All Over Albany

My Exit Bill Winans

Every Monday night our friends at WEXT do this thing called My Exit -- local listeners get to come into the station and program an hour of music. So we thought it'd be fun to find out a little bit about these people and why they picked the songs on their play list.

Here's tonight's person:

Who:

Bill Winans from Albany -- broadcaster by day, itinerant musician by night.

Musical Taste

Eclectic.

Five Songs from Bill's show:

Cream -- "Sunshine of Your Love." A song just as great today as when it was written, It's got everything a great song needs: Amazing opening hook, hard-driving rhythm, great harmony vocals on the bridge, fabulous Clapton solos in the break.

Christine Lavin -- "The Dakota" This song hits you in the gut and leaves you thinking about it long after. I was sitting at work in 1980 when the news of John Lennon's murder in front of the Dakota Hotel came in. I've still never gotten over the senselessess of it all.

Duane Allman --"Little Martha" A beautiful little acoustic solo standing all alone on a classic rock album -- like a guy on a street corner. When a friend told me it was only one guitar playing, I was stunned and set about trying to play it. After many years of frustration, I finally saw the sheet music and had one of those 'slap-the-forehead' moments... duh... open tuning! Still great fun to play and one that even budding young guitarists of today are intrigued by.

Danny Elfman w/ Oingo Boingo -- Dead Man's Party. Elfman's music surrounds you daily--but you probably don't know it. He wrote the opening theme for The Simpsons, the music for Beetlejuice, Mission: Impossible and Men In Black and many others. "Dead Man's Party" was one of Oingo Boingo's hits, thanks in no small part to its inclusion in the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School." Very few bands have such amazing instrumentation. The song opens right up with the horn section blasting out the opening hook, follows with Elfman's unique vocal style, and gallops to the finish leaving you wanting more.

You can hear Bill's My Exit show tonight at 8 at 97.7 or at exit977.org. Here's how to schedule your own My Exit show on WEXT.