As you may recall, Popdose has been lucky enough to secure a weekly segment with Jon Grayson, the host of Overnight America, a wonderfully entertaining syndicated program featuring noteworthy guests, intelligent discussion, and above all, the prodigious talents of Jon Grayson himself. We’ve mostly restricted our promotion of this segment to our Twitter feed, but starting with this week’s call-in, we’re going to be a little less shy about trying to get you to listen to the program.
Each week a different member of the Popdose staff talks with Jon about four stories on the site. Sometimes they’re the most newsworthy, sometimes they’re chosen for their discussion value, and sometimes we just pick ‘em because we like ‘em. This week Rob Smith stepped up for the call, and during his segment he covered:
Jeff Giles’s latest editorial, in which former members of Chicago, Little Feat, and Asia give an inside perspective on what it’s like for an established musician to lose a high-profile gig;
Rob’s latest Death by Power Ballad, in which he imagines that Bon Jovi died in 1985;
Jon Cummings’s most recent Political Culture, which uses the best and worst of what liberals and conservatives believe about each other to open a dialogue;
last week’s You Again?, in which Jeff endures the new Lita Ford album;
and finally, Rob and Jon discuss the death of Popdose film columnist Lance Berry, who passed away on October 4.
If you aren’t in an Overnight America market, or you missed the show Monday night, good news — it’s all online for you to listen to right now. Click here for Rob’s segment as well as the rest of the show, which includes an interview with They Might Be Giants, an appearance by Wired editor Ted Greenwald, and a call from Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide!
Any good label manager would tell you: don’t name your album something a reviewer could turn into a catchy, snarky counterpoint. But as we know far too well, most of the labels are hanging by a thread, the management inside reduced to bean counters versus quality controllers and, heck, if Hollywood keeps naming their movies in blindly self-insulting ways, why can’t the record industry follow suit?
, opens itself up to opening paragraphs such as this, begging the question, “Boom or Bust?” What really matters is if the band has spent the decade-long downtime productively or not, and luckily for you, the Popdose staff has gone through the work of sussing it out so you don’t have to. Strap on your steel dragon-face boots, smear on your kabuki greasepaint and shake off your love gun. It’s time to rock and roll.
fans). After listening to Sonic Boom, I can still say I cannot name a single Kiss studio album that’s great from start to finish.