BeatNonStop A Weblog by Chris Macias Bee pop music critic Music geek (n. myü-zik 'gEk) 1: A person who proudly wore KISS commemorative pajamas in third grade. 2: A person who owns multiple copies of the same album, still buys vinyl and has a room dedicated to 2,000 or so CDs and records. 3. A person who wrote a five-part series about traveling with a local band in their stinky van - and loved every minute of it. 4: Chris Macias, the Bee's pop music critic, serving Sacramento's music scene since 1999.

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October 10, 2007

Tell me about protest songs

Just got back from taping a segment for the National Public Radio show "Tell Me More." So I spent an hour this morning at Capital Public Radio, where I was patched into NPR's mothership in Washington D.C. to talk with host Michel Martin about protest songs and message-oriented music in the current marketplace. Also on board for the discussion was Serj Tankian, lead singer for System of a Down, who was being piped in from New York City.

We had a few minutes to kill after our various microphone levels were checked, so Serj, the NPR producers and myself made some small talk through our conference call-like set up. Unlikely topics included Genesis (and Serj admitted to even being a fan of the band during the 1980s Phil Collins era), the Van Halen reunion tour and Serj also talked about his solo show on Oct. 28 at Slim’s in San Francisco. He said that Larry LaLonde of Primus will be playing guitar at the show. Nice …

Don’t want to spoil the segment, but the discussion turned out to be lively and fairly provocative. I talked about some of the topics about my "subtle songs of protest" story that ran in late July, Serj mused on some of the backlash he’s faced after taking strong political stances and his own ideas about the intersection of music and politics. And then at the end we all joined hands and sang “Kumbaya.” Just kidding …

The bad news is that Capital Public Radio doesn’t carry the “Tell Me More” show. Diss! But once the show airs, it can be downloaded from iTunes and NPR.org, or heard on Sirius Satellite Radio. I haven’t been told yet exactly when this protest songs segment will air, but I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop.

Posted by cmacias at 11:11 AM | Comments |