Barracuda Radio

It’s hard to imagine a world without televisions. Today, TVs are not just ubiquitous, they’re everywhere. But in the 1940s, television was an expensive, new gadget that very few households owned. When the World Series was televised for the first time in 1947, only 44,000 TV sets were in use in the entire U.S. In 1948, only ten percent of Americans had ever even seen a television program. The only thing more scarce than TV sets was TV programming. Radio had been widely adopted for decades, with over 40 million sets in use in the late 1940s. So, the majority of talent and advertising money was still going into radio. In addition, television was so new that no one had really figured out what to do on TV yet. In just a few years, skyrocketing viewership would cause radio hits like Dragnet and Jack Benny to move to television. But in its infancy, many early TV shows weren’t much more than radio with a picture. The traditional radio music program was adapted to TV by simply showing the musicians playing their instr

As a musician, Jon Wurster is best-known as the drummer for Superchunk, The Mountain Goats, New Pornographers and The Bob Mould Band. He’s also half of the comedy team Scharpling and Wurster. Tom Scharpling was the host of a radio show which originally aired on WFMU. Scharpling and Wurster struck up a friendship, and Wurster started regularly calling into Scharpling’s radio show, voicing different characters. The Best Show aired for 13 years, and an exhaustive collection of the show’s shenanigans featuring Wurster’s crazy personnas, has just been released as a box set. We talk to Wurster about his early days in the Philly punk scene in the 1980s, becoming a professional musician and coping with life on the road. Wurster also reveals the surprising inspiration for the voice of one of his most notorious Best Show characters, Philly Boy Roy. The “Best Show” box set by Jon Wurster and Tom Scharpling is now available at Amazon, and includes 16 CDs, a book and lots of bonus material. You can listen to new “The Best

The groundbreaking TV show Mad Men is now in its final season. For seven seasons, the show has immersed its viewers in the treacherous world of New York ad executives. It centers around the iconic Don Draper, whose genuine talents and charisma are constantly being undermined by his self-destructive behavior. Mad Men’s unhurried story lines and morally feeble characters have broadened the possibilities for a basic cable drama. Its plot lines are rarely wrapped up at the end of a single episode. Some plots last several seasons long, giving the show the pace of a novel, rather than that of a TV series. Another one of Mad Men’s essential elements is its ambitious visual style. One part is the show’s meticulously-recreated post-war fashion and decor, complete with cigarette smoke so thick, you can almost smell it coming out of your TV. The other part is Mad Men’s cinematic photography. It lends the show a gravitas normally reserved for feature films. It also bolsters the show’s vintage elegance in a way that makes

We took this episode on location to the 2015 Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California. The GNRS is easily the biggest hot rod show in Southern California. The best of the best of the best of the hot rod world get polished up to the nines and put on display here every year. And don’t let the name fool you, there’s way more than roadsters here. You’ll find traditional hot rods, rat rods, kustoms, drag racers, gassers, bikes and even some low riders here. Plus, they have live bands, pinstripers, artists and vendors of all kind. So, yes the GNRS is so huge, that you really have to hustle if you want to see all of the cars in one day. It’s like a giant karnival of kustom kulture. And I don’t just mean for the attendees. I originally went out to the GNRS planning to interview car builders. But I found myself more interested in talking to the vendors, and here’s why. Hot rod shows are regional. But a lot of the vendors are from out of town, and they follow the hot rod show “circuit” through its entire seas

Punk Rock Blitzkrieg is the new book by legendary punk drummer Marky Ramone of The Ramones. The book tells the story of Marky’s life behind the kit, playing drums for one of the most influential and iconic punk bands of all time, The Ramones. Long before any books were written about the band, wild rumors about The Ramones had been the stuff of punk rock urban legend. Such as: all of The Ramones had served in Vietnam, Joey was in a mental institution, Dee Dee was a heroin addict and a street hustler, Johnny was a right-winger, Tommy had dropped off the grid and was the owner a fleabag hotel in Florida, Marky was in a revolving door of rehab and CJ was a former roadie who was AWOL from the Marines. [dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the most pervasive myths was that Phil Spector had pulled a gun on the band during the recording of End Of The Century. (The version of this myth that I’d heard back in the ’80s was that after a long day of recording, Spector had held them all at gunpoint, making them play pinball at his hou

P.J. O’Rourke is one of the most popular modern American humorists, but he’s also a car nut. We find out that O’Rourke comes from a long line of Buick men and then take a humorous look at the sad state of the American auto industry as we discuss his book “Driving Like Crazy.” Starting with his days at National Lampoon magazine in the 1970s, O’Rourke went on to write for magazines such as Playboy, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper’s and Rolling Stone. He’s also the author of best-selling books like Republican Party Reptile, Parliament of Whores, Give War A Chance and Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism. He’s best known as a political humorist, but he’s also an automotive journalist, having written for Car and Driver and Automobile. We discuss his book, which is a collection of auto-related stories, celebrating his love of cars and mourning the sad state of the American auto industry. The full, official title of the book is Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years Of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America The Wa