Wanted On The Air: Musicians Dead or Alive?

  [Published on WPRB Blog on July 31, 2015]

  

It is a joy to host a radio show on WPRB but one that requires making many decisions – “what to leave in and what to leave out” to quote Bob Seger (who is not related to Pete Seeger). Since DJs are people who pursue the opportunity to spend several hours a week seemingly talking to themselves in a windowless basement, almost by definition they are people who probably know or have access to thousands of songs for each of the 15-20 they may be able to play during an hour on the air. How to choose?

For me, this is a mostly intuitive semi-conscious process that combines considerations of songs relevant to current news or historic events, songs that could fit into a set I think might be moving, profound, funny, or musically interesting plus versions of songs and/or performers I simply love, want to hear again and want to share with others and music from performers soon to be giving concerts in the area. Somewhere in my internal rumbling is the recognition that I am more likely to hold the interest listeners long enough to turn them on to music that is unfamiliar if I include as touchstones songs they may already know.

Then, there is the slight variable that, for the most part, I have little idea who is listening, what music they might or might not have already heard, what they know about the styles of music I like – whether for example I need to explain who one or both of the Seger/Seeger boys are or that the line cited above is from Bob’s great song “Against The Wind” that was also recorded by Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson with Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings.

Another set of choices revolve around how often to play particular songs, artists and sets. Just because there is some music I could happily hear every week for many months doesn’t mean that listeners will feel the same way. On the other hand, much as I might wish otherwise, few listeners are there from start to finish every week so maybe they missed it the first 10 times I played it.

I hope and believe that the ways in which I and other DJs distill these factors leads to listening experiences that at least sometimes are more wide-ranging, surprising and entertaining than result from the algorithms employed by Spotify, Pandora and their personalized but non-human brethren.

This summer, during my annual break from the radio, it is yet another “what to leave in, what to leave out” question I’ve been thinking about; that is, should I be upping the percentage of music I play from living musicians. Maybe air time on PRB could increase – no matter how minutely – some individual or group’s fame and economic well-being. Or maybe a struggling bluegrass band or singer-songwriter driving down the Turnpike will get the thrill of hearing a cut from their own album or at least get a report from a friend or fan who heard it. Wouldn’t that be more valuable than taking time away from the living to play songs from the Reverend Gary Davis, or Stan Rogers or John Hartford or Bill Monroe, none of whom made it into the 21^st Century?

But, I’m pretty sure I’ll decide to continue including some songs or performances every week by the ever-increasing number of wonderful musicians no longer living - be their passing timely or untimely. One reason to do that is to explain and demonstrate the roots and traditions that have so influenced contemporary music, but that is not what will motivate me.

I’ll play them because I enjoy hearing them – because they are very funny, insightful or otherwise wonderful, because they come from an LP I cherish that was never reissued on CD, because they are songs or musicians that received little attention when they were new, because I remember where I was when I first heard them and, sometimes because I have come to feel a spiritual responsibility to keep them in – or on – the air.

This includes many individual songs and albums but it is also two incredibly talented performers and songwriters who died too young with too little recognition. One’s career was shaped by some bad decisions and incredibly bad luck while the other’s was done in by bad health. One – John Herald – I have written about on my website (http://veryseldom.com/JohnHerald.php); the other - Dave Gordon – I will write about another day.

I have at least the illusion that their music would become totally forgotten if I stopped playing them on my show. I know that’s not strictly true since there are a few other folk music DJs around the country who play their music from time to time, but it’s close to true. None of Dave Gordon’s recordings and only some of John Herald’s ever made it to CD so when I play their songs, I’m not suggesting listeners go order an album or download some tracks, and unfortunately I’m not promoting an upcoming concert.

What I’m doing, I realize, is enjoying the luxury of being on a truly non-commercial radio station. And knowing that PRB has some paid advertising in no way diminishes from that status of being in every meaningful sense one of the few truly non-commercial radio stations maybe in the world.

For the blues singers and string bands of the 1920 and ‘30s, I feel the radio can give them a measure of immortality. The song for which they may have been paid $30 in 1929 was released on a 78 and then somehow found its way onto an LP in 1968 and then in 1996 onto a CD and now in 2015 is coming out of a radio studio in New Jersey and is being heard by someone driving toward Newark Airport or Philadelphia or Red Bank and someone else listening online in New Mexico or Nepal. Imagine how little of that they could possibly have imagined. Imagine how they would feel if they could somehow be listening now.. I’m not by any means a religious person but I sometimes feel they are.