by JAY WATTS III

Not related to the Nation of Ulysses song of the same name, San Francisco’s The Sound of Young America (http://maximumfun.org, or check your iTunes podcast directory) began as a weekly public-radio show on a small station, and has since moved production to the comfortable digs of host Jesse Thorn. If your aversion to Internet comedy stems from workplace exposure to collegehumor.com or banal, animated GIFs with au-courant catchphrases, this podcast is a fine place for the medium to redeem itself.

Recent interviewees have included Montreal’s Jonathan Goldstein, host of CBC Radio 1’s hidden gem Wiretap and an executive producer at NPR’s This American Life. Quick-tempered comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm player Shelley Berman (Larry David’s father on the show), who once chewed out “Crazy” Joey Cobden during a telephone sketch gone wrong, gave them a memorable interview, as have Fred Armisen (SNL cast member and former drummer for Trenchmouth) and—lest one think the focus is solely on funnymen—British music critic Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up & Start Again, the first respectable book to tackle the humourless world of British post-punk.

The lone, ranting lunatic has long been the default podcast host, and the medium seems a breeding ground for megalomaniac indie zealots, but hey, the vast majority of the books published in the world are shit too (how many copies of The Da Vinci Code did I see on the metro this morning?). Chicago’s Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis strike a different chord as the hosts of Sound Opinions (http://www.soundopinions.com), which, in all fairness to amateur podcasters, is actually a show on gargantuan public-radio powerhouse WXRT, and while on rare occasions they delve into Wire Magazine territory (hey, these guys are middle-aged), their topics are discussed and bickered about with wit, intelligence and some damned informed opinions, which only make the rest of the music-oriented podcasts resemble a mash-up of two remnants of the ’90s counterculture, the mix tape and the dreadful PerZine (personal zine).

DIGERIDON’T! goldkicks@gmail.com

>> Music Listings