Friday, May 16, 2008
Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" has an old-timey sound- hardly surprising when you consider that 50% of the material was recorded before 1960. Makes sense in the context of his life and work, too. What did Bob listen to when he was growing up, after all? Buddy Holly was the fresh new sound on the radio, and the airwaves would have been filled with a lot of the country sounds he still favors. Tom Petty, nine years Dylan's junior, features material that is more late 50s to mid 60s-- again, not surprising when you think about what he was listening to as a kid, or what his music sounds like today. Now comes word that Lou Reed is joining the ranks of the satellite DJs. He'll be on the satellite I don't get, which is too bad, because I'd like to hear what he and producer Hal Wilner (whose work I've admired for years) come up with. Reed is a year younger than Dylan, but I think that geography will be the more significant defining quality to the sorts of things that formed Reed's taste. He was a child of the post-WWII New York suburbs, and, according to Wikipedia, the last time he had a radio show, when he was a student at Syracuse, he played doo wop, rhythm and blues and jazz, particularly free jazz, including Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. That would be some interesting radio.
// posted by Bill @ 9:45 AM 
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