Doe Paoro on the Rodent Hour

Last night, the Rodent Hour hosted a singer named Sonia from the group Doe Paoro. I probably had about three different pronunciations of that name over the course of the evening, and none of them were correct. I shouldn't have looked at the word "Paoro" before I had the sound stuck firmly in my brain. Kept trying to roll that R.

But it was still a great show. Sonia played music from her new CD, "Slow to Love," which you can listen to in its entirety at that link and also purchase on iTunes. She ended by singing a Tibetan opera piece for us, a capella. Most of the tech stuff went off without a hitch. And the Rodent Hour's new theme song is the theme song for the anime Cowboy Bebop. I'm pretty proud of that one. I pulled the song up on my computer, and my co-host Matt agreed that it would make a great opener, so now the nerdiest possible music outside of the Star Trek theme song will play before every show.

Staying true to my roots.

Next week, our guest is Jason Cady, a lovely person and an opera composer who was also my very first roommate when I moved to New York City. The BF remembers the story like this: "You got out of the car that took you to Bedstuy from the airport and we rang the doorbell to the apartment, and I was thinking, Please be normal, Please be normal, Please be normal. And it was Jason!" You can listen to some of his music at that link.

Update: Almost forgot, Rodent Hour shows are archived on the our SoundCloud account , so if you missed our guest interviews live, you can listen and download them for one week after the show.

Also, the second hour of our show is Tunes from the Crypt, music we find on the shelves of the Pratt Radio station. Each week's play list is also available for download on the SoundCloud account (soundcloud.com/rodenthour). We update the site every week every Wednesday, the day after the latest show.

And now I'm a radio host!

For my first post of the New Year (and Happy Year of the Dragon to you all!), I'm pleased to announce my debut on college radio. I'm going to be co-hosting the Rodent Hour on Tuesdays from 8 to 10PM New York time, which means it's just in time for all the Hawaii people to get off work, crack open a brew, and listen to some tunes on Pratt Radio.

It's all online. Here's the link to the Pratt Radio website where you can listen to us live.

And here's the link to the Rodent Hour's Facebook page, so you can post comments either celebrating or disparaging our taste in music and guests. Tonight's interviewees are Drunk Bastard and Skate from the hockey punk rock or puck rock band, Two Man Advantage.

Here's now I came to be on college radio five years after I graduated from college. My coworker, Matt, did the Rodent Hour on Pratt Radio last spring. Pratt Radio has bookshelves full of promo CDs, literally hundreds of them going back 10 or 25 years, that no one has ever listened to. Matt would grab a handful of them every week and bring them into the office so we could listen to them and riff on how bad they were, ala Mystery Science Theater 3000, because most of them were AWFUL. He'd say how he wanted to have another radio show and call it Tunes from the Crypt, where we'd just play music from the shelves and talk about it, and I'd laugh and say how much fun it would be to co-host that show with him.

Now, Matt will do this thing to me, and I think it's quite cruel, where he'll start off a sentence with, "Remember when you said..." It always makes a little bud of panic bloom in my tummy, because the truth is, no. No, I don't remember what I said. Ever. If it's not a quote from the Simpsons, a feminist screed, or the history of Batman's Robins, I don't save it in my brainspace after its left my mouth. So Matt came into the office about two weeks ago with the Spring 2012 Pratt Radio Schedule, and I'm on the list to co-host Tunes from the Crypt every Tuesday. He says I agreed to it, and my mind was just a big "File Not Found," but I pretended like I knew what he was talking about and nodded vigorously to save face. Then I got to thinking to myself, "Self, you're gonna be on the radio!" Self thought that was pretty cool, and I agreed, so now here we all are, on Tuesdays from 8 to 10, co-hosting the Rodent Hour!

Tunes from the Crypt, while originally a separate show from the Rodent Hour, is just going to be the name we give to the music we find on the shelves. Simpler that way.

We're on the lookout for musicians to come on the show, play their music, and talk story with us. So far, we've scheduled Two Man Advantage for tonight, and later we've got opera composer Jason Cady (2/21/12) and hiphop artist E-Dot (2/28/12). To be a guest, you have a have 1) decent music, 2) an upcoming show/CD release to promote, and 3) a website/Facebook page. If you want to be a guest, contact the Rodent Hour Facebook page.

Our listenership runs well into the teens, so you know it's a good bet!