| October 23rd, 2005 03:54 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
'Little Steven' rocks Portsmouth
By Gregory Bastianelli
Staff Writer
Fosters Dailt Democrat/Oct 23,2005
Steven Van Zandt is on a mission.
His goal? To give rock 'n' roll a chance to be heard.
Van Zandt, a guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and an actor on "The Sopranos," is the host of a weekly syndicated radio show "Little Steven's Underground Garage" that WHEB (100.3 FM) in Portsmouth recently has picked up. It's broadcast Sunday mornings from 9 to 11 a.m.
About five years ago, Van Zandt, known as Little Steven on the show, noticed a garage rock movement with a lot of new bands, such as The Hives, The Strokes and The White Stripes.
What is garage rock?
Van Zandt defines it as traditional rock 'n' roll influenced by bands from the '50s and '60s. But he also noticed there was no radio format for new rock 'n' roll in America.
"I said, let me start a show and try and play some new bands as well as classics," Van Zandt said in a telephone interview. "Combine the old and the new that shared a common spirit."
The show merges the music of 1950's pioneers (Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, the Crickets, and Jerry Lee Lewis); British Invasion and garage rock bands from the 1960s (the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Pretty Things, the Stooges), punk bands of the 1970's (the Ramones, the Clash, the Sex Pistols) and garage rock and power pop acts from the 1980's (the Chesterfield Kings, the Romantics, the Replacements). The show has introduced more than 100 new bands in the last three years including The Hives, The Vines, The Mooney Suzuki, The Donnas and The White Stripes, all of whom were signed to major labels.
But getting radio stations interested wasn't easy. He said it took him a year to get about 20 stations to carry his two-hour show.
"They were scared to death," he added. Even the big syndicates wouldn't go along. "We had to syndicate ourselves."
But once he did hit the air with "Little Steven's Underground Garage," on April 7, 2002, his show was a hit.
"The ratings came out ridiculously high," he said.
A little more than three years later, his weekly show now airs on about 200 stations in North America and 45 countries around the world. It reaches more than 1 million listeners.
Still, he said, getting radio stations to continue playing some of the new bands and songs his show introduces has been difficult.
"You can hear alternative format stations trying a little bit," he said.
Many rock stations will play a recent hit from bigger garage bands, such as The Hives and The Vines, but not the more obscure, unknown groups trying to break through.
Also difficult is reaching today's younger generation of music fans, who he described as more absorbed in the rap, hip-hop and pop scene.
"If you turn the younger generation on to something new, they'll dig it," Van Zandt said.
A primary goal is getting people into the habit of buying records and seeing shows.
"We haven't quite broken through where we need to be," he said.
It's tough for newer garage rock bands to maintain the staying power of bands from the '70s, like Aerosmith.
"It's more difficult now," he said. "There's no infrastructure today to support them."
He added that there is no big record company machine behind most newer rock bands to help them sell records and tours.
"We have to recreate an infrastructure,"he said. "The infrastructure is gone; it's not there. New bands have to be tough to stick around and make it."
He said bands have much cheaper ways to do this without sacrificing quality.
"You're going to sell less CDs," he said. "You have to adjust."
Traditional rock 'n' roll never will be mainstream again in the music industry, he said.
"We just want them to give us a piece of the pie," he added.
Each week's show loosely revolves around a theme, usually someone's birthday or the anniversary of a record release. A recent show's theme was the 33rd anniversary of the compilation record release of Lenny Kaye's "Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968," which Van Zandt described as the most influential compilation record of all time.
Other themes revolve around a classic movie, TV show debut or other cultural event, such as the bikini's debut.
"We have fun with that," Van Zandt said about the show's themes. "We're not too strict."
It takes him about 20 hours weekly to put the show together with a staff of about eight people. Each show features five sets, usually with five songs each, with introduction and exit music for each set.
Van Zandt has an expanded playlist of more than 2000 songs, while most radio stations, he estimated, have around 300. This lets him play multiple cuts from a release, not just the one or two heard on the radio.
An example is the latest release from the Massachusetts band The Charms, called "Pussycat." Van Zandt has featured six or seven tracks from the CD on recent episodes of his show. The expanded playlist also gives him the chance to delve deep into tracks from throughout the six decades of rock.
"They all fit together," he said, "so it makes perfect sense."
A guest, such as Ringo Starr, Iggy Pop and Brian Wilson, occasionally will drop by the show. But those are infrequent.
"I really want it to be about the music," he said.
The garage show also plays older music from groups such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, songs not typically heard on the radio.
"Those old songs can be forgotten," he said.
Van Zandt also has started a garage rock channel on SIRIUS Satellite Radio, channel 25, where listeners can hear garage rock 24 hours a day, commercial free. Hopefully he said, broadcast radio will pick up garage rock as a format. He's also trying to get Billboard to dedicate a music chart strictly for garage rock.
In the summer of 2004, he organized the first Little Steven's International Underground Garage Festival, a one-day, band extravaganza held on Aug. 14 on New York City's Randalls Island. It featured more than 40 bands. The lineup included garage luminaries Iggy Pop & The Stooges, The Strokes, Bo Diddley, The Raveonettes, The Flaming Sideburns and The New York Dolls — their first U.S. gig in more than 20 years.
The festival also featured a rotating contingent of go-go dancers and guest hosts, including Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Barris, Kim Fowley, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes and Sopranos stars Vinny Pastore and Tony Sirico. More than 15,000 fans attended despite repeated hurricane warnings.
A film of the festival, directed by Chris Columbus ("Home Alone," "Harry Potter)" was set for release. But funding was lost and the project remains in limbo.
Van Zandt said he had hoped to make the festival an annual event, but was unable to put one on this year because of his involvement in trying to save the landmark nightclub CBGBs from losing its lease.
He and other club supporters put on a mini-festival in New York City to drum up support for the club.
He predicted the club probably will hang in there for a couple more months, but he called it a tough fight and that doesn't look hopeful unless record companies help.
He hopes to continue with the festival next year. He said he also sees the possibility of smaller club tours featuring up to five bands.
But for now, he'll keep pumping out the music on his radio show.
So if you've been missing rock 'n' roll on the radio, stop in at "Little Steven's Underground Garage."
You'll be glad you dropped by.
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| October 23rd, 2005 12:07 PM |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
Little Steven is the main reason to get Sirius.
My uncle says that the Rolling Stones channel is gone... |
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