Matt Berninger is a singer and songwriter, best known as the frontman for The National, a group he formed with two pairs of brothers (Bryan and Scott Devendorf, plus identical twins Aaron and Bryce Dessner). All five of them hail from Cincinnati. Matt has a new solo album coming out this Friday. You can read more about that here and here. (Sidebar of note: the album artwork was done by my friend Dale Doyle – you may remember him from this post, when he was “downsized” by the ad agency where he worked for 23 years. What a difference a couple of years makes!)
Artwork by Dale Doyle
Growing up in Cincinnati, Matt tuned in to a tiny station with an even tinier transmitter, broadcasting from 35 miles northwest of the city, in Oxford, Ohio. 97X (WOXY-FM).
From the November issue of Uncut magazine
Nearly four decades ago, Brian Eno made a now-famous statement about The Velvet Underground in particular, and gratification in general:
“I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band! So I console myself in thinking that some things generate their rewards in second-hand ways.”
I’d like to think a similar concept holds true for 97X, where I worked for a few years in the late 80s and early 90s. The station only had about 3,000 listeners, but everyone who tuned in was a true music lover. Not all of them started a band (although Matt did), but to a person, they were folks who cared deeply, profoundly, sometimes rabidly, about the music. It wasn’t just about the artists, it was about the community that formed around that music… the “tribe” in Seth Godin parlance. Many listeners grew up misfits and outcasts in “normal” society. At 97X, they found a home, a place where they truly felt like they belonged.
You hear a lot about diversity and inclusion these days – it was baked right into the station’s programming. 97X ran the gamut of “modern rock” – jangle pop, punk, goth, singer-songwriters, grunge, you name it… with specialty shows for blues, reggae, dance, industrial, metal, and local music. If it was new, if it was different, it probably got played. We’d always err on the side of the listeners’ ears – play it and let them decide, not us. To be a 97X fan was to be open-minded, tolerant, adventurous, liberal in the broadest definition of that word.
All of this helps explain why, more than 16 years after the terrestrial station went off the air, and a decade after the internet version died, 97X still holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts. There’s a FB group called WOXY Forever. There’s a monthly playlist of new music on Spotify, compiled by dedicated listeners who never lost the joy of discovery that was inculcated by 97X.
There are college professors who give speeches about it. There are listeners who have painstakingly recreated countless hours of playlists, and archived each year’s “best of” and the “Modern Rock 500” (a Memorial Day countdown of the top 500 songs). It’s why Dave Tellmann (who worked at 97X for a decade) and I do a podcast about 97X (shameless self-promotion: it’s available on Podbean, Spotify and Apple podcasts).
The fact that Matt Berninger developed his musical tastes listening to 97X is super-cool. But I’m just as thrilled about all the other listeners who made 97X their station. We were all part of a small but mighty band… and we’re still focused on “the future of rock and roll.”
Brett Newski is an indie musician. (Or, per Wikipedia: Brett Newski is a North American nomad, songwriter, illustrator, and folk punk guitarist from New Berlin, Wisconsin.) Times are tough for musicians these days, especially the nomadic types. Brett played a very entertaining house concert at the home of my friends Dave and Jacqui, back in the Before Times when house concerts were still a thing. I sure miss those days.
Brett’s newsletters aren’t the cut from the same cloth as most musician’s. They’re deeper, wider, not so much music-centric as life-centric. A recent one really hit home for me – I think you’ll find some wisdom in it as well:
If there’s one thing we can agree on as people, it’s that politics really suck.
I don’t care how divided we are right now, deep down we want to be buddies.
It breaks my heart to see us at odds based on what political team we are on.
We have more in common with our fellow citizen than we do to Trump or Biden.
The old white guys in the control tower of politics want us to be at odds. If we are at each other’s throats, it makes it very easy for these old white guys to run the show.
Right now, the big guys are winning. They’ve got us emotional and angry and scared and confused. That’s what they want. But we don’t have to keep drinking their poison.
A small boost to healing is this…
Seek out those on “the other side” and chat them up, but not about politics.
If you see a man in a red Trump hat, chat em up about sports or recreation or the nice park you’re standing in together. If you see a purple-haired fedora wearing liberal, chat them up about Modest Mouse or community-farming or whatever feels right in the moment.
I did this for 3.5 hours on the beach yesterday. I swear it injected positive echoes between the 10-12 people I talked to. Those echoes will reverberate into their future interactions too. It’s a spiderweb of productive energy. Maybe this sounds tiny and insignificant, but it beats sitting in the car, absorbing more news, and getting more fearful toward our fellow people.
Deep down we all want to be buddies.
It’s easy to get trapped in your own news bubble, your own Twitter-verse, your own echo chamber. But understanding starts with reaching out. Let’s find the humanity in our fellow humans.
You can sign up for Brett’s newsletter here. His new album is here on Spotify.
Chuck Cleaver is one of the best songwriters in the known universe. He’s also a funny dude, in his own unique, gruff-yet-lovable way.
Chuck’s in a band called Wussy, and he and the other lead singer/songwriter in that band, Lisa Walker, do a live set of songs every other Friday night on Facebook. (On the alternate Fridays, their bandmate Mark Messerly plays a set. All the videos are here and are well worth checking out.)
The songs are brilliant. The between-song banter is the icing on the cake. It’s funnier than most network sitcoms. Here’s Chuck from a few weeks ago, going on a rant about old folks. (At age 62, he counts himself among that number). I can relate. My daughter drags me up to St. Vincent de Paul nearly every Sunday because if you’re 50 or older, you get a 25% discount:
Below is a blog post I wrote in 2018, when John Prine’s most recent album came out. We lost him to COVID-19 10 days ago. It was a massive loss not just to the music community, but to literature, and humanity. Because he had a way with words like few others, and he was by all accounts a kind, funny, caring, gracious, humble person. We could use a few more cats like that.
I’ve got another blog for most of my music musings, but John’s bigger than that. Check out the post below, and I’ve added a YouTube video of a house concert he did in 2018. Well worth a look and listen.
Blog post from April 2018:
John Prine has a new album out tomorrow.
Friday the 13th is our lucky day, because the new album is fantastic. Which is par for the course for Mr. Prine, a living legend who ranks right up there with Dylan and Townes Van Zandt in the songwriting pantheon. If the old adage about the Velvet Underground is true — they only sold 1,000 copies of their albums, but every person who bought one started a band — then for John Prine, every person who bought one of his albums became a songwriter. His music can best be described as “Americana” but really HE is Americana. A boy from the ‘burbs of Chicago, an Army vet, a former mailman, a cancer survivor, a folkie whose music is both timely and timeless.
In case you missed it (and there’s a 99.9% chance you did miss it), the podcast that I co-host is yesterday’s news! Er, I mean, it was in yesterday’s Cincinnati Enquirer. What do you mean you don’t subscribe to a newspaper? What do you mean you don’t even know what a ‘newspaper’ is?
Full disclosure: Luann Gibbs used to work at 97X, the station that is the focus of our podcast. But neither Dave nor I knew that she was going to mention us.
“Extra, extra… two old guys talk about a radio station that died a decade ago!”
It was our “the new phone book’s here” moment.
Actually, Dave and I don’t harbor any delusions of grandeur. (Occasionally, we do have delusions of adequacy, but we lie down until those go away.) Our podcast is extremely niche. Some podcasts have thousands of regular listeners, some have hundreds… we have “tens” of listeners. As I often say, “we’ve made about 50 people very happy” by bringing back fond memories of a small-but-mighty and much-beloved indie rock radio station. But it’s always nice to get a bit of recognition for the hard work you’ve done.
And now that we’re all under house arrest, there’s never been a better time to check out some new podcasts.
Back in my Catholic grade school days, the nuns talked about the Corporal Works of Mercy, one of which is “feed the hungry.”
William Shakespeare said “if music be the food of love, play on!”
Bill Janovitz, the lead singer of my favorite band, Buffalo Tom, hosted a “Virtual Happy Hour” yesterday afternoon, via the band’s Facebook page. After mixing himself a martini in his kitchen, he headed down to the basement to play songs from throughout his career, usually on acoustic guitar, occasionally on piano. It was like manna from heaven. A feast for the music-starved masses.
I’ve seen Buffalo Tom several times — in Cincinnati, in New York, L.A., Chicago — and have loved every second of every show. But last night’s solo gig was not just something I wanted to see, it something I desperately needed after a long, long week of work and worry and weirdness. And it wasn’t just me that needed this catharsis — a thousand folks tuned in from around the world. Australia, Italy, England, Abu Dhabi…
I’m not big on the FaceGrams and the InstaTweet and the other social mediums, but yesterday, it sure came in handy as a way to bond with like-minded fans. It provided a true sense of close connection in a social distancing world.
Bill was in his basement, sipping a martini and playing his songs. 800 miles away, I was in my basement, singing along at the top of my lungs (something I’d never do at a regular Buffalo Tom concert – I respect the other fans too much to torture them with my off-key warbling) and crying in my beer at the sad songs. It was more than music, it was magic.
In addition to being a fabulous songwriter and performer, Bill is also a caring dude. He’s heavily involved in the Hot Stove Cool Music fundraisers that provide scholarships for kids and families in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Boston. Yesterday’s gig raised more than $4,000 (via Venmo and PayPal “tip jars”) for local venues, promoters and musicians who are out of work during the coronavirus lockdown.
Until then, why not use a bit of your “house arrest” free time to check out Buffalo Tom’s most recent album Quiet and Peace. It’ll be good for what ails you.
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