If you’re old enough to remember the 1990s, and if you’re even slightly into music, and you appreciate great writing, you really owe it to yourself to check out the 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s podcast.
Rob Harvilla, a senior staff writer for The Ringer, spends each episode breaking down a song from the ’90s. Actually, he spends about half of each episode on a series of digressions, often about his time growing up in northern Ohio in the 90s, before finally getting to the featured song. And the digressions are great – brilliantly written, completely engaging, and typically hilarious… and the humor is usually self-deprecating.
Writing about this podcast doesn’t do it justice… especially when it’s my writing. Just listen to the first three minutes of one of the episodes — pick any one, they’re all great — and you’ll be hooked.
Here’s the opening of the episode that covers Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”:
The series (which is well over 100 episodes/songs now… Rob himself calls it “the world’s most inaccurately named music podcast”) covers all sorts of tunes from the ’90s – from pop to country to R&B to hip-hop to indie rock. Some songs were monster hits… some have been mostly lost to the mists of our memory. It doesn’t really matter, as they all offer Rob a chance to wax eloquently about music and life (not necessarily in that order).
(Apparently this podcast is the #1 music podcast on Spotify, so I’m probably about three years late in touting it… sorry, I was busy.)
Rob Harvilla just released a book to accompany the podcast.
This book description does the podcast justice:
Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.
The Mercantile Library is one of my favorite places in Cincinnati. A gorgeous space dedicated to reading.
Photo above from The Mercantile Library’s website.
And tomorrow night, I’ll be co-hosting an event there. It’s bucket list material for me.
A sold-out event at that! I harbor no delusions that anyone will be there to hear from me. They’ll be there because they loved a little radio station in Oxford, Ohio that respected their listener’s ears and minds.
My 97X buddy Dave and I started a podcast a few years ago, recording episodes in my basement. We had no idea what we were doing. Still don’t, honestly. “Shoestring budget” would be inaccurate. No budget. Actually it’s a “loss leader” given the hosting and website fees we pay. We’ve done very little promotion of it. But somehow, someway, the small-but-mighty group of people who loved 97X found it. And Robin James, who has been our guest a couple of times, wanted us to co-host her book event. BAM! Pretty friggin’ cool.
“The reason why I wrote Fahrenheit is that I am a library person and I am in danger of someday writing something that people might not like and they might burn. So it was only natural that I sat down and wrote Fahrenheit 451.”
They say there is strangeness, too dangerous In our theatres and bookstore shelves That those who know what’s best for us – Must rise and save us from ourselves
Quick to judge, Quick to anger Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice And fear walk hand in hand
Rush “Witch Hunt” from their 1981 album Moving Pictures
It’s getting harder and harder to read a book… and easier and easier to get a gun. Which would you rather have in your kid’s hands?
If you’re happy and you know it… appreciate it. (And go ahead and clap your hands too. We wouldn’t want that nursery rhyme that’s been stuck in your head all these years to go to waste.)
School and work push us to avoid real dreams. Dreamers are dangerous, impatient and unwilling to tolerate the status quo. Existing systems would prefer we simply fit in.
The dreams we need to teach are the dreams of self-reliance and generosity. The only way for us to move forward is to encourage and amplify the work of people who are willing to learn, to see and to commit to making things better.
It turns out that reading and writing are the cornerstones of this practice, now more than ever. These are the two skills most likely to produce exponential results.
The effective writer can see their ideas spread to a hundred people overnight, or perhaps a million. Writing is still the bedrock tool we use to codify and share ideas, and it forces us to organize our thoughts.
But we can’t say it until we see it, which requires the commitment to reading and understanding, combined with the guts to dream and to lead.
Find the others, see the problem, and then decide to do something about it.
Great stuff, as always, from Seth. Reading expands your worldview. And the pen is mightier than the sword. It’s never been harder to carve out time for reading… but if you do, it’s never been easier to publish your thoughts.
“nonstop but fruitless efforts to fill the yawning chasm of his soul by seeking the attention of indifferent strangers.”
Andy Borowitz, in The New Yorker
Artist’s rendering of Elon
I probably shouldn’t be posting the entire piece from Andy Borowitz here. To make amends, I’ll mention that a subscription to The New Yorker is well worth the price (especially in Year 1, when they cut you a discount). There’s so much good content in every issue: news, features, fiction, cartoons, humor like the piece above, poetry…
In the “digital economy” I know people are used to getting their content for free. But keep in mind that most websites are siphoning your personal data and selling it to the highest bidder. So it only seems “free”… and you are the product. If you want to support quality writing, fork over a few bucks – the transaction is much more above-board. And go ahead and pay a bit more for the printed magazine… it’s a better experience, and easier on your eyes.
The only challenge I’ve found with my New Yorker subscription is that there’s so much great content in every issue that I’m constantly running a few weeks behind on my reading. A nice problem to have. Unless I break my glasses like ol’ Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone episode above.
blueandgolddreamer on Vive la Différence!: “Apathy is the worst. It says it all” Mar 25, 04:14
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