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THE UNDERGROUND GARAGE RADIO SHOW!

Like it’s title suggests it’s a little off the beaten track, the sort of show that you used to find while searching channels late at night on an AM radio device, once found never lost, or indeed ever forgotten! The host of this show is Steven Van Zandt! Can you hear me? This is the voice of America!

Yes that Steven Van Zandt, got it? Put the word Little before Steven, ‘Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!’ Indeed…

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“You may know Steve from The Sopranos (he plays Silvio Dante) or as the long-time guitarist from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Now you can get to know him as the coolest DJ in the country, a proud throwback to the late-night hipster jocks of long-gone ‘60s and ‘70s FM radio.”

Kurt Loder, MTV News.com, April 15, 2002

O

n April 7, 2002, coincidentally the same date in 1967 that Tom Donahue kicked off “progressive FM radio” on KMPX in San Francisco, Little Steven’s Underground Garage had its inaugural broadcast on 27 stations throughout the United States. No radio show has ever gotten this much attention; during the week preceding the first broadcast Van Zandt appeared on ABC, CBS, and Fox, and a press blitz of mega proportions took place throughout cities that are carrying the program. In addition, the premiere starstudded broadcast at New York’s Hard Rock Café on April 7 achieved prominent placement on both local and network news as well as in local and national newspapers and magazines.

Being the coolest D.J. in the country is just the latest chapter in a long and distinguished musical career. He is an acclaimed record producer for artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Artists United Against Apartheid, Darlene Love, Lone Justice, Gary U.S. Bonds, Michael Monroe, Lords of the New Church and the Arc Angels.

A gifted songwriter, he has written songs for artists including Jimmy Cliff, Southside Johnny, Gary U.S. Bonds, Brian Setzer, and Darlene Love. In addition, Steven is a well-known musician in his own right, performing as a founding member of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as well as with his own band, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul.

In his early years as a musician, arranger, and producer he helped to craft what is now known as the Asbury Park Sound; horn-driven hard-driving soul music; forever legitimising the genre of “bar band music.” After leaving the E Street Band in 1982, he spent the 80’s immersed in international politics, released four albums, and toured internationally with his own band. He has worked to further human rights since the early 1980’s, spearheading the hugely successful anti-apartheid Sun City project, and establishing the Solidarity Foundation in 1985 to support the sovereignty of indigenous peoples.

He has been honoured twice by the United Nations for his human rights achievements, and received the International Documentary Association Award for his film The Making of Sun City. Rolling Stone called Sun City one of the best 100 albums of the 1980’s.

In January 1999 Steven added yet another facet to his mercurial career: acting. He plays Silvio Dante in HBO’s critically acclaimed dramatic series, The Sopranos, which completed its fourth season in 2002. The series has received numerous awards and honors. Stephen Holden said in The New York Times “it may just be the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter century.” In addition to his fulltime acting job, Steven joined his old friend Bruce Springsteen for a record-breaking international tour with the E Street Band during 1999 and 2000. And again on tour with

Bruce and the E Street Band to promote the hugely successful album, The Rising.

His fifth solo album (and the final album in a cycle conceived back in 1982) Born Again Savage combined the topics of sex, politics, and religion in a hard rock setting, and was released by Steven in late 1999 on his own label, Renegade Nation. In 2000 Steven contributed the song “Affection” to the second Sopranos soundtrack CD, Peppers & Eggs, from his unreleased album, Nobody Loves And Leaves Alive, performed by his 90’s garage band, The Lost Boys. In Spring 2001, Steven joined forces with Jon Weiss of Cavestomp! To present a series of live garage rock concerts at a downtown NewYork club, the Village Underground. By the end of the year the series had showcased some 50 new bands along with such legends as Barry & The Remains, The Troggs, The Pretty Things, and Dave Davies of the Kinks. In addition, Steven was the catalyst for establishing the first garage rock section ever to be part of a major music retail chain in all 40 stores of The Wiz in the New York tri-state area. His passion and support of the genre also initiated a national search for new, unsigned talent sponsored by The Wiz. In December 2001 The Best of Little Steven’s Cavestomp! The Wiz, featuring 20 unsigned young bands, released Garage Rock Band Search Volume 1 CD. He, it seems, is not best pleased with the state of rock ‘n’ roll, ‘If the Rolling Stones came out today, there is not ONE radio station in America that could play them’, he states, he is not right in that comment, but neither is he wrong, the same could be said for Guns n Roses or Nirvana, it’s like punk never happened.

Steven has been recording his weekly ‘Underground’ show taking time off from his role as ‘Silvio Dante’ in the last season of the Sopranos and of course as one of the greatest guitarist in one of the greatest bands, the ‘E Street Band’ he again brings up the Stones when he says that: ‘they would fit anybody’s format, how did we end up where every format apart from rock ‘n’ roll was catered for’. He claims that rock ‘n’ roll is his religion. I certainly understand that because I have been worshiping at the same altar. Steven is almost messiah like in his quest of saving the youth of America. He still looks the same – the open shirt, the bandana around the head, Springsteen was a white collar hero, while Steven was rock ‘n’ roll trash, between them they were the American Mick and Keith.

Underground Garage is a two hour show that has today’s garage bands playing next to stuff from the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s, currently syndicated to around a million – yes you read that right – 1 million people, listen to this show! Yet five years ago when Steven and his producer took the show to stations and syndicators, they all said no!

Steven is adamant (Stand & Deliver!) that the main reason that audiences are turning off their radio is simple ‘It sucks’. He is a realist. He knows that there are generations of people out there that need to hear the things they heard, need to know why AM radio in the 70’s mattered so much, it’s what they grew up listening to, and who better than Steven to bring it to them.

‘I don’t find myself watching sports at all. I don’t want to watch somebody else do something for three hours. I don’t keep up as much as I should with the culture in general, which for the most part in this decade showed total alienation. So I don’t see as many shows or listen to as many records or listen to the

radio or watch MTV or sports. I don’t go to the movies as much as I’d like, but I don’t think I’m missing much. I think everybody receives a certain amount of input growing up, and they reach a point where they’re filled up, and then they try to turn it into output. At this point I probably have a hundred albums and movies and all kinds of things in my head that need to get out. I regret not having more output and regret being as picky as I’ve been about what I’ve done, but once you start that pattern, it’s hard to break. I’ve probably only done four things in 25 years: Springsteen, The Sopranos, my political involvement and the records. But those are four good things’ Year 2000 and seven years had flown by for Steven, where he was walking in the wilderness, fed up with music, and really doing ‘nothing’ then out of the blue an old friend told him of a compilation coming out with one of his old bands on it. ‘The Young Lions’ – they were reforming and playing a gig. Steven checked it out and found lost classics that he still loved alongside a scene burning with new talent that he knew nothing about. The ‘Nuggets’ compilation was full of music Steven had learned guitar too, it was not called ‘Garage’ back then, genres have clouded everything we do now, in many ways Garage bands had a snotty attitude, it was 60’s punk rock, it inspired the whole CBGB’s scene of the 70’s, the Ramones were nothing without 60’s garage, Steven loves all the bands that influenced the Ramones, he also loves all the bands that the Ramones influenced, including one of my all time faves ‘Hanoi Rocks’, whose singer Michael Monroe spent time with Steven in New York.

Of course the original Nuggets album compiled by Patti Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye came out in 1972! Also strange that Patti’s biggest hit was Because the Night written by Mr Springsteen! Strange how intertwined the whole scene is, everybody knows somebody that knows somebody. So where next for this, England? That’s right, Steven feels the need to bring the sound of the underground to the UK, seems like he sees Coldplay and Radiohead as ‘Arty Rock’ it’s not to far from the truth, ‘god bless them all, But it ain’t rock n roll’ Steven chap, you ain’t wrong!

Check out Steven when you can, he can be found by scanning the internet via links from his website, check out the nuggets box set, buy all the Ramones albums, if you find any of Little Steven’s albums on CD, grab them, they are hard as fuck to find in the stores and are really great albums, given the fact that the first record that he ever bought was Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler or that he sees no difference between Knock on Wood by Eddie Floyd or anything by The Rolling Stones, R&B, Soul, Garage.

You can find the Sound of the underground here: http://www.littlestevensundergroundgarage.com and you should also check out www.littlesteven.com

www.zeromag.co.uk | ZERO MAGAZINE | 93

04 Radio.indd 93

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