The Oscars are gone now (please see previous blog); so are the Olympics and the "sweeps" ratings period. Still, TV has plenty of big moments coming up.
On HBO, "The Pacific" -- the epic follow-up by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg to their superb "Band of Brothers" -- starts Sunday. On ABC, two terrific science-fiction shows -- "FlashForward" and "V" -- return this month. And on PBS, it's pledge time, for good or bad.
Admittedly, some pledge specials feel like what one TV critic calls "glorified infomercials" -- cheap settings, where authors blare on about their theories. Still, some of them are excellent, including the new Rounder Records one.
Here's the story I sent to papers, about Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rounder. If you happen to be in the Lansing, Mich., area, you can catch it on WKAR (Channel 23) at 9 p.m. today (March 8) and at 5:30 p.m. on the drive's final day (March 21); check www.wkar.org. And if you live elsewhere, check your PBS station; first, here's the story about Carpenter and Rounder:
After a 20-year detour, Mary Chapin
Carpenter finally reached her natural habitat.
That's Rounder Records. Now she's in a
PBS concert, celebrating its anniversary.
“I grew up knowing that if I wanted
to find something really interesting, … I was probably going to
find it on Rounder Records,” Carpenter said. “And I was probably
going to love it.”
The special illustrates that. It has a
folk or blues side, from Alison Krauss and Bela Fleck to Madeleine
Peyroux and Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas. It also includes people
better known as a comedian (Steve Martin), an actress (Minnie Driver)
and a country star (Carpenter).
Actually, Carpenter grew up far from
Nashville. Following her dad's career, her family lived in Princeton,
N.J., in Japan and in suburban Washington, D.C. Her home, like
Rounder, was full of eclectic sounds.
“The music I loved earliest was the
Beatles and Randy Newman and Motown (and my parents') Woody Guthrie
records and Judy Collins and Joan Baez and my dad's jazz records,”
Carpenter said.
She listened to public radio and went
to clubs. After her parents divorced (when she was 16), Carpenter
couldn't manage the cover charge; a club-owner took pity. “He'd let
me stand at the sound board, because I couldn't afford to pay,” she
said.
Carpenter went to Brown, then became
part of the folk scene in Washington, D.C That's when her tape
reached Columbia executives – who decided this Ivy Leaguer is
really a country singer.
Nashville had plenty of
singer-songwriters in the folk vein, Carpenter said, reeling off
Rodney Cowell, Rosanne Cash, Guy Clark and Joe Ely. She got the
Columbia deal; for four straight years, she won the Grammy for best
female country vocalists.
Carpenter stayed with the label for 20
years, reportedly selling 13 million records. In 2007, she recorded
for Rounder, a folk label. “We do our best to deliver quality and
substance, vs. flavor-of-the month and lowest-common-denominator,
said Brad Paul, the Rounder chief.
That year, 2007, is also when Carpenter
suffered a pulmonary embolism. “I had to stop touring and just get
well,” she said.
Now, at 52, she's back with the folk
crowd. That may be her natural habitat.