Dear Bob:

You heard Jeff Daniels with me on xm a few months back — well, I have another scoop — I didn’t want to tell you about it til it was scheduled to air — and now it is.

Steve Wozniak, the guy who invented the personal computer and co-founded Apple, has a new book out — we met via cyberspace in August when he quoted my song lyrix about Pluto in his blog — Janis Ian read it, told me, but I didn’t know who he was.  She thought that was funny.  She wouldn’t tell me, so I had to google him to find out.  I sent him a note thanking him for quoting my song, we started writing, he had a book about to come out, was coming to NYC to do some TV shows, so I invited him out to dinner, then on an impulse asked him if he’d like to come on xm and talk about his book (he said yes) so THEN I asked him if he’d like to be a guest DJ.  Turns out that’s one of his dreams, but nobody ever asked him til I did.

He took this VERY seriously.  Went through his entire collection — he lives out in California — he made a list of his all time favorite 500 songs, but I told him that was too many (he’s not like a normal person — he’s such a genius).  So I asked him to narrow it down to 24 or so.  This was hard for him — he narrowed it down to 28.  He came into the studio on Monday, October 2nd — the plan was to record it in real time — he’d NEVER done anything like this and couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.  So we started off with that plan, but he has a lot to say — and he was so interesting — so we let him talk as much as he wanted to.  We ended up NOT doing the music in real time, just playing snippets during the taping, the producer edited the show together later (or we’d have been there all night) — we told him to back-announce the first set and he was like a rookie — reading the credits in the wrong order — but by the end of the session he was an old pro (hey, the guy’s a quick learner). 

His choice of songs is wonderful — in my book, all A++ material.  The very FIRST song he played was "Sit Down Young Stranger" by Gordon Lightfoot — he tells the story of how he wanted those lyrics printed on the first page of his book because that song means so much to him — but Gordon LIghtfoot’s people wanted $20,000 so he abandoned that idea (I’m sure GL knows nothing about this, and Steve probably didn’t understand you negotiate these things, that $20,000 wasn’t a hard and fast number) but I told listeners to buy his book, print out those lyrics and glue them on the first page to make Steve’s dream come true. 

He told us how he sleeps with the xm radio on, and how some of the songs on his list are songs that ‘woke him up’ from his sleep — he’d run to the radio to see who it was, jot down the name, then go back to sleep. 

He’s quite an interesting guy.

I told him in advance, before he started preparing — I said, "Steve, this is going on tape.  This will be preserved forever.  A hundred years from now your great-great-grandchildren will be able to hear what kind of music Grandpa Steve liked to listen to.  Don’t embarrass them!"  

I’m hoping he’ll do more of this — hey, if he started out with 500 songs, he’s got 472 more songsready to roll.  He also mentioned he is planning his THIRD US Music Festival for 2007-8 (he did two a few years back, spent $24 million of his own money and loved every minute of it). 

This is what I’m emailing around to everyone:

The Woz XM radio show "Guest DJ On A Segway" starts airing this week on Channel 15, The Village:

Tuesday – Noon ET to 4:30 PM ET
Friday – Midnight ET to 4:30 AM ET
Saturday – 6:00 PM ET to 10:30 PM ET
Monday – 6:00 AM ET to 10:30 AM ET

It will the 4-1/2 hour Steve Wozniak Show, where the man who invented the personal computer and co-founded Apple computers (and had fun along the way) will be discussing his brand new autobiography "iWoz:  From Computer Geek To Cult Icon," his love for the Segway, his enthusiasm for Segway polo, his opinions on life, culture, and music, all while guest-DJing, choosing more than two dozen of his all-time favorite songs to share with the xm audience on Channel 15 "The Village." In the studio with Steve Wozniak is New York producer Bill Kates, and folksinger/songwriter Christine Lavin (and a few of Woz’s friends who dropped in during the taping).  Steve Wozniak is one of the most important inventors of the 20th century.  Stop whatever you are doing and listen in.  You’ll be surprised at who made his list of all-time favorites, and what he’s planning next.
———–

I really think you’ll find this show makes for really good radio — hope you can tune in —

Sincerely,
Chris

p.s. I did a concert tonight in Troy NY with Jeff Daniels — holy smokes, he’s been on the road and is now one of the best live performers ever.  The audience was laughing so hard they were gasping for air during his song about leaving his wife at a truck stop by accident.  He and his roadie spent the night in a HUGE RV at the New Baltimore truck stop just south of Albany — my roadie and I stopped to say hi on our way home.  He’s having a ball (though upset that the Tigers lost the first game of the WS).  But he has tickets for the 7th game, so he knows it’s all part of the plan.