College radio luminary and comedy straight man Tom Scharpling, host of the The Best Show on WFMU, has interviewed Lou Barlow for the Low Times podcast. From childhood prank calls, tape trading, and recording experiments on his parents’ stereo, to the world-historical singularity of Johnny Ramone’s guitar attack, the lame machismo of the hardcore scene, and falling out with anti-social visionary J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), it’s pure uninterrupted awesome. What Studs Terkel was for the American working class, this is for indie-rock. Barlow articulates the unique sound “saturation” and intimacy of lo-fi cassette-tape home recording so well here (for those of us old enough to remember).

Part 1 (starts about 21 minutes in) Part 2

The Freed Man was the [1989] debut album by Sebadoh. The title refers to the Friedman Complex apartments at Smith College where Lou Barlow was living with his then-girlfriend Kathleen Billus. As Barlow says in the liner notes, “… we named our first co-headlining tape after the Friedman dormitory where we both were living against regulations, with our girlfriends on the Smith (all women’s) College campus ..”