Rocket Man

On Saturday, going up to Burlington, we listened to a "This American Life" podcast in the car. "This American Life" is a National Public Radio show that is usually brilliant. It is hosted by Ira Glass, and it tells true stories of people, events, phenomena and other things in America that seem to be commonplace at first glance, but that are actually interesting and odd and unexpected when looked at in more depth. The show is on every week for an hour, and each week the show has a particular theme, to which all the individual stories are connected in some way. We like to listen to the podcast while on the road, because that way we get to listen to the whole show at once, instead of getting bits and pieces of it as we try to find different NPR stations in the cities that we drive through. (A podcast is an electronic file that you can download to your computer, iPod or other MP3 player and listen to at your leisure instead of when the show is actually on the radio).

As a side note, the radio show ended up forming a TV show that aired on Showtime. We rented the first season and it was quite good. I believe their second season is also out on DVD now.

So anyway, I just wanted to share the show we listened to on Saturday. It was based on the concept of classified ads, and was brilliant, as usual. Click here for an explanation of the show. For one segment of the show, they formed a band strictly from the classified ads. They called up various musicians that had posted an ad in the classifieds and got them all together for one day to record one song, Elton John's "Rocket Man." None of these musicians had ever met before. Click here for the result - it's actually quite cool.

Post script: Jim would like to add a link to William Shatner's Rocket Man, just for comparison. What a hoot! Here it is on You Tube: Click Here.