Ref: http://www.wickedcoolrecords.com/articles/SVZ-SXSW%20World%20020909.PDF

Little Steven Van Zandt is a Renaissance Rocker on a Mission
Posted Feb 2009 8:01AM
by Luke Torn

Steven Van Zandt has always been a man of action whether arranging and co-producing Bruce Springsteen's 'The River' and 'Born in the USA' albums or forming The Artists United Against Apartheid to expose the heroes of South Africa's policies during the '80s. Still, after landing the part of gangster Silvio Dante in the Sopranos, HBO's landmark television series, he found himself with some additional and unexpected cultural leverage.

A '60s rocker at heart, Van Zandt was realizing that the accountants and clueless cultural arbiters had all but eliminated real rock and roll from the radio. "I'm thinking that the mainstream FM stations have eliminated the '60s; now that oldies stations have eliminated the '50s," he told Pop Culture Press in 2006. "And there is nobody playing the new stuff. Basically all of the greatest music ever made or being made, is not on the radio, And that is really, really ... fucked up. 'This is wrong!' So, I thought, I got a little 'celebrity capital,' let me spend it on this. Let me get a radio show. So that is how it started ... a desire to get stuff heard and make sure the second generation of kids gets a chance to hear real rock and roll."

Thus began the Underground Garage in spring 2002, with Little Steven manning the DJ chair and holding court like an ultra-hip Woldman Jack, pontificating on landmark records by the Electric Prunes, Shadows of Knight, Blues Magoos and the Easybeats. But this wasn't simply "oldies revisited," as the show provided airtime not only to that original tidal wave of 45s, but also drew its inspiration from Lenny Kaye's Nuggets and Greg Shaw's Bomp! compliations, as well as the Ramones and Fleshtones, scads of '80s revival bands, and on up to the Hives and White Stripes. Van Zandt's programming aesthetic went straight to the heart of the eternally disaffected teenager: anger, angst, anxiety, frustration, bravado and bad attitude; and, of course, the timeless sound of fuzz-tone guitars and hard driving Farfisa organs.

'It's still an underground empire," Van Zandt opines today from his New York headquarters. "We're more like an underground cult ... The radio, the touring, the merchandising ... We're just getting started really. The radio's still the main thing. We've got over a million listeners on our syndicated show. Then we have two channels on Sirius XM satellite. Now we're expanding. We're in every country in Europe and heading toward Asia. So we're going to have at least a two-hour syndicated show in as many countries as we can.

And then, we'll have a little bit of a sea change," he surmises. "That'll be a little bit of a sanctuary for rock and roll."

Wicked Cool, the record label component of Steven's burdoening empire has been cornering new bands who could have given the Chocolate Watchband a run for their money back in 1966. "the Breakers, we're very excited about, out of Denmark." says Van Zandt. "We have The Urges we've signed, out of Ireland. We're planning on bringing both of those bands [to SXSW], and some others as well.

Still despite his recent success, Van Zandt is hardly resting on his laurels. He is aggressively pursuing publlication of an extensive rock and roll history book, which is suitable for public school curriculae. He is also very excited about a contemplated resurrection of classic rock and roll TV.

"Our main goal in the next year is to get a TV pilot done and try to get a show on the air -- it'll be live, but [also] more of a mixture of things from the past that nobody's seen for quite a while, like the Shingdig, Hullaballoo-type thing," he enthuses. "But we have our angle on it. I'm very excited about that, I think it'll energize the entire rock and roll scene."