This week on The Sound of Young America: two guys I've always wanted to have on the show.
Chuck Klosterman is one of America's funniest and most perceptive writers on popular culture. His best-selling books "Fargo Rock City," "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," and most recently "Killing Yourself to Live" are favorites for hipsters across the nation. We talk with Chuck about what rock journalism means to him, and how he deals with being a grown-up who cares about music like an 18-year-old.
Dave Foley is one of our finest comic actors. He co-founded the Kids in the Hall, whose television show re-introduced weirdness into the world of sketch comedy. Shortly thereafter, he landed the lead role in Newsradio, one of the finest sitcoms of the 1990s. Lately, he's made a living hosting a celebrity poker show as well as acting and writing. Believe it or not, he's a Sound of Young America listener.
Hear! as Fa Real embarrasses himself with the worst "Mexican accent" I've ever heard in ever on the hook of this otherwise blazing new Snoop single, "Vatos." The man from VA needs to take note of the fact that people are getting seriously annoyed by him, and he hasn't even put his record out. (Thanks to Spine Magazine)
And speaking of Spine... they have some great new stuff up right now.
These twonew Outkast joints are pretty decent, but not setting the world on fire. Big Boi is still bringing some dope new flows. Sounds like Scar on the track, based on the two Purple Ribbon mixtapes, I think he's got a lot of potential.
This new AZ joint is fire. Better than the new Nas, I'd say. I bet AZ gets pretty sick of that comparison.
I guess Chino XL is serious about his comeback. A very talented guy who never put it together, but he's bringing a new flow on this track, which has a nice beat from Cool & Dre. He needs to leave out the similes though. Seriously rappers: it's not cute any more. Chino, please let Talib know about this.
Killer Mike PROMISES HE WILL NOT LOSE. This joint disses Black Owned C-Bone, which seems like a waste of effort. C-Bone apparently made a comment at a Purple Ribbon show which Killa Kill didn't attend along the lines of "one monkey don't stop no show." Mike has responded by declaring himself King Kong. Sez Mike: "You know that wadn't right. You know you was wrong when you did it. I hope you was raised betta than that. I hope yo' side of town doesn't, does not, Does Not, DOES NOT recognize you for the sucka you are." LOLzers.
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There will be so many giveaways you will go doo-doo in your pants!
Comedy CDs! DVDs! Mr. T Books! A Pee-Wee Herman Doll!
And perhaps most amazingly of all...
A Pez MP3 Player!!!
Yes, it's an actual 512 megabyte MP3 player built into the Pez Boy. The inventor of the Pez MP3 player, Pat, is a Sound of Young America listener, and he's graciously donated this one to us to give to you! Not available in stores! Sold out online! Amazing! Delightful! Remarkable! Astonishing!
Brian Palmer remembers the now-retired-from-radio talk host Phil Hendrie with some downloads over on his blog. Hendrie pulled off the remarkable daily trick of serving as both host and guest for his programs, interviewing himself in character completely convincingly. Incredulous callers, shocked by his "guests" outrageousness, were part of the fun. He's moving on to a career as an actor -- we'll see how it works out.
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Things I never thought I'd say: "This new DJ Shadow album sounds awesome."
Because the first single, "3 Freaks" is bananas, and has been my favorite song for like three months. And the other leaked track, "Seein Thangs" with David Banner is my favorite Banner track since "Cadillacs on 22s." Plus 40 Water is on it, and E-40+Shadow=something awesome no matter how you do the math.
Status Ain't Hood has a very interesting review of an Atmosphere show in NYC last night. I have to say I agree with his assesment of the group -- Slug and Ant are both quite talented, and have long been the bright lights in the overly sincere white rapper firmament, but something seems to have gone missing since their earlier days. He writes:
Slug didn't do much rapping last night, delivering his lyrics in a sort of cocky-ironic spoken-word singsong cadence instead. It was weird and dissonant seeing this guy do heavy confessional stuff for a group of rabid kids and coming dangerously close to self-consciously half-assing everything.
I generally don't buy in to the idea of "radio as art," but if there's such a thing as a radio artist, Joe Frank is it. An original host on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, he soon departed that program to produce distinctive original work.
His work combines truth, fiction, speach, music, telephone calls and sound effects in the service of often mysterious stories. If you're a fan of shows like Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything or This American Life, you should know that they largely cribbed their formats from Frank. In fact, Ira Glass worked under Frank as one of his first jobs in public radio, and credits him as his greatest inspiration. Frank has won a Peabody, a lifetime achievement award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, and a pile of other awards and accolades.
He left his home station, KCRW, in 2002. Since then, his archives have been available at his website, and re-runs have continued to air on a few stations around the country.
The first offering is an excellent hourlong show from 1997 called "The Other Side." It's a typically diverse Joe Frank episode: It opens with an actor (or is it an actor?) mangling a short passage from the Bible, then moves into an improvised phone dialogue between two actors. Later on are excerpts from a phone interview Joe conducted with an unidentified woman who is apparently a friend of his; she tells Joe about her doubts regarding her current relationship. (As he often does with his phone interviews, Joe cut out most of his side of the conversation, which gives the interviewee's answers the flavor of a monologue.)
The rest of the episode consists of two classic Joe Frank monologues. The first is a paranoid, Raymond Chandler–ish tale of an office worker who is visited by a strange woman who forces him to accept a mysterious box. The second is a first-person story of a man who realizes, out of the blue, that he must leave his wife: He tells her calmly that he's leaving her, then packs up his things, walks out the door, and checks into a hotel to begin a new life.
Our pal Ben does interviews for Gothamist, often with comics. He justed posted an interesting one with Patrice O'Neal. What I've seen of O'Neal's work on TV has never impressed me too much, but enough people I trust have said he's the best live comedian they've ever seen that he must be something special.
I was twenty-two when I started; I did a bit of living. I would imagine that when you do something, like any young person, that at some point you have to grow up. At some point, you're going to have to deal with grown-up emotions. If you're fourteen or sixteen, there are life lessons you're missing out on. Look at the alphabet. Let's say that at A you're born and that at M you're a millionaire at the age of twenty-one. You skip over things that help you live at M when you jump from G to M. You're going to eventually come back to that. Some people put their lives in the microwaves and go all the way to Q, but they got to come back and see K and L. You can't skip life. If you skip letter C, you're missing out on lessons. If you start at fourteen, it's great, but there's letters that you've skipped. There's letter's I might have missed at twenty-two, but I don't know what I've missed.
"I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here - close! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don't like it, leave."
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"Rust, a fungus disease, sapped the
wheat crop. Production of durum wheat dropped from the 10-year average
of 31,547,000 bushels a year to 4,976,000 bushels."
Chuck Klosterman is one of America's funniest and most perceptive writers on popular culture. His best-selling books "Fargo Rock City," "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," and most recently "Killing Yourself to Live" are favorites for hipsters across the nation. We talk with Chuck about what rock journalism means to him, and how he deals with being a grown-up who cares about music like an 18-year-old.
Dave Foley is one of our finest comic actors. He co-founded the Kids in the Hall, whose television show re-introduced weirdness into the world of sketch comedy. Shortly thereafter, he landed the lead role in Newsradio, one of the finest sitcoms of the 1990s. Lately, he's made a living hosting a celebrity poker show as well as acting and writing. Believe it or not, he's a Sound of Young America listener.
