My shows feature raw power from the old school, some familiar, most not, all killer no filler. R&B, soul, psychedelia, garage, avant garde, country, jug bands, rockabilly, outsider, blues, experimental, gospel, proto-punk, no wave, etc. In between songs there's a buncha crap such as Alfalfa "Our Gang" Switzer crooning, Rudy Ray "Dolemite" Moore signifyin', occasional prank calls, Criswell predicting, wrestlers ranting, stupid and/or memorable movie lines, deranged preachers, bits of idiotic commercials, strange shortwave stuff, etc. Sometimes all at once.

My first two LP's were "Now Playing" by Jimmy Reed and "Encore of Golden Hits" by the Platters. Thick, heavy vinyl by a booze-soaked blues singer on the one hand and a reverb-soaked pop doo-wop group on the other. Labels and genres have never mattered to me although sometimes - not always, but often - the labels on the records themselves can be pretty reliable roadsigns to "the good stuff": Volt/Stax, Sun, Fire, El Saturn, King/Federal, Norton, Duke/Peacock, Fortune, Excello, Cobra & thousands of smaller ones . . . and of the good stuff, there are bottomless wells of treasures from all over the world with no sign of them running dry. Incredible finds from every country in Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, South America, Oceana . . . not to mention our own trash-filled American backyard.

So why stick to any one genre?

My criteria is pretty simple: it has to move me (and better yet amuse me). Maybe it'll do these things for you. I prize performances where a singer can really "put over" a song, even if they aren't the greatest singer in the world. Every person has something unique to bring to a recording, and if what they bring is sincere and from the heart, it's worth hearing and sharing with others through the medium of deejaying, be it on the radio, a living room or in a bowling alley. And every genre has something to offer, some more than others.

I figure other deejays (human or robot) are doing a pretty good job covering "the classics". I avoid playing Led Zeppelin on the air, for example. I will play The Yardbirds, though. There's a whole radio show in Ithaca alone dedicated to the Fab Four, plus they're readily available streaming, can be heard in every big box chain store, every restaurant, you name it. Why make folks hear "Yesterday" or "Whole Lotta Love" for the 10,000th time when some poor lost kid out there could hear Link Wray for the first time? Or Godfrey Daniel's doo-wop version of "Whole Lotta Love" for that matter. A life could be saved by rock and roll.

Nostalgia neuters nasty. I grew up with "classic" rock before it had the debilitating name. There are exeptions but "classic" implies "respectable". In my book that isn't what rock & roll is about.

The punk/new wave/d.i.y. ethos of the late 70's/early 80's opened my ears to experimentation, willingness to fail (the more entertainingly so the better) and the elusive "authenticity" factor, whatever that is, but I know it when I hear it. Artists like Captain Beefheart (hence my moniker, in part), The Residents, Sun Ra, Hasil Adkins, The Shaggs are the tip of an iceberg of kooky originals that almost never get on the radio but can be found these days on Spotify. But for every one of these oddballs there are ten thousand more that didn't even get that far. There are whole other worlds buried deep in the cultures we inhabit but rarely experience.

Rocket Morton travels to Mars and back to bring Earthlings their own musical heritage.

Mission: entertain. If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

Burn on, tune in, flop out.

See you on the radio . . .