Flutter in the Ether: Podcast!

Click to hear Flutterbox open and close the May 6th edition of THE KGB RADIO HOUR with your hosts, and Janine's, now also Neill's, friends, Mark Jacobson and Larry "Ratso" Sloman.

This entertaining pair beam smart, smarm free podcasts out of the KBG Bar on E. 4th Street roughly, literally, every month. Mark came to fame in Janine's life as the coach of her son's basketball team, a job he performed with 110% rumpled style and authority, but his calling is as a writer (currently, at New York magazine) interviewing icons, gangsters and saints of all stripes. He's been at this for years and remembers details.

Ratso was maybe the first editor of High Times, the dream job of countless millions. Larry's working with Tyson on the fighter's autobiography now. You should read his book on Houdini. The magician was a spy, you know.

The sound equipment on hand at the KBG falls somewhere between lo-fi and no-fi, but so what? Neill figured out a way for us to be heard despite the odds and the teeming rain 3 feet from the microphone. At the top, you'll hear the hosts wondering where "that sound" is coming from. Fans will recognize that sound ("In my head?" Ratso wonders) as a loop Neill is building, in this case for "The Robin Sings." At show's end we play "Safety Last"; the crowd, having heard "Robin" was authentically shocked at the tempo. Fun to see the surprise on their faces: That's radio, folks!

Some of Ratso's songwriter friends from Brooklyn are on the show, as are Mike Daly of The Daily News and Tom Robbins of The Village Voice. There are also phone-ins with Cong. Anthony Weiner (who had not yet dropped out of the Mayoral race) and the best Mike Bloomberg impersonator anyone could imagine. Jaw dropping. Are you as sickened by the Bloomberg "campaign" as we are?

Enjoy the show.