My music collection, both store-bought and digitally encoded, numbers in the thousands of albums at this point, yet I go through periods of feeling burnt out on every bit of it. For the past couple years I’ve been finding alternatives to get me through the workday – talk radio, lectures, news, comedy, variety.
One option is ListenToAMovie.com. Everyone thinks it’s weird I’d want to arrive at work, strap on the headphones and listen to Red Dawn or Caddyshack while concentrating on design. But I only stick to movies I could practically recite from childhood, nothing too emotionally complex or distracting.
Then there are podcasts, my favorite being Tom Scharpling’s “Best Show on WFMU”. Tom plays the disgruntled host who hangs up on callers and slays sacred cows like Tom Waits (”Yeah, Insane Clown Posse are making a lot of money, too.” — Tom, countering a claim that financial success makes Tom Waits good) and The Jesus Lizard (”I’d put Ringo Starr. His recorded output in that era. Little more tuneful.” — Tom, offering a replacement for The Jesus Lizard as Best Band on Earth circa 1989-1993). His guest callers include comedian friends like Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt and Zach Galifinakis who sometimes check in to say hi. Tom’s comedy partner in most shows is Jon Wurster from Superchunk who plays a range of extremely damaged fictional characters. The music portions are also excellent and even though they’re excluded from the podcast, they’re available on recidivism.org, a blog providing hilarious Best Show highlights.
A similar podcast is created each week by AVerySpecialThing.com, one of the more engaging online comedy communities. A lot of its contributors overlap those from the The Best Show: Patton Oswalt, Tim & Eric, Jesse Thorn and so on.
Speaking of Jesse Thorn, he also runs the “Sound of Young America” podcast, interviewing musicians, authors, comedians and other performers. Some of my favorite guests or subjects: Neal Pollack, Brandon Bird, Japanese Toy Culture, Amy Sedaris, WonderShowzen and of course, Tom Scharpling.
Other podcasts and online radio in regular rotation:
- This Week in Tech
- American Cliche
- Big Soccer Radio
- MPIR Old Time Radio
- Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
- CBC Radio: The Best of Ideas
- The Definitive Word
- Ricky Gervais Show
- Never Not Funny
- Jordan, Jesse, Go
I’d love more recommendations and reviews.
6:04 pm
For Charlottesville-based podcasts, there’s always my site, the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. There’s a combination of lectures, radio shows and the occasional feature. Of course, anyone who wants help creating a podcast is welcome to join our volunteer group.
Me personally, I listen to a lot of British podcasts, because I spend a lot of time in the UK. I’m able to keep current with pop culture and news. I’d suggest the BBC podcast page as a good place to start. Start the Week is highly recommended by me for anyone who wants to keep abreast of what’s going on in politics and culture. The format is brilliant – four guests in the same studio, and each has ten minutes or so to talk about their latest work. Sometimes there’s a thread, sometimes there’s not.
I’m personally very excited that the Now Show is back as a podcast. They pulled it from their podcast trial over the summer, but it’s back. It’s incredibly goofy and kind of inside-y, but fun all the same. What’s interesting is the way the BBC is now structuring it – the Now Show podcast feed will now carry another comedy show.
The Front Row podcast features highlights from art and culture, and is a good way to find out new things British. I attribute my discovery of Peep Show to listening to the podcast at just the right time. Peep Show is definitely the funniest sitcom I’ve ever seen, goes for the jugular each time.
I used to listen to the Sound of Young America, but I fell out of the habit when Jesse started splitting up the shows. I’ll get back into it. As you may or may not know, his show is now distributed by PRI.
If it’s still available, see if you can find Benjamen Walker’s the Theory of Everything. It seemed to have died shortly after he started producing them for NPR.
6:04 pm
Sorry for the second comment, but the link in my above comment is to a specific podcast, rather than the main site.
6:19 pm
Thanks for the recommendations, Sean, they sound like good listening. I enjoy British-perspective commentary, too. Incidentally just added two Brits to my list: Boag World and The Rissington Podcast.
My face is red for not mentioning the Cville Podcast Network earlier – I grabbed the list from my iTunes, instead of Netvibes, which is where I’ve bookmarked local audio like CPN, Monkeyclaus and so forth. Charlottesvillians, give it a listen. I recently learned a thing or two about chubs.
11:13 pm
No worries on the not mentioning. After all, the site is kind of an eclectic beast, without any one podcast. That’s made it slightly hard to manage, which is why our site redesign (based on Mimbo!) has been so helpful as we try to rethink the best way to present such an eclectic array.
8:34 pm
You sure about this? There’s still so much good music out there. I recently moved back to France and have been catching up on all the stuff I missed, a few names (not all french…):
Sebastian Tellier (Jim noir mix of La Ritournelle is ace).
Bertrand Burgalat (Chéri B.B.).
Boards of Canada
Le Clandestin
Sigur Ros
Zero7
Calogero
Bartone (France / Allemagne 82 is funny…)
Stereolab
Le Hammond Inferno
The Flaming Lips
Gruff Rhys
Fat Boy Slim
Peter, Bjorn & John
Aphex Twin (Icct Hedral is excemment)
Amon Tobin (Searchers…)
And of course Ivor Cutler… go on – I dare you to listen to Ivor…
Apologies if above is not to your taste!!!