Podcast Roundup Week #19

This week I listened to 54 episodes. Some of our friends are on an extended trip out of town and I'm walking their dogs twice a day, so I am getting lots of doggie time AND podcasting time. This week we're going to focus on music podcasts.

Not my dogs.

First up, Chris Molanphy HATES Bon Jovi. I LOVE Bon Jovi. So I must admit, I giggled my way through the episode of Hit Parade called "The You Give Love a Bad Name Edition" because I knew a small piece of Molanphy's soul died a little bit when he had to play snippets of "Bad Medicine," "Always," "Runaway," "Blaze of Glory," and "Livin' on a Prayer."

No, not really. I thought it was a smart piece of cultural criticism wherein Molanphy tries to figure out how Bon Jovi is still relevant today. He focuses on the structure of their songs, the production of their albums, and the sheer luck that made Bon Jovi the face of hair metal instead of, say, Def Leppard,whose drummer was in a car accident that took his arm and forced the band to delay release of an album that could potentially have been competition for Bon Jovi.  I try to listen to a lot of music podcasts, but most of them bore me to tears. Hit Parade is always a hit for me.

One of my current tutoring students loves podcasts. We exchange recommendations regularly and one that I had heard of, but was resistant to listening to, was Disgraceland. I was wrong to be worried. Jake Brennan, the host, walks through one famous musician and his or her brush with murder in an episode every two weeks. The best part is that it's independently produced and he can't afford the rights to the music, so there are entire episodes about famous musicians with no famous music in it. It tickles me.

Also, the stories are well researched and told in an interesting way.  Brennan walks a fine line because I will turn off a podcast quick as a blink if I think victims are being disrespected in any way and Brennan somehow manages to make a lot of this lighthearted, but also with a sense of respect. It's delicate work that he's doing and he's doing it well.

The last podcast I will leave you with is Song Exploder. I love to hear people talk about their work (see: Working, Longform, and Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase!) and Song Exploder talks to musicians about their work. It turns out that I actually rarely like to hear musicians talk about their work* though, and so Song Exploder is a beloved podcast that I regularly download and then delete after the first five minutes of an episode.

But.

The episode with the singer of songwriter of The Long Winters about the song "The Commander Thinks Aloud" is an episode I have listened to REPEATEDLY. I like the song (which is true for about 5% of the music on this podcast), I think the guest, John Roderick, is exceptionally well-spoken (which is true for about 5% of the guests on the show), and I think the host, Hrishikesh Hirway, really lets his nerd self out in this episode. The combination of all of that makes me love this episode. Go listen to it.

*I once dated a guy who had a small level of success in the music world around the Twin Cities. He once spent twenty minutes talking to me about how microphones work and I tried to be interested because he was so enthusiastic, but, my friends, I did not care then about how microphones work and I do not care now.  We did not date long.