The national television debut of a very young REM, when they were still a squirrelly little outfit from Athens, Georgia, known for an EP, and a great first album, "Murmur." That still is one of my favorites. Here they jump like snakes on a griddle. Yes, everyone had more hair back then. This was twenty five years ago, after all. What did your hair look like in 1983?
According to John Hodgman, in The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes, authors and books are funny "because they are sad. They are as sad as zeppelins are -- they wish to soar, but they are using a technology that is old, largely forgotten, highly flammable." Hodgman triggers a synaptic linkage, bringing a huge, old, largely forgotten, highly flammable rock band to mind. Unlike cartoonist Ellen Forney, who wrote and illustrated the comic "I [heart] Led Zeppelin," my feelings are complicated. I don't [heart] them uncritically. It's more of a love/hate relationship. They are overwrought, lumbering, reactionary, and personify all the rockist wretched excess of stadium groups punk came along to destroy. Zep stocks the "classic rock" stations like rack-jobbers, providing tired old warhorses for button-down nostalgics, and false memories for kids who weren't even there in the first place. Honestly, I could do without hearing "Stairway to Heaven" ever again.
On the other hand, once in a while, the behemoth lifts off. Those moments rattle me with cognitive dissonance; I know I shouldn't like it, but I do. The earth moves, and Led Zep, that improbable wasp trapped in fossilized amber, somehow takes wing. Watch this clip of "Kashmir." You wonder, will this thing ever fly? It does.
When we were in Portland last month for a Friends of the Nib art showat Floating World, artist Jim Woodring and I were interviewed by radio station KBOO. SW Conser and Bill Dodge have a regular show about comics and art called "Words and Pictures." Anyway, our interview airs Tuesday, March 11th at 9:30.
Bob Rini, a face for radio Check out more of Jim Woodring's visionary artwork here. To see more of my artwork, look here. For more archives from the "Words and Pictures" radio show, click here.
Steven Van Zandt is an actor, a guitar player, and a fantastic rock and roll deejay. His underground garage show makes the rest of rock radio seem canned, corporate, and dull as dishwater. He plays "back-to-basics guitar, bass, and drums, with a little attitude, and a direct connection to the sixties, before the machines took over."
What a mug on this guy. If he looks familiar, you may know him as Little Steven, or Miami Steve, playing guitar in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Or you may know him as Silvio Dante on The Sopranos, Tony's well-coiffed consigliere.
Born Steven Lento in 1950, he grew up in an Italian American home in New Jersey, and started playing guitar as a teenager in the bar scene on the Jersey Shore. Van Zandt (he took his stepfather's name) was a founding member of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, and played in several early Springsteen bands, though he didn't officially join the E Streeters until the mid-1970s. Check out "Hammersmith Odeon 1975" on DVD to see Steven in all his pimped-out glory. Hear him on the new Springsteen album, "Magic." But whatever you do, check out the radio show.
Musically, I like everything from Hank Williams to Sonic Youth, but I had no idea what was going on in my brain when I listened to music until I read this amazing book by Daniel J. Levitin, "This is Your Brain on Music."
Levitin is a neuroscientist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University in Montreal. He's also a musician and former record producer, so he's the perfect person to ask what happens in the brain when a favorite song comes on the radio, or why certain chord sequences fill us with delight.
