You know how every non-fiction book in the last three years has been about the author doing one odd, life-disrupting thing for one full year and then writing a book about it? I'm reading one of those books a week for one full year and then writing a book about it. It's My Year Of Everything, and you're soaking in it. CONTACT: Dave Holmes/davedotcom@mac.com
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Sarah Vowell’s “Radio On” was a great read from another planet. The year she spent listening to the radio was 1995, which might as well be the Roaring ’20s. Rush Limbaugh was ascendant, Glenn Beck still a cokehead morning zoo jock. Kurt Cobain was dead for only a few months, “alternative radio” and Lollapalooza were in full swing, our one-hit wonders came from art schools. Radio was still one of the only ways to reach a large group of strangers; there is a quick mention of a WBEZ show having an AOL account, but no evidence anyone knew what was to come. At times, the book reads like a newspaper from September 10, 2001.
Of course Sarah Vowell had a radio show in college. And from her reminiscence, it seems she took her responsibility as seriously as you’d think. Bartok between the Velvet Underground and the Shangri-Las. Homewoman wanted to educate. Remember when people wanted to educate? When you might have 300 listeners, but you wanted them to feel something? Now everyone has an equal chance at millions of readers, and we’re showing them Lindsay Lohan with cocaine on her feet. Hard Harry would be appalled.
“Radio On” comes from a time when everything was possibility, a few years before we gave up. Go pick it up. I’ll be mixing the new media in with Vowell’s old by playing a selection of the songs Vowell mentions in the book, in a “Radio On” playlist on MOG.com.
