Dan 10Things on NPR!

At noon today there will be a short interview with me on Ross Reynold's discussion show "The Conversation" on Seattle's NPR station KUOW. Hopefully I won't sound like too much of a dork, I used the opportunity to give The Showbox some criticism for gouging music fans with extraordinarily high fees by using Ticketmaster in a conversation about the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. I am a big fan of Ross and the show and was surprised to be asked to tape an interview. I'm an opinionated bastard and they'd read both some comments on my blog and the Stranger's Lineout blog about the subject, apparently being a big mouth can occasionally get you somewhere... if local NPR is somewhere. Anyway, if you want to tune into the show or hear it later from their archive, it's available online here, I'm about 40-45 minutes in:
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=17009

Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?

Do you remember Hullabaloo?
Upbeat, Shindig and Ed Sullivan too?
Do you remember Rocknroll radio?
Do you remember Rocknroll radio?

Do you remember Murray the K,
Alan Freed, and High Energy?
Its the end, the end of the '70s.
Its the end, the end of the century.

Do you remember lying in bed with your covers pulled up over your head?
Radio playin' so one can see.
We need change, we need it fast, before rock's just part of the past.
'cause lately it all sounds the same to me.

Oh-oh. will you remember Jerry Lee,
John Lennon, T. Rex and 'ol Moulty?
It's the end, the end of the '70s.
It's the end, the end of the century.

You know, it's funny to read the lyrics of The Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?" and realize they were fondly remembering the rock radio of the '50s and '60s. But that's what punk was trying to recapture, the fast rockin' two minute songs of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holley, but roughed up around the edges. Me... I'm an '80s kid. The radio stations I fondly remember from growing up are represented above. KJET I've mentioned before, in the early to mid '80s they played the best alternative and punk music in Seattle. From the 1972 through 2001 KCMU, the University of Washington's college station, also played it's fair share of alternative and local music. After a big donation from Paul Allen in 2001, the station moved off-campus down to Allen's Experience Music Project and adapted it's name, KEXP... from there it definitely stepped up it's programming to be much more commercial, yet still has managed to maintain it's local roots (and added punk programming!).