Influences: The Podcast

I think a great idea for a Podcast or a radio show would be a music program that played songs that were linked to each other. The link between the songs would be the influence one artist had over the next, or vise versa. So say that Green Day was influenced by the Ramones (that’s an easy one) and the the Ramones were influenced by the Shangri-Las who were influenced by Julie London. But you can go up and down. Julie also influenced Diana Krall, who most certainly influenced Elvis Costello, who probably was influenced say by David Bowie, who influenced Talking Heads, who influenced U2, who influenced the older Sinatra, who influenced Harry Connick. You could take it back to classical music and how that influenced the heavy metal of the 70’s. (Randy Rhoads). You could have fun with the surf guitar of the 60’s and the influence of it over bands like Los Straitjackets. Not to mention the Beatles (you could probably have the ‘obligatory Beatles song’ in each episode.)


The thing is you could go all the way back to different time periods and give the listeners the opportunity to see how different genres influenced each other.


I would start each show simple with ‘Welcome to Influences’ and then the first song. I would play songs in secession with an occasional ‘This is Influences’. At the end, I would wrap up simply by saying who the artist was, and the song was, followed by ‘who was influenced by’ or ‘who influenced’ and then the next artist and song.

I wouldn’t give a big speech about how I knew this or that person was influenced by the other. I would just do some research.
You could say, for example, that the lead singer of Live was influenced by Sonny and Cher because he once said he used to sing to those songs as a kid.

I wouldn’t make it so one artist had to be the main influence over another. Little influences are fine.

Anyway, if you got a little controversy it would lead to letters which means people are listening.

I also would start each show with a artist who was influenced by the last artist played on the last Influences. That way you’d always have a chain going. You listener could take a wild musical ride by listening to a few Influences in a row.

Influences: A great Podcast Idea.