Radio: the Soft White Underbelly of America
We learned punk rock in Hollywood. We drove up from Pedro. We were f*cking corn dogs. We'd drink and go pogo, me and Mike Watt. Minutemen, "History Lesson pt. 2".
A few more commercials have filtered through my nominal consciousness featuring material formerly thought to have no commercial potential. Someone is using the Violent Femmes' Blister in the Sun to sell something. At times over the years the Femmes actually got played on the radio, so I'm not sure if they count. I hear drum and bass, in TV commercials too, but someone else will have to pick up the slack on that. Most astounding I was reminded the other day that the LA band the Minutemen had their music in Volvo commercial. This I learned listening to a show on WZBC (Boston College's station). The Monday 5-7pm DJ, John Straub, did a special on The Minutemen's 1984 double lp. Part, I think, of a general theory of 1984 he is developing. He had with him Michael Fournier who has written a book about this record for the 33 1/3 series The Minutemen's Double nickels on the dime. I was a little surprised to learn Joe Carducci, who ran SST records during this period wrote the lyrics to the song Jesus and Tequila. The Volvo licensing was for D. Boones dad's hospital bills (Boone died in a car accident in 1985). John Straub keeps annotated play lists from his shows up on his myspace page
Kraft-o-Matic Bed o' Nails and the one for this show has numerous excerpts from Fournier's interviews with Mike Watt
Annotated Playlist for 4/2/2007 (Double Nickels on the Dime with quotes from Mike Watt). The Minutemen special came on the heels of another similar show on WFMU. On Thursday Diane's Kamikaze Fun Machine did a show focusing on the Misfits. This with Joel Gausten (Joel Gausten - Wikipedia) author of an upcoming book 100 records that should've changed your life (and several smaller spin off book projects including one on the Misfits)
March 29, 2007: Special Guest: Author Joel Gausten
. I have a recollection that I once saw the Undead (a Misfits related band) play at a place called the Marble Bar in Baltimore with P.G. county's own Black Market Baby opening.
The day before that Washington DC NPR talk show host Kojo Nnamdi had Ted Leo (and his guitar) up in the studio for a half hour
WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio - The Kojo Nnamdi Show. Ted played a unaccompanied version of Curtis Mayfield's Move on up right there in the studio:
Real Audio. OK I've forgiven radio for its general wankerness, but only because of pod-casts and internet streamining. I heard another song off the Pernice bros. record Live a Little that I like, It's called B S Johnson and seems to be about a tiny manuscript with a hole cut in it. Wait a moment! Looking over the first half of this post again I had a thought strike me. Now; there were three guys in the Minutemen: D. (dennis dale) Boone, George Hurley, and Mike Watt. I knew the big guy reminded me of someone, I saw the Minutemen play once, but I think they got it backwards. And then, where is the character in the TV show Lost named Mike Watt? It just seems incomplete, suspicious.
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