American Song

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At the start, radio was like the Wild West. Anyone could get on the air, and it was all fair game: preachers, farmers, a quack broadcasting from Mexico. But that was before the networks moved in, before the payola hearings took the records out of the DJs' hands, and ultimately before a single law in 1996 sold the dial to a few corporations. Signalis the story of American radio's hundred-year fight between the people who wanted to say something and the people who wanted to sell something. Because the good guys win in the end, free voices keep getting through anyway.

Last time: Signal Episode One, “Hello, World,” covered radio’s first three decades. We listened in as a man on a Pittsburgh rooftop in 1920, read election returns into a microphone without a clue as to whether anyone was listening. In just three short years from that random starting place, there were 556 stations. In the beginning, Boy Scouts built crystal sets. Families gave the radio the best spot in the living room. Farm wives in the Depression found company in it, and FDR comforted a nation in it. For a brief, chaotic window, anyone could get on the air: preachers, poultry farmers, Pedro González speaking Spanish to Los Angeles, and a goat-gland doctor blasting half a million watts from across the Mexican border, where a six-year-old Johnny Cash heard the Carter Family for the first time. Then NBC and CBS moved in and turned all that noise into a business.

Radio was built on the fact that people would crave a voice they trust.

Then television showed up and took the business away.

Now: This is Episode Two and its about what happened in the empty room TV left behind. The big stars packed their bags and left: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, the Lone Ranger all headed for that little box with the fishbowl screen. Meantime, a transmitter, a microphone, and a stack of records were left to hold down the fort. That turned out to be enough. It actually birthed the DJ. 

Episode two is also the tragic story of Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM radio and was destroyed by the company that should have made him famous. So much for gratitude and fair dealing. And this is also the story of WDIA in Memphis, where Nat D. Williams reached one in ten Black Americans and B.B. King sang jingles. This was also the open range prowled by wildman Wolfman Jack, howling across the border at 250,000 watts. Look again and its also the story of payola hearings: Alan Freed lost everything, Dick Clark lost nothing, and anyone paying attention could see why.

My episode two guest is Bruce Warren, who has spent more than 35 years at WXPN Philadelphia, most recently as Assistant General Manager for Programming and Executive Producer of NPR's World Cafe. He’s living proof that some vestiges of the 1950s still remain. The listener-supported model that a pacifist invented in Berkeley, CA in 1949 is the same one that pays NPR station bills. The promotion game that brought down Alan Freed still happens to a lesser extent; these days its concert tickets now instead of cash. And the formatted, playlist-driven radio the payola hearings created leads straight to today, where one voice-tracked DJ can "host" six cities at once. 

Turn it up. The static’s the good part.

Did you miss the first episode - Signal: Hello World? No problem! It's available here on your favorite streaming platform or on the American Song website. Check it out - you won't want to miss it!

Get in touch: I'd love to hear from you! Find American Song on Substack. 

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In 1920, a radio signal was a rumor with electricity behind it — a handful of amateurs in garages and attics, broadcasting into a void nobody had proven was listening. There were no networks, no formats, no rules, because nobody in power had figured out yet that there was anything here worth controlling. That's the world this episode opens in: the accidental birth of American radio, before it belonged to anyone.

"Hello, World" traces how a scattered hobby became a national voice — and sets up the argument this whole series is built on: American freedom tends to live in the places nobody's bothered to claim yet. Episode one of Signal, a new American Song series on the rise, fall, and strange afterlife of American radio, is live now.

In this episode:

• Robert Baden Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts) talks to parents
• KDKA Pittsburgh. 11/2/1920. First Commercial Radio Broadcast
• W.K.  (Old Man) Henderson -  Hello World (1930)
• KPBS Classics - Ballad of an Unsung Hero
• Father Couglin - 12/11/1938
• The Amos 'n Andy Show - Courtroom Catastrophe
• Orson Welles - War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast (1938)
• FDR Fireside Chat on Banking
• Edward R. Murrow - The London Blitz

And here's what comes next:

Radio didn’t stay innocent for long. Neither did anyone, really.

A man invents FM radio, and the company profiting from it steals it out from under him and leaves him with nothing. For thirty years after that, nobody wants what he built. Turns out neglect was the best thing that could’ve happened to it — because ignored is free, and free is where a DJ can play whatever he wants, for as long as it deserves to be heard, with nobody telling him otherwise. That part is genuinely glorious. It’s also, like most glorious things, temporary.

Because eventually somebody in Washington signs a piece of paper almost nobody reads, and in a few short years radio stops belonging to the people who loved it and starts belonging to a balance sheet. Local voices get replaced with automation. One January morning, a chemical disaster hits a small town, and the station legally required to warn people doesn’t answer the phone — because there’s nobody left inside to answer it. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what corporate greed actually costs.

The people radio pushed out never stopped loving it. They rebuilt it somewhere else — podcasts, Substack, stations run by people who remember what this was supposed to sound like. Something America loved got taken away by greed, and then, quietly and stubbornly, brought back from the ashes by the people who never let go of it.

That’s also an American pattern. It happened to jazz. It happened to punk. Over the next six episodes, we watch it happen to radio.

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Today’s episode is an interview with the Southern California based singer-songwriter, Anson Corsair. His remarkably open interview reveals some of the highs and the lows he’s lived through and how he’s processed these events into a growing group of beautiful songs. While American Song generally covers some of the most well-known musicians throughout the canon of popular music, these artists are just the tip of the iceberg. Interviews with people like Anson help us appreciate just how rich the music world is. Writers like myself have an opportunity to shine a light on the immensity of what’s found below the waterline! 

With a sound that is reminiscent of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Ed Sheeran, Anson’s songwriting craft is elegant, and poetic. In this interview, he goes deep on the many life experiences that have shaped who he is and how he understands his world. 

I hope you’ll enjoy today’s show!

Learn more about Anson Corsair:

Website: https://www.ansoncorsair.com/

Instagram: AnsonCorsairMusic

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ansoncorsairmusic

Spotify

Follow American Song on Buzzsprout or your favorite streaming platform and connect with me on Substack! 

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Today on American Song, I’ll introduce you to my friend, A.J. Deiboldt. A.J. is a singer-songwriter originally from upstate New York, now making his music in a small town in the woods of Tennessee just outside Nashville. American Song is a show that celebrates the history, breadth and richness of our country’s music in all its flavors. Writing memorable and sensitive songs in the style of Chris Whitley, and with historic connections to acoustic blues pioneers such as Ledbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson, A.J. is certainly no stranger to this legacy.  By the end of this interview, I think you’ll end up agreeing , he represents the music well!  A.J.'s songs are beautifully crafted, and his musicianship is finely nuanced and highly developed. I’m proud to have him on.

Music In This Episode

• Some Day's Gonna Come Some Day
• Diamond's In The Dust
• Steal Away
• The Old Ways
• Pretty Days

Look for A.J. Deiboldt at:

Substack: The High Notes

YouTube: AJDeiboldt

Connect with us online! American Song on Substack. 

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New Wave was born in a New York dive bar, then it got on a plane. In England it picked up eyeliner and a synthesizer where its guitar used to be. But somewhere over the Atlantic, in a few very specific places, it also picked up something heavier: a government watching.

This is the final episode in our New Wave series, and it's the one where the genre stops being an aesthetic and starts being evidence. In Chile, three teenagers formed a band while Pinochet's regime was still making people disappear — and wrote songs about it anyway. In Argentina, a junta collapsed the same year its kids started plugging in synthesizers. In South Africa, artists built entire careers on saying things apartheid censors weren't fast enough to catch. None of these bands set out to be political. The regimes they lived under made that decision for them.

Germany, South Africa, Latin America, and back around to post-Franco Spain — the biggest songs from the boldest bands in each, made under governments that would've preferred they stayed quiet, played anyway.

This is Dancing Under Fire. Across different times, places, artists and eras, it's a now familiar story in hipper clothes and different accents. American music keeps leaving the country and coming back changed — recognizable, but not asking permission anymore.

Music In This Episode

Germany

• DAF - Der Mussolilni
• Spider Murphy Gang - Skandal Im Sperrbezirk
• Nina Hagen- Du Hast Den Farbfilm Vergessen 
• Ideal - Blaue Augen
• Ideal - Wir Stehn Auf Berlin
• Ideal - Monotonie
• Nena - 99 Luftballons
• Nena - Irgendwie Irgendwo Irgendwann
• Peter Schilling - Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst)
• Peter Schilling - Die Wüste Lebt
• Falco - Ganz Wien
• Falco - Der Kommissar
• Falco - Rock Me Amadeus

South Africa

• éVoid - Shadows
• éVoid - Taximan
• éVoid - I Am a Fadget
• éVoid - Urban Warrior
• Brenda Fassie - Weekend Special
• Brenda Fassie - Black President
• Brenda Fassie - Memeza
• Paul Ndlovu - Khombo Ra Mina
• Solomon Linda - Mbube

Latin America

• Los Prisioneros - La Voz de los '80
• Los Prisioneros - El Baile do Los Que Sobran
• Los Prisioneros - Tren Al Sur
• Los Prisioneros - Eléctricas
• Soda Stereo - Por Qué No Puedo Ser del Jet Set
• Soda Stereo - Nada Personal
• Soda Stereo - Persiana Americana
• Soda Stereo - En la Ciudad de la Furia
• Soda Stereo - De Musica Ligera
• Caifanes - La Negra Tomasa
• Caifanes - La Célula Que Explota
• Caifanes - Nubes
• Caifanes - No Dejes Que
• Radio Futura - Enamorado De La Moda Juvenil
• Radio Futura - Escuela de Calor
• Radio Futura - Semilla Negra
• Radio Futura - 37 Grados

Come visit with us on Substack!

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Britain just turned the lights fluorescent. The future arrives every Wednesday now, whether you're ready or not.

Picture 1979 England: factories closing, Thatcher cutting glass with every syllable, and a music press so brutal it could make or break a band before the tea went cold. Punk already burned down the house. Now a blond former schoolteacher from Newcastle who sounds like a cathedral trying to seduce you, a man dressed as three centuries of fashion history simultaneously, and a band that named itself after a hairstyle and a bomber are about to rebuild it — colder, sharper, and somehow more danceable.

This episode: The Police turn jazz chords into a global empire. The Clash and XTC ask exactly how much pop a protest song can survive. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Squeeze, and Tears for Fears each find a different way to make precision sound like feeling. Elvis Costello smuggles class warfare into a piano hook your kids could hum.

Then the screen turns on. MTV launches with nothing to play but the eccentrics nobody else wanted — and the eccentrics become the biggest stars on Earth. Until two artists the network never planned for, Michael Jackson and Prince, force the door open and rewrite who gets to be on television at all.

The future was never going to be warm. But it was going to be brilliant.

Songs In This Episode

• The Clash -  Career Opportunities
• XTC - This Is Pop
• The Police - Message In a Bottle (No Vocal)
• The Police - Roxanne
• The Police - Walking On the Moon
• Squeeze - Tempted
• Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier
• The Cure - A Forest
• Siouxsie and the Banshees - Cities in Dust
• OMD - Enola Gay
• Tears For Fears - The Hurting
• Tears For Fears - Mad World
• Tears For Fears - Shout
• Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World
• Elvis Costello - Pump it Up
• Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives
• Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army
• Elvis Costello - Alison
• Elvis Costello - Radio, Radio
• The Monkees - (Theme From) The Monkees
• The Buggles - Video Killed the. Radio Star
• Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
• Prince - Controversy
• Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
• Prince - When You Were Mine
• Prince - 1999
• Prince - When Doves Cry
• Falco - Der Kommissar (German Version)

Interviews With

• Sting
• Adam Ant
• Elvis Costello
• Michael Nesmith
• Andy Summers

Join American Song on Social Media

Substack:  https://substack.com/@americansong

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It was the late 1970s and early '80s. New York was bankrupt. Akron's tire factories were closing. Regular families were struggling with double-digit inflation. The AIDS epidemic was raging. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the US boycotted the Olympics in protest. John Lennon was assassinated.  And somewhere in the background, always, that low hum — nuclear warheads, patient at the edge of the light.

 Into that America walked Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, the B-52s, the Cars, and Oingo Boingo. You Might Think you know what they were doing. Quirky! Fun! Great hair!

 Here's what they were actually doing: holding a mirror up to everything that was broken and making it danceable. Whether that was a fun house mirror or a regular one — you'll have to decide.

 This episode, we find out what New Wave was really made of. And who was really making it.

Continue the American Song journey on Substack!

 Music Featured In This Episode

• Blondie - X Offender
• Blondie - Rip Her to Shreds
• The Stillettos - Anti Disco
• Blondie - One Way or Another
• Blondie - Heart of Glass
• Blondie - Call Me
• Blondie - Rapture
• Blondie - Dreaming
• Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
• Talking Heads - Take Me to the River
• Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
• Talking Heads - I Zimbra
• Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
• Talking Heads - Burning Down the House
• DEVO - Jocko Homo
• DEVO - Whip It
• DEVO - Wiggly World
• B-52s - Planet Claire
• B-52s - Rock Lobster
• The Cars - My Best Friend's Girl
• The Cars - Just What I Needed
• The Cars - You Might Think
• Oingo Boingo - Capitalism
• Oingo Boingo - Only A Lad
• Oingo Boingo - Private Life
• Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
• Oingo Boingo - Goodbye, Goodbye
• Oingo Boingo - We Close Our Eyes

Interviews With

• Chris Stein 
• David Byrne
• Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerry Casale
• Cindy Wilson and Fred Schneider
• John Lennon
• Rick Ocasek and Benjamin Orr
• Brandon Flowers
• Danny Elfman

Continue the American Song journey on Substack!

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Five hundred million years ago, ( approximately 1977), something extraordinary happened on the floor of an ancient sea. Life — which had spent billions of years as little more than a few unremarkable blobs drifting in the dark — suddenly exploded into every possible form simultaneously. Claws. Fins. Shells. Eyes. Creatures of impossible elegance and alien strangeness, emerging from the murk and becoming something the world had never seen before. Scientists call it the Cambrian Explosion. It was the moment life stopped playing it safe.

Rock music had its own Cambrian moment. And like the original, it happened in the dark, in conditions nobody would have designed on purpose, among creatures that looked like nothing that had come before.

This is the first episode of American Song: New Wave — a new series tracing the origins, explosions, and enduring legacy of the genre that turned anxiety into an art form, made nervousness a fashion statement, and somehow got America dancing to songs about the end of the world.

In this episode: Kraftwerk emerges from postwar Düsseldorf like something that evolved independently of everything else — precise, alien, and more perfectly adapted to the future than anything sharing its environment. The Ramones reduce rock to its purest possible form and discover that what's left is still everything. Television proves that minimalism and virtuosity are not opposites. And Patti Smith walks into a twelve-foot room on the Bowery and claims the entire territory of rock and poetry for herself, without asking anyone's permission, because it hadn't occurred to her that permission was required.

New Wave didn't descend from the mainstream. It crawled up from somewhere older and stranger and more alive — from musicians too weird, too restless, or too furious to stay in the shallows. This is where it started. This is the murk.

Music In This Episode

• Peter Gabriel: Intruder
• Kraftwerk: Autobahn
• Kraftwerk: Trans Europ Express
• Gary Numan: Cars
• The Feelies: The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness
• Ramones: I Wanna Be Sedated
• Ramones: Beat on the Brat
• Ramones: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
• Television: See No Evil
• Television: Marquee Moon
• Patti Smith: Gloria
• Blondie (Rhythm Only): One Way Or Another
• B-52's: Rock Lobster

Interviews

• Ralf Hutter (Kraftwerk)
• Hilly Krystal (CBGB's)
• Marky Ramone (Ramones)
• Tom Verlaine (Television)
• Patti Smith (Patti Smith)

Next episode: Blondie. Talking Heads. Devo. The B-52s. Oingo Boingo. New Wave goes national — and it turns out the whole country had been waiting.

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Part 2

Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....)

Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world. 

But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim that those rarified few received?  What is it within a songwriter that drives their art and compells them to write, even if they're not filling stadiums, or winning Grammy's (questionnable why some of the folks who do receive them deserved it!). 

I've been fortunate to share many road miles with one of these artists for most of my life, and in today's episode, I introduce him to you. 

In 1995, LA Time music critic, Mike Boehm, said this about Mark's first album: "The two albums I couldn’t stop listening to in ’95 were a tie for the number-one position in my Top Ten. [One of these was] Mark Davis, “You Came Screaming”. Davis’ first album is graced by superb melodies and hall-of-fame influences. His intensely realized subject is the embattled condition of idealism in a fallen world."  

Other music critics have said this:

"Getting at large truths with songs full of human-scale detail and unsentamentalized beauty.  - Los Angeles Times 

“Davis is truly a master of his craft… able to lift spirits even while supporting the weight of the world.” - Orange County Register 

I hope you'll listen closely to this two part episode. I have a special feeling that when you do, you just might come to love this music and appreciate this artistic soul as much as I do.

Learn more about Mark Davis and support his music through these links:

https://songrites.com/mark-davis-and-the-inklings

https://markdavisinklings.bandcamp.com

Get in touch!

Part 1

Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....)

Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world. 

But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim that those rarified few received?  What is it within a songwriter that drives their art and compells them to write, even if they're not filling stadiums, or winning Grammy's (questionnable why some of the folks who do receive them deserved it!). 

I've been fortunate to share many road miles with one of these artists for most of my life, and in today's episode, I introduce him to you. 

In 1995, LA Time music critic, Mike Boehm, said this about Mark's first album: "The two albums I couldn’t stop listening to in ’95 were a tie for the number-one position in my Top Ten. [One of these was] Mark Davis, “You Came Screaming”. Davis’ first album is graced by superb melodies and hall-of-fame influences. His intensely realized subject is the embattled condition of idealism in a fallen world."  

Other music critics have said this:

"Getting at large truths with songs full of human-scale detail and unsentamentalized beauty.  - Los Angeles Times 

“Davis is truly a master of his craft… able to lift spirits even while supporting the weight of the world.” - Orange County Register 

I hope you'll listen closely to this two part episode. I have a special feeling that when you do, you just might come to love this music and appreciate this artistic soul as much as I do.

Learn more about Mark Davis and support his music through these links:

https://songrites.com/mark-davis-and-the-inklings

https://markdavisinklings.bandcamp.com