When I listen to 103.1 fm it's in the car -- leaving the neighborhood, tired of NPR, KPFK. Almost never in a house, for personal reasons. But I got an email that river man and Arthur editor Jay Babcock would be plugging a new music series at McCabes (Santa Monica, a beachside city). And so then, Sunday night, I'm traveling, in my house, to the 103.1 radio show Dead Air (awful name, but it's a good show) -- and a great band was playing, the Entrance Band, with a song I think they said was called "MLK." A new favorite. I hadn't heard of Entrance before.

An odd thing: I don't think I've heard a radio interview in which the interviewer and interviewee sounded so much alike -- as Babcock and his host -- in tone, range, accent (I'll call it that -- a cultural thing more than geographic). I had to think about who it was saying the bands that would play at Arthur nights McCabes were something of a Western States sampler.

In any case, Arthur nights are an Echo Park regular event at the Little Joy bar. Now they're an export: road trip, radio.