Open Letter to KUT

This Ausintist loves KUT and has for over 20 years. John Aielli, Jeff McCord, Larry Monroe and Angela Miller and many more are the voices I associate with solid music programming and I often turn to them for the soundtrack of my day.

That said, John Aielli's interviews last week with Smog's Bill Callahan and Tuesday with Aqualung's Matt Hales highlight the need for someone else more knowledgeable or interested to step in for some of these lunchtime interviews.

When John already loves a band before they come in, he does great interviews, bringing up past recordings, interesting facts and engaging the artists (and letting them speak). But when in the case of Smog or Aqualung, he knows little to nothing in advance he proceeds to embarrass both musician and listeners alike. He tends to make everything focus on himself, "when I was in London", "as I was saying, that summer I was in London". John pains us making inane, though sweet, comments like "I do love all the mothers of the world, they do so much for us" - after one smog song that repeated the phrase "I Feel Like the Mother of the World" when he has nothing to ask the artist.

Also weird compliments like "you really sing quite well" and "you really play the piano well" seem insulting and out of place - these are not street players and the audience is assuming that KUT would not have crappy singers and piano players featured. Again serving to highlight that John Aielli does not prepare very well before his interviews with musicians he does not already carry a torch for. Reading liners notes out loud, not looking up even simple bio questions in advance, and letting the first listen to a musician be day-of seems a little less than the standard KUT holds everything else.

These are just some thoughts on how to improve the lunch time music - of which I am a huge fan. Rotating out host and interviewer for just these segments, when the band/artist warrants it, would make a huge impact on the quality of the interview and professionalism with very little disruption to the afternoon's flow. I point this out only because of the stark contrast to Aielli's other interviews with subjects he is more familiar with.

Sincerely,
a longing Austinist*

*letter sent to KUT Tuesday, June 14th, 2005

Contact the author of this article or email tips@austinist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By eva in Arts & Entertainment, News on June 18, 2005 1:10 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Shanna

Thanks for that letter, Eva!

I was cringing the other day at John's Aqualung interview, too... He wouldn't shut up about Radiohead, which I think would be insulting to any band to not only get the comparisons tirelessly, but then have their interviewer go off on a tangent about another band for a while, on their time. ("What's that blonde guy’s name who sings for Radiohead?" "They’re a great band; he has a great voice..." "Wasn’t he a choir boy?" "He should have been..."-–something to that effect... If you heard it, you know what I'm talking about.)

I'm not a John-hater, and Eklektikos usually does a great job of brightening up my lunchtime. But I don't think it would kill him (or any associated charm) to do a little research, you know background and name pronunciations, and not completely go off on self-absorbed tangents.

Scoop

John just shouldn't be doing interviews. I enjoy his show in the morning, but agree with the comments here that KUT has many better suited interviewers to do the noon hour live show. KUT ought to live up to its high standards across the board.

mark hammer

travin, maybe you should be really 'asutin' and mvoe closer into town so you are not sitting in traffic all the time.

Travin-ist

all hail the internet -- the place where assumptions are quick and usually wrong....i've been in austin for exactly five months having moved from nyc via austin via d.c.

i am not a keep austin weird banshee but i remember when i could get a table at trudy's and didn't have to look at the squirming pupae of 24/7 strip mall construction along every major roadway -- and Aielli was keeping it real then and keeping it real now.

i will continue to defend him just as i'd continue to defend a loyal dog who just won't stop jumping up....you can get frustrated all you want, but every once in a while you'll get some love and you'll say, hell, this IS a good dog.

and of COURSE he drives me insane -- he's like the alan greenspan of public radio....total uncle fluffy.

but that's John, babies....love him while you can.....of course, now you can have the perfect 10 internet dog too, according to lua. though a fat lot of good that'll do most of us while we sit in traffic waiting for a new strip mall to open up.

if you wanna oust some folks in austin, i can think of better places to start.....

lua

Aielli drives me insane. For outstanding, 24-hour, non-commercial music radio, Minneapolis Public Radio has us beat with The Current, http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/thecurrent/

Ray

Standard old Austin provincialism, Travin-ist. Everything homegrown in Austin is by definition better than anything other cities have, eh?

Nobody's dissing John A. because he's not commercial enough, not homogenized enough. The opposite is true. Come on, you don't think Aielli gets kind of same-y after a while?

KUT is a fine station, and would be a great component in the full range of non-commercial radio options that Austin deserves. But outside of KUT, we have only a half a student station in KVRX, and only a half a lefty community station (and a woefully mismanaged and underfunded one at that) in KOOP.

You go to New Orleans, which is a medium-sized poorly-educated politically-fucked-up Southern city, and not only do you get an NPR affiliate, but you get 24 hours of WWOZ and 24 hours of WTUL on top of that!

Houston, the reddest city in the red state of Texas has an NPR affiliate plus KPFT plus KTRU.

Don't even get me started about places like New York and Boston and San Francisco.

Aielli would be fine if Aielli wasn't the only damn thing on the radio half the time.

Nobody who has ever lived anywhere with good non-com radio likes the radio here. I'm guessing you're one of those born-and-bred types. More power to ya, but it ain't as good as you think. You should get out more.

And don't get me wrong, there are great programs here, on KVRX, on KOOP, on KUT, on KAZI. I even like John A. once in a while. But there are so many hours of the day when there is just nothing on...for a city the size of Austin with the smarts Austin has, it's depressing.

B.H.

On TWO different shows, he mispronounced Rodney Crowell's last name. What I took from that is, he's not that interested in learning. So someone more interested could do the interviews now & then? Is that so radical? I do like John's very geekocity, I do. But not when he's wasting other (musicians) peoples' time. I've listened for years. Still do, much of the time. xoxoxox

Travin-ist

Conformists of Austin Unite!

All y'all J.A. hataz can move to Steiner Ranch and wax your Escalades. Tune into KBLJ and groove to those sick three chord sounds.

John Aielli knows more about music than 40,000 Austinites combined and I'm counting each and every one of you jokers who've commented TWICE. For a city known as the live music capital of the world, to have a man of his expertise, intelligence and prestige (rather than a vacuous junket-scripted drone) manning a popular show for touring and local artists is a blessing. Oooo, perhaps we should even give him SOME FREAKING CREDIT for your hot lil burg's favorite aphorism.

Eva's rant is so below grade and wishy washy, I feel clean. If this is the biggest problem in her life, I say we elect her Mayor.

Y'all are lucky to have John Aielli crooning his whacked out monologue into your Boses. Unless you really are shallow enough to blame a guy for not flipping thru some manager's promo-slop, or stupid enough to believe you know more than him. In that case you're waaay unlucky. I recommend if you want to read or hear for the nth time how Monsieur Hales used to polish chaps or plunge loos in Brixton or whatever, you can find it in Spin. Meanwhile, I'll take Aielli in all his spacy glory and actually enjoy the enrichment being added to my day in the increasingly homogenized, conservative culture some of you seem to crave.

OK. Stick a fork in me...

Heather

I think you're being too nice to John Aeilli. You say he tends to focus on himself when he doesn't know much about the band. That's half true. He focuses on himself no matter who he's interviewing. Most of the time I have the impression that John Aeilli is far more interested in expressing his own opinions and hearing his own voice than listening to what anyone else has to say.

Shannon

Eva, this is right on the money. Thank you for writing it.

Ray

It's sad enough that a city like Austin can have so few non-commercial radio options, and then to compound this inadequacy by letting one guy's taste completely dominate so much of the schedule of the largest one of them...it's just depressing. On days when John is on vacation, you can usually tell instantly, from the first song you hear. "Wow, reggae, and it's not Bob Marley. John A. must be home sick."

Apart from a few bright spots, Austin radio as a whole sucks, has always sucked, and apparently will always suck. Even cities which are relatively backwards compared to Austin, like Houston and New Orleans, have fantastic non-commercial radio compared to us.

In John's defense, though: pronouncing Ani DiFranco's name, either correctly or incorrectly, just kind of smacks of effort.

B.H.

I love John but...when he starts talking about movies that the interviewee has never heard of, or goes off on some other irrelevant tangent, I just want to scream.

Josh

here here! did anyone hear the cringe-worthy ani difranco interview in which Mr. Aielli kept mispronouncing her name and was corrected about ten times?