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The Department of Tangents Podcast


Years ago, playing a sort of improv game with friends in which we all picked super powers based on our personalities, I dubbed myself “Tangent Lad.” I was not a very strong superhero, and I could not defeat a super villain on my own, but I could distract them with Monty Python quotes and football trivia. I have many times since apologized to an interview subject in my capacity as a journalist by saying, “I am either very good or very bad at tangents, depending on how you feel about tangents.”

I had a rough time coming up with the concept and naming this blog/podcast. I knew I wanted to create a place where I could address things I’m passionate about – comedy, music, and horror. Finding a name that communicated all three of those things proved a bit impossible. I bugged my friends, and they all tried to help. To no avail. Then I thought, maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe my lack of focus should be the focus.

As a journalist, I have written for The Boston Globe since 2000, starting out writing CD reviews and then writing a regular column on comedy for seven and a half years. I still contribute there, and to Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. I’m also a musician, and released my debut full-length album, Blue Skies and Broken Arrows, in March of 2015. And I’ve been publishing short horror fiction for a couple of years.

I like to climb into things I love and see how they operate. That’s what the Department of Tangents is for. The main thing here is love. To talk about the things that make I’ve loved forever, and some new things that might stand the test and be around, at least for me, for decades to come. I’ve had to be critical in my writing at times, and it might not all be nonstop roses here, but in the end, what I really want to talk about is the good stuff. That’s why I will regularly write about things I think are “Perfect,” even if someone can demonstrate empirically that they are flawed. Still perfect to me.

Also, fish.

I hope you, dear anonymous surfer person, will come to expect only the highest-quality, free-range, grass-fed tangents. And I hope some of you love the same things I do and find it useful. Or at least a welcome distraction until the others get here.

Sep 5, 2019

I have met my tangenting match. I went into this interview, backstage at the legendary Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a slate of questions for Steve Poltz, about his new album Shine On, about writing “You Were Meant For Me” with Jewel, about humor in music. I probably could have gotten a good hour with Steve with two or three questions. There is no telling where his mind might flash next. Just in terms of music, the conversation covered his early days with The Rugburns, Nirvana and 90s “goat music,” the Replacements, the Dead Milkmen, Mojo Nixon, Tom Lehrer, and Allan Sherman over the course of a few minutes. We talked about spirituality, Risky Business, Hyman Roth from Godfather II, Jesus, Marianne Williamson, Styx in another five-minute section. At one point, when I told Poltz the name of the podcast, he said, “We’re living up to the name.”

This breakneck tangenting is something you have experienced if you’ve seen Poltz onstage. I hadn’t seen him play since he did an in-the-round show with Beaver Nelson, “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb, and Adam Carroll perhaps seventeen or eighteen years before. I certainly hadn’t remembered this version of him. When he smiles, it splits his face almost completely, and he smiles a lot when he’s not singing. He also jigs, which makes him seem like a Muppet version of Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The first several minutes onstage, he told stories, picked up his guitar and put it back down again, and threatened not to pick it up the rest of the show. It’ll be there, he said, the audience would see it, but maybe he wouldn’t use it. He played the Grateful Dead’s “Althea” off the top of his head, which surprised even him. He apologized for the bad notes, but backtracked, saying, “Think of how many bad notes the Dead hit.”

The new album is called <em>Shine On</em>, and you can find more info about that and Poltz on <a href="https://poltz.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">www.poltz.com</a>, and find him on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stevepoltz/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/stevepoltz" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Twitter</a> under Steve Poltz. You can also <a href="https://www.passim.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">find more about Club Passim at www.passim.org</a>. And if you’re intrigued by some of the music you heard in the background, that’s Boston singer/songwriter Rachel Sumner, formerly of Twisted Pine, and you can find her stuff at <a href="https://rachelsumnermusic.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">www.rachelsumnermusic.com</a>.

I am currently putting together this year’s Daily Horror Film Fest, for which I post a different short horror film every day in October. If you are a short horror filmmaker, or even if you just have a short horror film you love dearly, e-mail your suggestions to nick@nickzaino.com.

And now for something completely different. Or maybe not. This week’s featured track is "Comfort" from Secret Shame of Asheville, North Carolina, from their new album, out today, September 5th, called <em>Dark Synmthetic</em>. This new album would have sounded great in nestled somewhere in your collection with the Pixies, The Cure, and Nirvana. It’s propulsive guitar rock, mixing glassy chorus and echo with heavy, distorted riffs to create this wide-open sound. From somewhere within that sound, singer Lena is trying to reach you through waves of reverb. Seven songs come in just under twenty-six minutes total. Not a note wasted. The band is kicking off a tour this week, and you can <a href="https://secretshame.bandcamp.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">find them on BandCamp</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/secretshameband/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Facebook</a> to find out more.