Latest Albumartwork Podcast Episodes
How Vinyl Keeps Music History Spinning (Looped In: Chicago)
Vinyl Emergency - April 17, 2024 17:30 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsHello! For my day job, I host and produce Looped In: Chicago, a podcast for WBBM Newsradio. And this week, they allowed me to make an episode all about the city's ties, past and present, to the record industry. So while it's different from your typical Vinyl Emergency episode, I hope you'll find...
SECOND SPIN: Derry deBorja (December 2020)
Vinyl Emergency - April 09, 2024 19:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsThis is an encore presentation of a previous episode, originally airing in December 2020. On today's show, keyboardist Derry deBorja (of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit) talks about the musical influence of his older brother, his time as a member of Son Volt, how experimenting with a modular synt...
Episode 195: Ruston Kelly (Returns!)
Vinyl Emergency - March 12, 2024 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsSince his last visit to Vinyl Emergency in August 2020, Nashville singer/songwriter Ruston Kelly has narrowly escaped a fiery bus explosion, sold off nearly every physical stage piece from his last tour, and rehabbed an old Victorian bungalow with his own two hands. And while all of these experi...
Episode 194: Chris Rosenau (Volcano Choir / Pele)
Vinyl Emergency - February 27, 2024 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsIn bands like Volcano Choir, Pele, Vermont and Collections of Colonies of Bees, guitarist Chris Rosenau has actively sought out a unique ambiguity. Whether through off-kilter tunings, a myriad of loop pedals or long-form improvisations in 130-degree heat, he says he finds his most interesting ...
Episode 193: MLB Pitcher John Axford
Vinyl Emergency - February 06, 2024 06:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsWhile on the Milwaukee Brewers roster in 2011, major league pitcher John Axford created a buzz among indie-rock baseball nerds by forgoing the standard jock jams and using Refused's "New Noise" as his game entrance music. While exposing thousands to the Swedish hardcore band’s chaotic screams an...
Episode 192: Amy Fleisher Madden (Author of 'Negatives: A Photographic Archive of Emo')
Vinyl Emergency - January 23, 2024 18:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsAt just 16 years old, Amy Fleisher Madden was contributing to her surrounding Florida punk rock scene like a wily veteran. Through booking and promoting national bands visiting the panhandle -- as well as her DIY zine Fiddler Jones -- she had introduced, connected and championed emo, pop-punk an...
Episode 191: Nirvana 'In Utero' Special with Michael Azerrad
Vinyl Emergency - December 12, 2023 06:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratings"If Nevermind was a peek into Kurt (Cobain)'s psychological/emotional world, then In Utero was a wide-open window.” This comes from today’s episode with author Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991), who definitively knew better than ...
Episode 190: Jim Pitt, Music Booker for SNL / Conan / Kimmel
Vinyl Emergency - November 28, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsStarting as an NBC page in the mid-80’s, Jim Pitt eventually landed a dream job, for many: music booker for Saturday Night Live. From Nirvana’s debut on network television to Sinead O’Connor’s impactful and headline-making performance, Pitt booked it all starting in 1990, including mega-star app...
Episode 189: R.E.M.'s 'Up' at 25 (with Josh Modell)
Vinyl Emergency - November 07, 2023 06:05 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsLogistically and artistically, R.E.M.'s 1998 album Up marked a fork in the road for their trajectory: Prior to its recording, drummer and founding member Bill Berry had amicably left the band, having suffered a brain aneurysm while on stage three years earlier, leading the remaining trio of Mich...
Episode 188: Mac McCaughan of Superchunk / Merge Records
Vinyl Emergency - October 24, 2023 05:30 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsNorth Carolina-based label Merge Records, inarguably one of America's most influential and prolific purveyors of indie-rock, is on the cusp of turning 35 -- a landmark that co-founders Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan likely couldn't fathom when they started the label in 1989. Then, Merge was si...
REPOST: Dessa (November 2022)
Vinyl Emergency - October 10, 2023 05:30 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsEnjoy this encore presentation of Episode 170, with rapper/poet Dessa, in honor of her new album Bury The Lede dropping last month. We'll be back with new episodes soon!
Episode 187: Bruce Springsteen ‘Nebraska’ Special with Warren Zanes
Vinyl Emergency - September 12, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsSince his first book twenty years ago, musician/author (and all-around music appreciator) Warren Zanes has deftly chronicled what it means to be a rock star without a road map. His acclaimed 2015 authorized biography on Tom Petty -- released just two years prior to his death -- gave readers an e...
Episode 186: Mike Mills of R.E.M.
Vinyl Emergency - August 29, 2023 05:30 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsAs bassist Mike Mills tells it, on the cusp of their formation in 1980, he and his fellow Athens, GA bandmates had a simple goal: To make a cool, 45 RPM single with a picture sleeve -- the kind they grew up on. And, if anything else (or nothing else) were to come of their band, so be it. What Mi...
Episode 185: Tommy Prine
Vinyl Emergency - August 01, 2023 05:30 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsThe two sounds Tommy Prine says he remembers most growing up were having the AM radio on or his father (renowned singer/songwriter John Prine) workshopping tunes at the kitchen table. Journeying through adolescence, his eclecticism later manifested through acts like Outkast and System of a Down....
Episode 184: Louise Post of Veruca Salt
Vinyl Emergency - July 18, 2023 05:30 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsIn her family, Louise Post says that there have been three usual career paths: Join the clergy, practice medicine or become an artist. Thankfully she followed the latter. In 1992, Louise co-founded Veruca Salt with fellow vocalist/songwriter Nina Gordon, and the quartet became one of Chicago's b...
Episode 183: Lisa Loeb
Vinyl Emergency - July 04, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsFrom making multitrack recordings as a kid to DJ’ing at her high school radio station to fixing turntables for her college dormmates in the 80’s, Lisa Loeb has always been wired for sound. She made music history in the next decade, when her mega-hit “Stay (I Missed You)” became the first song by...
Episode 182: Ben Harper
Vinyl Emergency - June 13, 2023 05:30 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsAs a child of the 1970's, vinyl records were intrinsic to Ben Harper's understanding of and approach to music. “If somebody came to the house and said 'We're gonna repossess either your refrigerator or your turntable,'" he states today, "they would've been hauling out the fridge.” Growing up, th...
Episode 181: Adam Duritz of Counting Crows
Vinyl Emergency - May 30, 2023 05:01 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsPrior to releasing some of the most memorable songs to come out of the 90’s, San Francisco’s Counting Crows were subject to a major-label bidding war, thanks in part to something rather unheard of in the industry: a massive, 15-song demo tape. Not only did this show a deep well for vocalist and ...
Episode 180: Devon Gilfillian
Vinyl Emergency - May 16, 2023 05:30 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsOn his second album released earlier this year, Love You Anyway, Grammy-nominated and Nashville-based R&B artist Devon Gilfillian sets today's political activism against a backdrop of stunning soul music that finds inspiration both from the past and the future. Having gained acclaim touring with...
Episode 179: Braid 'Frame & Canvas' Special
Vinyl Emergency - May 02, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsWhether you hailed from Gainesville, Grand Forks or Green Bay in the late 90's, it wasn't rare to hear criss-crossing vocal shouts, razor-sharp guitars and drums with jazz-like precision, all blasting out of your local VFW hall. That's partly thanks to Braid, four modest Midwesterners who funnel...
Episode 178: Magnolia Electric Co. 'Sojourner' Special
Vinyl Emergency - April 18, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsReleasing nearly 20 albums over 15 years, singer/songwriter Jason Molina penned "bruised and barren songs of longing and lost salvation" (NPR). Delivered with a soul-cutting, unadorned tenor, his discography continues to connect with a devoted fan base through varied incarnations -- whether in a...
Episode 177: Jordan Kurland (Manager; The Postal Service / Death Cab for Cutie)
Vinyl Emergency - April 04, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsIt would be tough to say any vinyl collector started out earlier than Jordan Kurland. Having already accumulated every Kiss album by age 6, he became an obsessive fan of The Who just four years later, and eventually parlayed his love of music into a career in large-scale event production — for e...
Episode 176: A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers
Vinyl Emergency - March 21, 2023 05:30 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsAhead of the March 31st release of their latest record -- Continue as a Guest -- New Pornographers ringleader and vocalist/songwriter A.C. Newman talks about imposter syndrome, finally putting out an album with the much-beloved Merge label, why his songwriting approach lies somewhere between The...
Episode 175: Travis Morrison of The Dismemberment Plan
Vinyl Emergency - March 07, 2023 06:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsIf any band personified a record collection with ADHD, it was The Dismemberment Plan. Connecting the dots between soul, post-punk and experimentalism, the quartet also brought dark humor, deep grooves and an appreciation for music history to the forefront, over five albums and millions of miles ...
REPOST: Robert Fisher, Art Director for Nirvana (July 2020)
Vinyl Emergency - February 28, 2023 06:30 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsEnjoy this encore presentation of a July 2020 episode of Vinyl Emergency. --- Los Angeles native Robert Fisher has designed records for some of the most popular acts of the alternative rock boom, including Beck, Weezer and No Doubt. But starting with 'Nevermind' onward -- including all post...
Episode 174: Jaimee Harris and Mary Gauthier
Vinyl Emergency - February 14, 2023 20:29 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsNPR has separately crowned both Jaimee Harris and Mary Gauthier with some well-deserved accolades over the last few years: The former was recently referred to as "the next queen of Americana-folk" (thanks to a new album, Boomerang Town, dropping on February 17th), while the latter's "The War Aft...
Episode 173: Anthony Mason of CBS News
Vinyl Emergency - January 31, 2023 06:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsAfter a number of years in small-market television journalism, 7x Emmy-winner Anthony Mason joined CBS News in 1986 and has quite literally done it all: from being a chief correspondent in London and Moscow, to handling Q&A's with American presidents. But maybe most notably, Anthony has now beco...
Episode 172: Greg Graffin of Bad Religion
Vinyl Emergency - January 17, 2023 06:30 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsWith razor-sharp guitars, breakneck rhythms, unrivaled harmonies and a socio-political worldview that disavows much of punk rock's anarchistic nature, Bad Religion has inspired countless bands over their 40+ year existence. Even their iconic logo, known by fans worldwide as "the cross-buster," h...
Episode 171: Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket
Vinyl Emergency - December 06, 2022 05:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsEven during their 90's heyday -- with popular singles like "Fall Down," "Walk on the Ocean," "Something's Always Wrong" and "All I Want" ruling the radio -- Toad the Wet Sprocket vocalist and songwriter Glen Phillips recognized that they weren't "the cool kids," often being the least edgy band o...
Episode 170: Dessa
Vinyl Emergency - November 15, 2022 05:30 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsInfluenced equally by Elizabethan composers and pop radio, Dessa consistently dissects the human condition, while deftly defying genre tags. A member of the Minneapolis indie-rap collective Doomtree (and championed by playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda), her interest in examining behavioral science h...
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