In what must be the strangest interaction of my short life in my short history on Twitter I found myself having a barney with the wife of Miami Steve Van Zandt/Little Steven/Silvio-in-the-Soporanos. Someone had asked a question and I, oh callow naive fool that I am, answered it honestly. This is, of course, always a fatal error. It’s not going to happen again.
I’m going to do what politicians do when asked a direct question; I’ll answer a different one. In fact, I’ll write my own questions if that’s ok with you? A friendly cove asked me what I thought about Miami Steve/Little Steven/Silvio-in-the-Soporanos school programme. It had something to do with schools following some sort of curriculum which was based on rock ‘n’ roll or something. No doubt, entirely laudable. So what happened? Having no intention of having any involvement in anyone’s school programme (mate, I did my time) I was asked if I’d support a programme which included a ’40 chapter history of rock ‘n’ roll.’ I demurred sighting my firm religious belief that rock ‘n’ roll is something you want to get OUT of school for. I still believe that.
Mrs. Van Zandt/Little Steven/Silvio-in-the-Soporanos was less than impressed it seems. My duty, I understand, was to assist this programme. Well, good luck to it. Hope the kids enjoy it and it keeps them loving school. But here’s my question: when you walk out of the gates at night; what are you left dreaming about? Isn’t rock something we made despite teachers? Didn’t we find corners of days and nights to escape all of that? I did.
So it was interesting to meet those lovely Massachusetts former college-boys, Darlingside, who all met while studying together. It wasn’t at the prestigious Berkeley School of Music, however but at another Massachusetts school. Did they study music? No, it seems they used the music as the great escape from whatever it was they were meant to be doing.
You can hear why this was such a good idea on Tuesday when we’ll broadcast the results of that amazing session and conversation with the band.hear what they did to a Neil Young song just so they could perform it at a pal’s wedding. Hear how great their voices sound around one microphone and see (on video) how they still manage to play an assortment of instruments while they’re doing this.
We’ll celebrate lots of harmony groups from CSN and the aforementioned Y, to Fleet Foxes, I’m With Her and our dear Jellyman’s Daughter. Will there be any Miami Steve Van Zandt/Little Steven/Silvio-in-the-Soporanos? No there bloody won’t!
