All Over Albany

My Exit: Michael Keefe-Feldman

From funk to folk, but no techno, please.

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:
Michael Keefe-Feldman -- formerly of Beverly, Mass., but now I live in Albany

Music I Enjoy:
I get into funk, folk, jazz, blues, hip-hop, bluegrass, reggae...anything that sounds like it came from human beings, which I think includes just about everything other than most techno music. Most of the time, though, I just want to rock and roll. I tend to listen to whatever I can pick up on the cheap at Last Vestige in Albany, and right now that's The Band, They Might Be Giants and Golden Smog.

Songs from tonight's My Exit:

Guster--All the Way Up to Heaven -- Aside from the fact that it's just a great, melodic song to listen to, I like how this song was created: Someone finds a $5 Casio keyboard and plays one of the pre-recorded samba rhythm tracks, the kind you'd use when you're first learning how to play keyboard. Then someone starts playing guitar along with that and by the time all is said and done, you've got this little rock symphony built around something that most people would toss into the trash.

Warren Zevon--The Rosarita Beach Cafe-- Warren Zevon, who died of cancer six years ago, was so much more than just "Werewolves of London" and I really miss his songwriting. He just had a way with words that really cut to the core of the sweet and the sour in life, and he could put the latter in such a way that could make you laugh at it.

Velvet Underground-- Rock and Roll--" Lou Reed sings: "Then one fine morning she turns on a New York station and she don't believe what she heard at all/She started shaking to that fine, fine music/Her life was saved by rock and roll." Not sure if it has saved lives, but those lines pretty much sum up how I feel about WEXT for doing what they do: playing great music without commercials, spotlighting local artists, turning the airwaves over to people like me for 'My Exit,' etc., etc. That's how radio should be.

You can hear Michael'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.