Brown Bird "Bilgewater"

How do you walk the line of being respectful without being opportunistic?

David Lamb of the band Brown Bird passed away this week.  He had been battling leukemia and had received tremendous support from the Rhode Island (and beyond) music community.

When listeners started letting us know that Lamb had passed away, I remembered that we have a Brown Bird performance in our archives.  And my first thought was to post it on Facebook, or make it this week's MVY Live.
But something about doing that felt like it would be too self-serving, too self-promotional, too opportunistic.

When Lou Reed passed away, we did many a tribute to him on the air.  But even before his passing, not a day had gone by where we didn't play a few Lou Reed/Velvet Underground tracks.

The same isn't true for Brown Bird on MVY.

So would promoting it, just be co-opting a tragedy?

These are the weird, unexpected questions that they never teach you to answer in DJ School.


For a really beautiful rememberance of David Lamb, read this.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Joseph Arthur "Walk On The Wild Side"

A minor footnote to the announcement that David Letterman is retiring, was that Mike Mills of R.E.M. fame, broke the story.

He was part of the band for the scheduled musical guest that night, Joseph Arthur, so he was at the afternoon taping, and tweeted the news.

Joseph Arthur was on, because he has recently released a cover of "Walk On The Wild Side."  Arthur was a friend of Reed's, and recorded this reworking, as a tribute to his late friend.

See the Letterman performance below, which includes Mike Mills, and Peter Buck of R.E.M.


See the video on Youtube.