#DeleteMonday
A weekly podcast review from Vaaka Media.
Okay, you might not be able to delete Monday, but we suggest you forget about it for a while and tune into the podcast we review and recommend. Each week, one of our team members will share a podcast episode they love and tell you why.
This week Samyuktha Varma makes a case for Wind of Change from Pineapple Street Studios and Crooked Media.
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Lately, I’ve heard a lot of weariness expressed about the explosion of podcasts in the world — Oh god, yet another podcast.
No one says that about television!
I’ll set my irritation and personal feelings aside for a minute and say that for all of you podcast eye-rollers, I have been thinking about what kinds of stories are best delivered through this medium, and there is an answer. It’s stories about music. And some of the podcasts about music that I love are Dolly Parton’s America, Song Exploder and Twenty Thousand Hertz. But we’re only allowed to pick one episode for #DeleteMonday and so I give you Episode 5 of Wind of Change, which is called “I Follow the Moskva”. The episode details the story of the Moscow Peace Concert in 1989, a historic event at which a group of American cock rockers played for the first time in Russia. (Note: Yes, please Wikipedia “cock rock”)
The episode is a wildly entertaining piece of music history you didn’t know you needed. None of these bands were invited to Live Aid for Africa — we’re talking about Skid Row, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi, and of course Scorpions (who were all part of the standard line up at every bar in Bangalore in the 90s). But the episode chronicles the feeling of a last East versus West moment and the debauchery that ensued when a bizarre set of people were recruited to a soft power mission. So, listen to it if you want to hear about Cold War conspiracies, heyday MTV, or the Prince of Darkness complaining that there’s no toothpaste. It might remind you of a time when India was more like Russia than America.
Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here.
