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Satellite radio: Where every star is a DJ |
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Written by Knight Ridder
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Wednesday, 07 June 2006 |
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The buzz is over Bob Dylan, but satellite radio is crawling with rockers and rappers turned would-be Wolfman Jacks.
In the iPod age, you are what’s on your playlist, so if you really must know what makes Ashlee Simpson and Ashley Parker Angel tick, their mixes are for sale at iTunes. But the XM vs. Sirius satellite-radio battle one-ups Apple by putting name-brand musicians to work as DJs and programmers in pursuit of market share.
Besides the Bard, Snoop Dogg, Tom Petty and Rancid, among others, have their own weekly shows on XM. Sirius employs the likes of New York Dolls front man David Johansen and hip-hop producer Prince Paul as DJs, as well as giving Eminem and Little Steven free rein to program entire channels.
Most of these on-air personalities are hardly overworking themselves, putting in hour-long shifts that are repeated over the course of the week, though Steven, who rarely appears on his Underground Garage channel (Sirius 25), is on air for two hours every Sunday night on “terrestrial” — otherwise known as “free” — radio.
The worker bee of the bunch is Johansen, whose often-inspired six-hour “Mansion of Fun” airs on the free-form channel Disorder (Sirius 24) at 3 p.m. each Friday. The glam-rocker, who also performs as Buster Poindexter, has a show that’s almost too mind-blowingly eclectic as it mixes philosophical musings while moving from the Beach Boys to Julie Andrews to Claude Debussy to Senegalese singer Musa Dieng Kala.
“Buried Treasure,” Petty’s show, which airs on Deep Tracks (XM 40) at 10 a.m. Mondays, digs up classic rock nuggets, mainly from the `60s, accompanied by the least-slick patter this side of a student-run college station. Last week, he played a version of the Who’s “My Generation” with the vocal track removed, plus “Margarita,” by “a bunch of drunks called the Traveling Wilburys,” and the Led Zeppelin outtake “The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair.”
Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” airs on Deep Tracks at 10 a.m. Wednesday, then repeats up several times during the week. Like his 2004 memoir, “Chronicles: Vol. 1,” it’s a left-field surprise that, without ever qualifying as personal, tells us a few choice things about Dylan that we didn’t know before.
Such as: He’s an LL Cool J fan. His show’s themes are inspired in their simplicity, or maybe hilarious in their stupidity. They include “Weather,” “Drink,” “Baseball,” “Mothers” (in which he played Ruth Brown’s “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean” and LL’s “Mama Said Knock You Out”), and “Coffee,” with such percolating cuts as Squeeze’s “Black Coffee in Bed,” Scatman Crothers’ “Keep That Coffee Hot,” and Frank Sinatra’s swinging cut in praise of what Dylan called “my favorite brown liquid,” “The Coffee Song.”
Coming this week: “Jail.”
The croaking DJ tells old vaudeville jokes (“I said, `This coffee tastes muddy.’ He said, `It should, it was ground this morning’ “), gives airtime to such alleged friends as Penn Jillette and Charlie Sheen, and during “Baseball” theme week, sang an a cappella “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Complete with a film-noirish intro that varies weekly (“It’s nighttime in the big city. Somewhere a car alarm goes off. A woman walks barefoot, her high heels in her handbag”), Dylan’s is an old-time radio show in the best sense. It uses the medium’s theatrical potential. And in between excellent tunes, it’s unafraid to be both educational and absurd in its scripted patter. Having just celebrated his 65th birthday, the greatest songwriter of the rock era begins his senior citizenship with a new title to defend: Best celebrity DJ on satellite radio.
SATELLITE SOUNDS
From Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” (XM 40, 10 a.m. Wednesday)
- "Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” Les Brown & His Orchestra (with Betty Bonney)
- "Joe DiMaggio’s Done It Again,” Billy Bragg with Wilco
- "Baseball Canto,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- "Newk’s Fadeway,” Sonny Rollins
- "Third Base, Dodger Stadium,” Ry Cooder
From David Johansen’s “Mansion of Fun” (Sirius 24, 3 p.m. Friday)
- "It’s Not Unusual,” Tom Jones
- "Zalahy,” Tarika Sammy
- "Do I Love You,” The Ronettes
- "Valzer Al Laghi,” Nino Rota
- "You Have Killed Me,” Morrissey
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