All TBTL Shows Are Above Average
Oct 20, 2014, 11:37 AM | Updated: 11:41 am
Most of my weekends are spent dodging Garrison Keillor. Like many public radio stations, KUT in Austin runs 46 hours of Prairie Home Companion every Saturday and Sunday. If I’m not quick enough to the stereo I get several seconds of air whistling through the forest of Garrison Keillor’s nose hair. Or, even worse, bluegrass music.
Last Friday, after Luke mentioned how much Dan Savage disliked Keillor, I did some thinking as to why I have come to truly hate Prairie Home Companion. While it’s true that I’ve always hated banjo music, I used to like the rest of the show. What bothers me is that it is a show aimed at my generation (I am almost 50) and it’s the exact same show it was 25 years ago. It’s funny enough, but we’ve heard all these jokes. I hate it for the same reason I hate classic rock. Yes, it’s good, but I know it backwards and forwards. Please try something new. Even if it’s terrible it could be interesting.
At seven o’clock on Saturday night KUT breaks free from the PHC marathon to broadcast Wits, a show done by Seattle’s native son and current Minnesota resident and heir to Keillor’s “Life Alert” demographic. It’s a clever show with younger guests, but I feel it going down that slippery slope of pandering to white, middle America. It’s a lucrative slope, one that might soon see Moe in “wooden boat ownership” financial territory, but I don’t think us older folks should give in without a fight.
After Wits comes LiveWire and all is right in the world, at least for an hour. Luke is funny without pandering to the Whitest Common Denominator, the writing is sharp and so far the show hasn’t bowed to pressure from Big Banjo. I’m usually out of the car by the end of Burbank’s show, but I imagine during this two hour break they’ve managed to free the rest of PHC from Keillor’s eyebrow tendrils and it starts up again at nine o’clock.
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