• Music

    American Routes’ Labor Day Special

    American Routes: radio show from New Orleans Monday, 9–11 am: For four months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, American Routes stayed on the air in the French Louisiana city of Lafayette. In this two-hour special, host Nick Spitzer revisits many artists who were displaced by the storms—including Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, David and Michael Doucet, and Aaron Neville. Plus, music and conversation by Wynton Marsalis and Ghanaian master dummer Yacub Addy, recorded live in New Orleans’s famed Congo Square.   I’m listening to the Labor Day show of this excellent music program. It’s outstanding, and they just played one of…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    RIP: Steve Irwin

    ABC News: Stingray Kills ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Irwin No, it wasn’t a croc that got him in the end, but a stingray thwapped him in the chest with the barbed tip of its tail. Irwin will be immortalized as the “Crikey!” guy who got right up close to dangerous animal. In this case, a few times too many…but I’ll always remember him as yet another celebrity baby-dangler.