Monday, April 03, 2006

Sound Opinions podcast

I've just recently returned to the land of the iPod-enabled (or iPod zombies, depending on your point of view), and I'm having fun catching up with a few podcasts. My first iPod died (6 months out of warranty, grrr...) in December. I loved it, it was my constant companion, we went together everywhere, and there was great mourning when it died, blah blah blah.

The only podcast I really listened to on iPod #1 was On the Media from NPR. But I was already addicted to that as a radio show, so it wasn't really something I had "discovered" from podcasting. It was more a convenience than anything else...

So when my new iPod arrived, one of the first things I did was browse through the podcasts listed on iTunes. And while I've found some klunkers, one of my happier discoveries has been Sound Opinions from Chicago Public Radio.

Sound Opinions features two amazing music writers, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. It's almost a Siskel-Ebert/Ebert-Roeper kind of deal (Geez, I'm sure no one's ever noticed that before) because Jim is at The Chicago Sun-Times and Greg is at The Chicago Tribune. And apologies to Greg, but I was really buzzed to see Jim on there, as he wrote a Lester Bangs bio that I loved. He's also written a Flaming Lips bio that I hope to dig into this summer...

Jim and Greg do a great job of voicing their opinions without stepping on top of one another. They give each other room to speak, and so far in my listening, there hasn't been the cattiness that (unfortunately) seems to define radio these days. They do disagree with each other, but they keep it light-hearted and fun. Out of the episodes I've listened to so far, #16 Buried Treasures is my favorite. They played some marvelous music, and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club interview was fascinating.

So to whoever decided to podcast Sound Opinions -- thanks! It's a fun listen, and hopefully other NPR stations will begin to pick it up. Until then, I've got the podcast to keep me happy...

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love a good NPR podcast. I'm a pretty regular "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" listener, but I'm going to subscribe to Sound Opinions.

9:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I checked out Sound Opinions, and it is really good. Good stuff

8:55 AM  

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