Idiot’s delight

As much as I miss Today and most of BBC Radio 3 (especially Late Junction and Andy Kershaw) when I’m away, it’s always a joy to be able to listen to National Public Radio back in the US (it’s just not the same streamed over the net).

Especially pleasurable this trip was rediscovering Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s delight on WFUV, one of the great public radio music stations in the US (or at least in the New York area). Last week, he interviewed Daniel Wolff, author of 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land, a paean (or an elegy, really) to that New Jersey seaside town, most famous nowadays as Bruce Springsteen’s early haunt, but whose musical history also includes concerts by Frank Sinatra and riots sparked by a performance by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll.