming to San Francisco in May, and hopefully he'll revisit our modest airwaves.
All of that said... tommorow the DVD of his comedy special, "No Reason to Complain," is released. It's classic material, and it's 30% off at Amazon, where you can order it RIGHT NOW.
Sound of Young America pal Nick Adams just kicked off the tour for his very funny new book, "Making Friends with Black People," at Book Soup in LA. Not only were there plenty of folks there, but one of them was the first white lady ever to be on Soul Train... and according to photographic evidence, one of them was TSOYA pal / brilliant standup comedian Jasper Redd. I'd link to Jasper's website, but the man still doesn't have one, which is probably why so many people come to our website after searching for "Jasper Redd."
Nick's got a few more readings coming up... He'll be reading at Marcus Books in San Francisco on Friday at 6PM, and Saturday, he's reading at Barnes & Noble in Oakland at 7:30 PM. I'll be at the San Francisco reading (in the audience, of course), so come and say hi to Nick and I.
Last week, we watched Heat Vision & Jack... this week, it's the pilot that's always nipping at HV&J's heels for "Most Salivated Over By Comedy Nerds Unaired Pilot" status... Lookwell. This series, created by Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien, stars Adam West as a crime-stopping acting teacher. Enjoy!
Understand that I do not condone downloading or illegal internet file sharing, because it's just like Lars from Metallica coming in your dorm room and messing everything up or whatever.
Anyway, the blog linked above is called Milton Berle's Cock, and it reminds me of an old showbiz yarn that I heard somewhere and think it HILARIOUS. You should know that it's not family-friendly.
Anyway, Uncle Miltie had a legendarily large schwantz. One day, a young, upstart comic goes up to him and says, "I hear you've got the biggest dick in comedy."
And Miltie says, "Well, I'm a modest man..."
and the kid says, "Come on... we'll have a contest."
And Miltie says, "No no no..."
and the kid says, "Come on... we'll have a contest..."
And Miltie says, "Kid, gimme a break."
and the kid says, "You chicken, Miltie? I'll whip out mine and you whip out yours and we'll see whose is bigger! Come on!"
This week our theme is "Rip It Up & Start Again," and we investigate the history of Post-Punk music.
