Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Are You Out There? Can You Hear This?

For the uninitiated, my sister-in-law Ginny and I have a radio show here at the lovely Northfield Mount Hermon school, where I teach and live as a dorm parent. It's called Tributary, partially in homage to local commercial fave The River; Monday nights from ten to midnight for the past few years, we've sat around in the basement of Stone Hall, a hundred-year-old grey building of classical granite, playing music from funk to folk, bluegrass to blues, and jazz to jambands, reading bedtime stories on the hour and the half-hour while the fluorescent lights flicker on and off at odd intervals.

Students call and make requests, far too often for something I just don't have. We try to ask a musically-relevant trivia question each week, and give away a weeks worth of free coffee at an NMH snackbar to the correct caller, if there is one. Some nights no one calls. When we come back from the show past midnight -- Tuesday according to the way blogger reckons time -- I post the playlists and mention the contest we had. That's how it works. Now you know.

Tonight's contest question: identify the original source of the name Steely Dan. (Basically a test to see if anyone not only knew, but also had the guts to call and talk to a teacher about an embarassing subject, as Steely Dan gets their name from a vibrator in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Interestingly, the term heavy metal comes from the same book, not from Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild as I had previously thought.)

Tonight's playlist:

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee man
The Poets of Rhythm -- ? (something off one of Ginny's burned CDs)
Rusted Root -- Rising Sun
Stevie Ray Vaughn -- Close To You
Jane's Addiction -- Jane Says
Skavoovie and the Epitones -- Blood Red Sky
Trey Anastasio -- Alive Again
Dave Matthews Band -- Jimi Thing
Guster -- Fall In Two
Alana Davis -- 32 Flavors
Moxy Fruvous -- Green Eggs and Ham
Steely Dan -- Peg
Yusef Lateef -- Chang, Chang, Chang
Velvet Underground -- All Tomorrow's Parties
Eddie From Ohio -- #6 Driver
Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks -- The Piano Has Been Drinking
Kasey Chambers -- Little Bit Lonesome
Sting -- Spread A Little Happiness
The Bobs -- Helter Skelter
Grateful Dead -- Franklin's Tower
Jourma Kaukonen -- Tom Cat Blues
Dar Williams -- Are You Out There
Sarah Harmer -- Coffee Stains
Keller Williams -- Overdub
Phish -- The Inlaw Josie Wales
Paul Simon -- Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
Miles David -- Summertime