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Ithaca, 30 March 02 -- The music swells. The crowd cheers. The geek stands tall at the podium. Perhaps there is a wind machine in the vicinity giving him that rippling, Superman vibe. But Andy Zax is the Music Geek, and you're not. Five nights a week on Comedy Central's "Beat the Geeks" (which has just been picked up for its second season) Zax and a variety of other pop trivia Geeks try and whip the pants off three unassuming civilians. Unlike other TV trivia shows, on "Beat the Geeks," it's okay to point out that Journey basically sucks.

And Zax covers the music beat -- third podium from the left -- not just for "Beat the Geeks" but as a freelance writer for, among others, Time-Warner and Rhino Records, producing and writing liner notes for new releases and re-issue packages. A 1986 graduate of Cornell University, Zax worked the board as a DJ for WVBR, spinning a certain Beastie Boys song incessantly until he was told to cut it out.

So delve with us if you dare into the amazing mind of Andy Zax.

14850: Do you get promo CDs and vinyl through your work, or is it all bought with love?

Zax: Well, it's not bought with love, it's bought with cash or trade. Some of each. I get a reasonable amount of major label stuff that just kind of falls into my lap. But I pay through the nose for plenty of other things.

14850: What are your three newest albums and/or CDs?

Zax: Well, I just picked up a three-disc compilation record called Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970's Funky Lagos, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a really amazing compilation of stuff that emerged in the wake of Fela Kuti in Lagos in the early 70's. Pretty brilliant and highly propulsive, as they say.

Ah! So new that I haven't taken it out of the shrink-wrap: the new album by Clinic, which is called Walking With Thee. They're a hip, indie band from England. Their previous stuff is excellent, and they've been getting a lot of hype, which I wouldn't have expected, because they're kind of quirky. It's sort of post-Velvet Underground-y. If you distilled certain German records from the early 70's which feature tracks that are all 27 minutes long, if you kind of boiled that down into modest, bite-sized, three-minute chunks of pop, you might have something that approximates what they sound like.

Oh, and here's the third thing that I just bought last week. It's a compilation of stuff by a band from the 70's that never made a proper record. They were from Cleveland, and they were called Rocket From The Tombs -- not to be confused with the San Diego band Rocket From The Crypt, who kinda swiped their name. Rocket From The Tombs never actually made a real record, but they were sort of incredibly influential because their members included David Thomas from Pere Ubu and guys who on went to be in the Dead Boys and an amazing visionary guy named Peter Laughner who died a few years later. They were one of those interesting proto-punk, proto-everything sort of bands from the mid-70's, kind of like the original Modern Lovers [fronted by Jonathan Richman]: if people had actually heard them in the right time and place, they could have changed the world, but nobody heard them outside of Cleveland at the time, so they didn't. Finally now collected on CD. Fantastic.

14850: How many albums -- vinyl, CD, 8-track, the whole shebang -- do you own today, right now?

Zax: No idea, don't care, don't wanna know. Thousands. Many thousands. I don't count, I don't alphabetize. It's not an issue. It becomes an issue when I no longer have room for them, and when that happens, I prune. Some people have a desperate need to quantify that kind of stuff, but I'm not one of them.

14850: What was the last piece of music that made you say "Fuck me!"

Zax: Oh, that happens constantly. One particularly amazing piece on that "Nigeria 70" thing by a band called Blo just made me go "Holy shit!" It happens a lot.

You know, a lot of people go through phases where they're really interested in music, and I meet and talk to a lot of people who kind of tune out at some point after they get to be about 30, maybe, and it's kinda like whatever their taste is becomes set in concrete, and from then on there's only a certain type of music that does it for them. And they kind of look back with some degree of nostalgia on whatever that special thing is that floats their boat.

I guess I don't do that. I'm always hearing stuff that's amazing. There are things on the radio right now, on Top 40 radio, that are absolutely terrific, that can make you go, "Wow! That's fantastic!"

14850: I love the Strokes.

Zax: Sure, the Strokes are great. But even mainstream Top 40 radio has stuff that's of value. People who kind of generically toss it all away and say, "Ah, it's garbage"...You need to look closer. There's always amazing stuff going on. Yeah, people get hot and bothered about boy bands or Britney Spears or whatnot pose some kind of threat to society, but --

14850: But that stuff doesn't stick.

Zax: No, that stuff doesn't stick. It goes away, and the interesting stuff kind of sorts itself out. Plus, I would never get cranky about Britney Spears or N'SYNC or the Backstreet Boys or anybody like that, because the majority of the people that are buying that are kids, and it's entry-level music. You know, the person that's listening to Britney right now, in five years they're going to be listening to -- well, who knows what? Something a lot more developed and hopefully exciting and compelling, and that's fine. You don't send four-year-olds to graduate school, you send 'em to kindergarten.

And when I was a kid I had the Partridge Family and the Osmonds and all that stuff. So I would never begrudge somebody the experience of falling in love with music for the first time.

14850: What was the last piece of music that made you say "Fuck that!" On "Beat the Geeks," you termed Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson's duet "To All The Girls I've Loved Before," "ghastly," I believe.

Zax: Yeah, I'll stand by that. There are some things that are just awful, and that's one of 'em.

14850: How does it rate on the "ghast"-o-meter? What can you compare it to in terms of shittiness?

What would I compare it to? I wouldn't say it's a DEFCON 1 kind of ghastliness. On a scale of 1 to 10 ghastliness, 10 being -- I 'm not even sure what 10 is. But let's just assume that 10 is just some sort of sonic apocalypse that would make me run screaming from the room...I would say that's about a 2, which is certainly ghastly but not life-threatening.

14850: What's worse: rock stars or rock critics?

Zax: As with anything, there are good ones and bad ones, and I'm not sure that comparing the two groups does us much good. It's like saying "Are there bad apples?" "Are there bad oranges?"

14850: Who's released a concept album who shouldn't have, and who hasn't who should?

Zax: The concept album is really an idea that doesn't have a whole lot of currency anymore. It hasn't for about 25 years. There was a relatively brief period where it was in vogue. Blame the Beatles, I guess. Sergeant Pepper arguably, is the record that started the trend, although I don't think anybody's really clear on what the concept actually was. I think the idea of that record -- the Beatles as this sort of Sergeant Pepper band, this guise other than themselves that they adopted for the duration of the album -- I think that inspired a lot of people, and of course, if you're going to inspire people, some of the people you inspire are going to do terrible things with the ideas you've given them. It's not your fault. We don't need to prosecute the Beatles for this, but that's probably the root of stuff like that.

I couldn't tell you why KISS made a concept record [Music From The Elder, 1979]. Actually, they made two: Destroyer [1976] is sort of a concept album, and that one actually kinda works. Music From The Elder, however, is baffling. It's the people that don't quite know how to grapple with the ideas that they're unleashing that have problems. Alice Cooper probably shouldn't have made concept albums. And Rick Wakeman should have been prevented by law from making them.

That's a tough, weird question to answer. I'll tell you my favorite concept record, that no one knows or cares about, but I wish people did. It's an album called The Plan, by the Osmonds, which came out in 1973. I'll stand by this: It's the greatest rock & roll concept album ever recorded about Mormon theology.

14850: [laughing] O-kay...

Zax: It's also probably also the only rock & roll concept album ever recorded about Mormon theology, but still...it stands at the top of its class.

14850: And the field's wide open.

Zax: True, true. If anybody else wants to work the Mormon theology angle, I think there's definitely some wiggle room there. But until that happens, it's a strange, strong record with weird production touches, and it's thematically linked. Even for secular humanists like me, it's a pretty fine record.

14850: Give us a couple guilty pleasures.

Zax: That Osmonds album I just mentioned kind of qualifies, but I'm beyond guilt over that record. I just like it.

Y'know, Rhino, about a year and a half ago, put out a two-disc Foreigner anthology, the first disc of which is a major guilty pleasure for me. I don't want to enjoy it, I don't want to find myself reaching for it, but --

14850: But it's got "Urgent" and "Cold As Ice", right?

Zax: Yeah, right, that's basically it. Disc 2 is kinda nowheres-ville, but Disc 1 on this thing -- it's got all the hits, and it's just a great slab of late-70's-early-80's album rock radio sludge that somehow keeps delivering for me, despite considerable ridicule from my so-called friends. I think it's literally the first Foreigner album I've ever owned, and the only reason I have it is because someone sent it to me in the mail.

To tell you the truth, I tend to like underdogs. I tend to like people who haven't gotten a fair shake in the court of public opinion. A lot of music that I tend to champion is pretty off the beaten path, and a lot of what I listen to is stuff like obscure psychedelia or Japanese weirdness or musicals about Listerine and so on-- music that [makes] people kinda go "You like that? What's up with that?" Which is fine with me. I prefer the nooks and crannies to the bright sunlight, anyway.

14850: Vanilla Ice. Why?

Zax: Because he was a manufactured commercial product that sold, that's why.

14850: Go ahead: tell us why Kiss kicks ass.

Zax: The good parts of Kiss are: they were fantastically theatrical and imaginative, and that's something that people have been able to tap into and are still being inspired by; they have a certain basic drama to them that's fundamentally cool. But they've never really been strong songwriters. The flash and the costumes and the make-up and the blood and all that stuff has always worked well for them, but I wish they had a couple more tunes as great as the rest of their concept. 14850: Time for our Lightning Round. Beatles or Rolling Stones?

Zax: Both.

14850: Robyn Hitchcock or Syd Barrett?

Zax: Boy, that's impossible, because I'm a huge fan of both. I would say that [Pink Floyd founder and main songwriter] Syd set a template for a certain kind of eccentric English songwriting, and I think Robyn has followed on that path, but he's definitely his own guy with his own preoccupations. And obviously, he's still here and making great records. Syd's on Planet X. [Barrett suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by drugs and manic depression shortly after recording Pink Floyd's first album and retired, replaced by guitarist David Gilmour.]

14850: Tori Amos or Fiona Apple?

Zax: I like Tori a lot. I like her records, and I think they've been getting better and better. I actually enjoy both, and I wouldn't knock one to pat the other on the head. Tori's really evolved over time, and Fiona hasn't peaked yet. The growth curve between her first and second albums is incredible. I'm really looking forward to hearing what she does in the next five or ten years.

14850: Lenny Kravitz or Led Zeppelin?

Zax: Not even close. Led Zeppelin.

14850: The Kinks or The Knack?

Zax: The Kinks, of course.

14850: Bay City Rollers or Village People?

Zax: Y'know, Village People had the mad hits.

14850: Bangles or Go-Gos?

Zax: If you'd asked me back in the day, I would have said Bangles. But it's pretty clear now that the Go-Gos had a much better concept, way better songwriting and records that have proven more durable. Not to say there's not some good Bangles stuff, but I think the Go-Gos clobber 'em.

14850: I love the first Bangles album [All Over The Place, 1984].

Zax: Yeah, and then the rest of it sort of declined. The Go-Gos' stuff is all pretty consistent. And their comeback record from last year, God Bless The Go-Go's, I thought was really enjoyable. It's one of the few comeback albums that actually kinda works. You can listen to it and say, "Yeah, good Go-Gos record," not "Well, it's okay, considering it's 15 years later" or "Gee, I wish they hadn't included the power ballads..."

14850: "Why is Cozy Powell on drums?"

Zax: It's straight up. If you liked them in '84, '85, you'll like this. It doesn't alter whatever was fundamentally good about them to begin with, and the songs are really nice.

14850: Let's talk about "Beat the Geeks." Some trivia shows are the TV equivalent of People magazine, where all pop trivia is just neato and never criticized. "Beat the Geeks" seems to be more about attitude and opinion. When Keith asks your opinion, you're not required to give an infomercial answer.

Zax: No. If I'm giving an opinion, it's my opinion, definitely. And I think that goes for Marc or for Paul. Whatever you see us talking about, if we're knocking something, it's because we genuinely hate it, and if we like it, it's because we have an opinion about it.

14850: "Beat The Geeks" seems to be able to have it both ways. Some might say that listing Kiss albums is sad, and yet, you're on TV, you're a geek, so you're cool.

Zax: Yeah, I have no problem with it at all, really. Is it sad? Who knows? Who cares? Look, I work in the music business. For me, it's professional awareness.

14850: What is it about geek chic? It's all about who can remember guest stars on "The Brady Bunch."

Zax: Well, if I were more of an armchair sociologist than I am, there's any number of things I could point to: [There's] Disposable income now, relative to 50 years ago...

And think about this: popular culture, such as it was, if you go back half a century, was pretty ephemeral. VCRs didn't exist. Merchandising opportunities didn't exist at the level that they do now. No one thought that cultural artifacts had value, or that in the future someone would want to see that television program again or listen to that singer's 45 after their 13 seconds of fame had evaporated. No one had worked this stuff out. So things went away. And now, because people have realized that they want to keep that stuff, everything has come back and we're drowning in it.

Look, in terms of what I do -- producing box sets and things like that -- what am I doing? I'm bringing back old stuff or I'm contextualizing some band's career for hopefully both new listeners and old listeners who maybe didn't have everything on CD, or wanted to get those rare B-sides in one place. If we were having this conversation thirty years ago, we might be saying, "Oh, the Velvet Underground...too bad their records are out of print, you gotta go look for them." Now you can go to Sam Goody or Tower, and they're there.

14850: Does it bother you when J. Keith Van Stratten calls you a geek?

Zax: No. I mean, that's my job on the show.

14850: What about on the street? What's the reaction like from just plain folks?

Zax: It started even before the show aired, when they were running the commercials. I get spotted out and about, which has thus far been very pleasant. People that hate me -- and I'm sure they exist -- don't seem to be falling all over themselves to walk over and tell me how much they hate me, which I'm grateful for. But most of the people that I've met as a result of the show have been very pleasant.

14850: What have we learned from the first season, apart from the fact that we need Joe Tex albums but we don't need musical albums from TV's "Odd Couple," Jack Klugman and Tony Randall?

Zax: I think the first 65 episodes were a learning experience for everyone connected with the show. It taught us how to work as a group, how to pace things, and it taught us how to approach stuff within the show. It's like going to the gym -- if you work out, you get stronger. I think the show got better as the episodes wore on. It was a new show, and we sort of worked out some of the kinks, and there may be more kinks to work out in the future, but I think ultimately it was a good thing.

14850: You've had to list some crazy stuff during the Geek-Off.

Zax: Some of them were easy. There were a couple that seemed preposterous. There was one where they had me rattle off tracks from the Kiss Unplugged record, which I had never heard; so pretty much all I could do was spout out best-known, best-loved Kiss songs and hope for the best. And one of the production staffers came up to me afterwards and said, "Yeah, we knew you weren't gonna get that, because basically that album had two hits plus, like, 15 tracks from 1993 that nobody ever heard, that they were plugging that year." They will very frequently stick in questions like that. I mean, I'm good. I'm very, very good. But I'm not infallible. Fundamentally, the show doesn't work unless the Geeks lose periodically. Otherwise, the contestants can't get on the board and score points.

14850: Tell us about the robe.

Zax: The insulating properties of the robe are fascinating. It's cold when it's cold and it's hot when it's hot. Mostly, though, it's cold because the studio is cold. It's solid polyester.

14850: So what does an intelligent geek wear under his robe on a show day?

Zax: Layers are wise. But usually, being cold keeps me alert and on my toes, so I don't tend to wear sweaters and mittens and things like that underneath. Usually, I'm wearing a T-shirt and jeans, or shorts, since it's 90 degrees outside. Shorts are usually better.

14850: Have you calculated your win-loss record over the first season?

Zax: No, I didn't, actually. Of the Final Challenges I was in, I do know that. I think there were only six that I was in, and I was 4-2.

14850: Was there any question that really threw you where later you thought, "Oh, I knew that!"

Zax: There have been one or two of those, where I was thinking to myself afterward, "Duh!" There was an awful moment where they asked me to name some of the celebrity guests that had been on that Santana record [Supernatural, 1999] from two years ago, the one that sold 87 million copies and won all the Grammies and stuff. And I just blanked, the only time that ever really happened to me on the show. At other times, I could have rattled off plenty of names of folks. And I just stood there, and it drained out of my head. There have been one or two other times where I knew I knew something and it just didn't quite unlock from my brain when I needed it, but that's life. It happens, it's an occupational hazard. You just sort of deal with it and move on and try not to let it gnaw at you when you think about it. Of course, I don't take my own advice, but....

14850: There are only three other Geeks up there with you. What's your impression of Marc Edward Heuck, the Movie Geek?

Zax: Oh, Marc's fantastic. Marc is a great guy. We actually have a lot in common: we both went to film school. I don't have anywhere approaching Marc's level of completely comprehensive movie knowledge, but we tend to like a lot of similar stuff. He's wonderful to work with, and it's great fun to watch him do his thing. I'm a fan.

14850: Paul Goebel, the TV Geek?

Zax: Paul is incredible. He really, really knows his TV. I don't know if you've seen this episode, but J. Keith asked him something about Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen) from "The Beverly Hillbillies," and Paul told the story of how he had always wondered, whenever you saw Jed Clampett sign his name on the show or when Mr. Drysdale spoke to him, it was "Jed D. Clampett." And Paul wanted to know what the "D." stood for, because Paul takes it upon himself to know this stuff. So he wrote to Paul Henning, who created the show, and Paul Henning couldn't remember or didn't know himself. So he said, "Let's go ask Buddy Ebsen." And Buddy Ebsen said, "Let's just call him David." That's how Paul tracked down Jed Clampett's middle name. To me, that story just exemplifies the amazingness of Paul. He's also one of the funniest people I've ever met.

14850: I wasn't surprised to find out that he's a stand-up comedian.

Zax: And he's great. No bullshit, it is a real privilege to be doing the show with those guys, because I'm incredibly fond of both of them.

14850: What about the little challenge phrases you guys say when the contestant challenges you? Do you write them, or do the show's writers?

Zax: It's in-between. I write a lot of 'em. The show's staff writer/punch-up guy will also kind of say, "You might want to try this." Sometimes they'll present us with something -- and this goes for all of us -- and we'll say, "Can we try it like this? Can we do this, or can I substitute this?" It depends. Some things are completely off the cuff, some things are written ahead of time. When we were in production, we just made long lists of these things. I would come in with 30 of 'em. And they would go, "Oh, great, yeah, let's use this, and this, and that, and this." It varies. I would say that most of the [jokes] generally tend to reflect us, in one way or another. By the time you hear them, we've done somethin' to 'em.

14850: And then there are the guest Geeks, like Gabriel Koerner, the Star Trek Geek (featured in the "Star Trek" documentary Trekkies).

Zax: I've seen Gabriel recently because he and his wife are looking for an apartment in my neighborhood, so he asked me to show him some places around the area and help jot down phone numbers. So I actually saw him over the weekend. It was the first time I'd seen him since we stopped taping the show.

They were all extremely nice people, the guest Geeks that I worked with. I think some functioned better on the show than others. Diplomacy prevents me from going further.

14850: The late, great rock critic Lester Bangs once said, "We may as well start with the year I was born." Tell us about your background.

Zax: I was born in Chicago. I moved to L.A. when I was very little, lived here for several years, and then moved around for a few years. I lived for two years in Cincinnati, another two years outside of Washington, D.C. in Bethesda, Maryland, moved back to L.A., and except for my four years at Cornell, I've been here ever since.

14850: What was the first music that rocked your world?

Zax: I guess probably the kind of records that you buy for small children. I can remember one in particular -- you know the Babar books? It was Babar, kind of transmuted into stories and songs on a record -- actually, by a guy named Frank Luther, who I later found out made all kinds of children's records in the '50's and '60's -- things like that. I have some really vague memories of being very tiny and hearing Top 40-ish stuff on the radio. When I got a little older, my uncle had a copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band. I liked the song "When I'm Sixty-Four." I got my first transistor radio when I was about six, just in time to discover the Partridge Family, the Osmonds and the Jackson Five, and all that stuff. And then later, I dealt with the Beatles -- that would be, like, fifth grade. And then I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of comedy albums, which I think kids who are about ten or 11 or 12 do.

14850: 1976. Elvis in Cincinnati. What was that like?

Zax: My parents took me. It was very exciting. It was the first show like that that I'd ever been to. There was a whole lot of pomp and circumstance surrounding the show, and the wait for Elvis to take the stage was just excruciating for a kid like me. There was a comedian, and a woman who sang, and then the band vamped for a while, and then Elvis came on. It was pretty amazing, just as a kind of a spectacle. This is very late, post-Vegas jumpsuit-era Elvis, but still, it was pretty damned cool.

I have to say that what I remember most about it is not so much the music--which was fine--but the weird ritual he had after every song -- he would wipe himself off with a scarf or a towel, and then hurl it into the audience, where these little mini-riots would erupt as people attempted to grab the sweat-soaked rag, or whatever it was. Kind of a strange image that sticks with me.

I have a fairly vivid memory of his closing number, which was this big, kind of ponderous version of Mickey Newbury's "American Trilogy," which ended with him singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I remember thinking that was strange. And then he was gone. I'm eternally grateful to my parents for giving me the chance to see him.

14850: Were you a collector from Day One?

Zax: That probably really started in high school, I guess. A lot of it depends on your ability to buy stuff. I tried to buy an album a week in high school. I remember shipping my albums to Ithaca for my freshman year of college, which seemed like a real big deal at time because I had maybe three hundred records at that point in time, and I thought that constituted an incredibly huge collection. [Laughs] By the time I left Ithaca, I had a hell of a lot more than that, and I remember having to hire a moving company to ship them back to Los Angeles. Things have been expanding ever since.

14850: And so you and your records came to Cornell University, where I still don't understand your degree program.

Zax: It's the College Scholar program. As opposed to being an English major or a history major or a theatre major, I was a College Scholar. It was pretty much academic license to kill. You didn't have to worry about distribution requirements, so I could essentially do what I wanted. And I guess what I wanted to was take a lot of English classes, take a lot of history classes, and mostly take tons and tons of film courses, which I did -- actually, with two really amazing teachers who I believe are both still at Cornell: Don Fredericksen, who taught the history and theory of film, and Marilyn Rivchin, who taught filmmaking. The two of them are collectively the best teachers I've ever had. I've been thinking of Don recently. Don is a Jungian, and he's very much concerned with symbolic life and quality of the images that are unleashed upon the world. He always used to say to us in passing, "You know, TV doesn't give people good images to live by." And now, well... here I am on TV. So I feel like I should write him a note of apology or something. I hope he'll forgive me.

14850: What did you do at Cornell besides academics? You mentioned theatre; did you do plays?

Zax: Yeah, I'm sure there must be people alive who saw my production of Albee's The Zoo Story, with me in the lead. It was done in the West Campus Union someplace.

14850: Do you play or write music?

Zax: No, I write words, but I don't write music.

14850: Where did you live on campus?

Zax: Freshman year, I lived in Clara Dickson Hall, on North Campus. Sophomore year, two friends of mine and I rented this kind of townhouse apartment over on Charles Street, which is right across from the pedestrian foot bridge that crosses Six-Mile Creek. It was actually almost closer to Ithaca College than it was to Cornell. God, that was a pain-in-the-ass walk to campus. It was one of those things: if we had thought about it more carefully before we decided to rent the place, we might have thought differently. Junior year, I lived in a great place on the corner of Buffalo and Stewart. It was owned by Jim Bilinski, the owner of the Ithaca Times. Is he still around?

14850: He is still my boss.

Zax: My bedroom window looked out on this very pleasant vacant lot across the street, which I hope is still vacant, because it was green and shady and nice. And the bedroom had a great porch, where I spent an entire great summer reading Ulysses.

14850: So you did get to spend an Ithaca summer here. That's something I encourage all Cornell students to do at least once.

Zax: Oh, God, yeah! One of the best summers ever! It was fantastic. I'm so glad I did it. How much more idyllic does it get? I was taking classes, so I would wake up in the morning, I went to my acting class, I went to my Ulysses seminar, which was basically four of us and a professor reading Joyce. And then I would come home and read for two hours on my porch and then I would go sailing. I wouldn't mind doing that right now, to tell you the truth. To finish off the real-estate chronology, during my senior year I was on Dryden Road, about a block past the Royal Palm. Right across the street from the purple piano.

14850: Which brings us to WVBR.

Zax: When I got there, it was your basic, musty, still-stuck-in-the-70's album-rock station. I wouldn't say it was a brilliant, cutting-edge place. The problem for me and other people was that there was a lot of really exciting new music that was happening at that point, so to be working at a radio station that was still treating the release of a new Foghat album as a major event was not the happiest thing in the world. When I first started, I worked that 2 am-6 am shift that they used to break new people in. It was that very stereotypical AOR kind of radio: "Here's the Rolling Stones, here's Traffic, here's Journey, here's Eddie Money, here's Renaissance..." That kind of thing.

But it was a new experience; it was fun to be on the air, it was fine. Then over the summer, the format change happened. John Rudan was probably around for more of it and could explain it better. What I remember was that there was a guy who was the program director, and over the summer it just kinda went to his head. And he got on some strange power trip, and he was deposed. There was a coup. And what happened was that this woman named Kathy Jassywas installed as program director; Kathy was a DJ, she'd started at the same time that I did.

As a business thing, she was, like, "Why are we playing this stuff? If we really want to get ratings, Top 40 is where it's all happening." I think that was the kind of stuff she was more comfortable with, anyway, so it wasn't a big leap for her to say "Let's turn the station into a Top 40 outlet. If we really need to make our numbers and get advertising revenues, then why shouldn't we be competing like that?"

That also sort of coincided with the great Top 40 boom of the mid-80's; all of a sudden 'VBR became FM 93, and went from being this kind of loose, album-rock station to being a very tightly formatted Top 40 station. And as a DJ, it obviously didn't give you a whole lot of opportunities to be creative with music. In fact, it basically gave you no opportunities to be creative with music if you were doing a regular shift.

For me, at that point, I had kind of risen through the ranks, and I was doing the morning drive-time show, from 6 to 10 in the morning. I remember it vividly, because there's so much going on during that shift -- there's a million commercials, everything has to be timed precisely, you've got news and weather and remotes coming in. And you're dealing with a very large audience of people who are listening to you while they're waking up and going to work. So that was kind of an interesting shift to do, not from a musical perspective, but from a "hard work" perspective. You're kind of constantly in motion, and if you forget what you need to be doing two minutes from now, or if you're not planning for it, boy, are you going to be screwed.

So that's what I really enjoyed about that. And you get to be a little bit of a personality at that time of the morning, too, so it was easier to overlook the fact that I was playing the same Michael Jackson and Thompson Twins songs for the 8,000^th time.

And they gave me the "Saturday Night Dance Party" show, and that was one of the very few shows on the station that had no play list. I think only other ones were John Rudan's "Rockin' Remnants," and also Heather Dunbar's "Salt Creek Show" on Sunday mornings...is "Bound For Glory" still on?

14850: Yes, indeed.

Zax: Wow, that is so cool. That's great to know. Anyway, "Saturday Night Dance Party" was essentially Kathy's idea; she liked to dance on Saturdays. So she gave me the show, and while I did tend to play a lot of danceable stuff, I took my mandate fairly liberally. There was a lot of interesting stuff that was happening -- the beginning of hip-hop -- and so there were these amazing records coming out of New York that I would try to get a hold of and play: Run-DMC, things like that. I can remember kind of unleashing those on the airwaves. The Beastie Boys' first single, "Cookie Puss," a fantastically great and obnoxious record that I loved. I remember spinning that over and over, week after week, until they finally ordered me to stop playing it [laughs].

But I was playing a lot of good, synth-poppy, dancey stuff from England, and I was playing tons and tons of that, much to the chagrin of other people at the station. But after awhile, particularly like in the later hours of the show, the dance party concept got kind of set aside and I'd start sneaking other stuff in. I'd rationalize it by saying, "Well, it's in 4/4 time...theoretically, you could dance to it." I think the thing that saved me was the fact that it was late on a Saturday night and everybody else from the station was at the Royal Palm or Rulloff's or somewhere else drinking beer and really couldn't be bothered. [Laughs] So I kinda got away with murder.

The ends of the shows were always kind of interesting. In the last 30 or 45 minutes, we used to do cut-up mixes of odd stuff. I would get break-beat records, and VBR had an amazing library of spoken-word records, that we would deploy over beats; we'd do that for a half an hour, these kind of odd, cut-up things. Dropping Woody Allen's "The Moose" over hip-hop beats was one of my favorite things to do. The show was mostly me. My girlfriend at the time would help, along with a guy named Bobby Comstock.

Those records in the station library were an amazing resource, and that was some of the most fun I had at VBR, sitting there at 3:00 in the morning, sifting through things. I would come in at odd points in the middle of the night and listen to weird stuff I'd never heard of, because it was educational. How many other times in your life are you going to find a room full of 30,000 records that you can look at, examine and learn from?

But the rigidity of Top 40 eventually burned me out. I'd started working there at the beginning of my freshman year -- it was one of the things that I wanted to do when I got to college -- and I left in between my sophomore and junior year.

The novelty of it at first was great. Truthfully, one of the dominant images of my first year at Cornell was getting off that 2 to 6 shift. I remember one morning in particular, because it led to one of those perfect, Zen Ithaca moments. It had been clear when I got to the station around 1:15, and in-between the time I had been on the air and off, it had snowed. I walked out at 6:05 into Collegetown, and there was eight inches of snow covering everything. And it was really quiet. It had that incredible new-snow kind of silence.

And I can remember walking down College Avenue, schlepping, trudging back toward North Campus...and the only person on College Avenue was the early morning guy at Collegetown Bagels taking the stuff out of the oven. So I just remember walking through the new snow, walking by Collegetown Bagels, looking in the window and watching the guy, smelling that fresh-bread smell, and then heading north across the Arts Quad and off to my dorm to try and get three hours of sleep. Other than the bagel guy, I felt like I was the only person on the planet, walking across this big field of whiteness. In many ways, that may have been the happiest moment of my entire freshman year. It was just this little, perfect...thing.

14850: What did you think of the Ithaca music scene -- the clubs and bars?

Zax: It was tough to bring name acts to Ithaca, or name acts that weren't blues acts that played at the Haunt. I was constantly hearing from people who were a couple years older than me, "Oh, last year we had the B-52's and the Pretenders! You missed them!" My freshman year, they had...Jesus Christ, they had Linda Ronstadt, they had Survivor and REO Speedwagon...stuff that didn't make me real happy, put it that way.

I can remember some stuff that was modestly entertaining. Sophomore year, I think someone booked Graham Parker, and that was okay. The big opus that year was this triple-bill at Bailey Hall with Marshall Crenshaw, David Johansen and the Bongos. And that was the hippest bill ever in Ithaca at that point. That was about as good as it got.

The Haunt was always a decent place, you could always count on Junior Wells and Buddy Guy coming through town two or three times a year. The Burns Sisters Band was sort of a deal around town, because they got signed to a major label. I saw 10,000 Maniacs a bunch of times, pre-fame and fortune; they were just a local band from Jamesville. And I was particularly fond of the Tompkins County Horseflies, later the Horseflies. I always thought they were delightfully great.

14850: When you were playing Madonna and Dexy's Midnight Runners, did you ever think, "Gee, I want to be on a pop trivia game show?" What were your ambitions at that point?

Zax: The music thing was my hobby. It was something I was interested in. If you'd asked me what I was going to be doing, I was going to be making movies. I was going to be directing movies, or writing them, or whatever. What do I really do in life? I'm a writer. Everything else I do is a variation on things that pay the bills. This ["Beat The Geeks"] is just the most recent, interesting, and certainly the most public of those. But I'm a writer, period.

14850: You write liner notes for new and reissue CD packages?

Zax: Right, although that falls under the category of making a living. But I have a book in progress, and I've written scripts. That's why I came back to L.A. and went to film school, with the expectation that that was going to be what I was doing. I never really thought I would work in the music business; I had no plan to, and I didn't know anything about it.

But after I got out of film school, I was working as a development executive for a guy named Irving Azoff, who had managed the Eagles and Steely Dan. He'd had a hand in Urban Cowboy, FM and Fast Times At Ridgemont High and he had a big overall deal with Time Warner to produce movies and music. Just prior to Azoff, I'd been a freelance reader for a bunch of different studios; I read thousands of bad scripts and wrote coverage [a brief synopsis and opinion as to the script's quality]. Eventually, I got the Azoff job, where it was my responsibility to deal with scripts and writers on all the projects that were going on there.

That was a miserable experience. I hated it. Because if you're a writer and you have ambitions to write stuff, being stuck in a job where pretty much your entire day is spent grappling with other peoples' terrible ideas is not the best place to be spending your time.

14850: I'll bet you were pitched some truly dreadful movies.

Zax: Billions of them, yes. But Azoff had this record company, too. And suddenly, I met these people, and I was like, "Wow! This stuff they're doing is really fun. I actually kind of care about this, this is cool. Why am I not involved in this?" So by an odd series of dopey coincidences, Warner Bros. Records offered me work as a copywriter. I spent the next several years writing hype about their new releases -- thousands and thousands of albums.

I left Warners in 1998, and I do a lot of liner notes and box set work. I also write the Rhino Musical Aptitude Test [Zax scored highly on the test, and was then invited to write it in subsequent years]. It's a 305-question test that covers all areas of music, except classical. You can take it on the Web, or you can take it at certain Tower Records stores. I produced an Echo and the Bunnymen package last summer (Crystal Days) that I'm really proud of; I just did a set of liner notes for a boxed set by the late lamented Jellyfish. I've also done other liner notes for Rhino's New Wave Just Can't Get Enough series, vols. 5, 6 and 11.

14850: You got your MFA in film at USC. Doesn't it burn your bologna to have to stand next to Marc, a mere projectionist? Maybe Paul could stand between you guys.

Zax: Well, Marc's got a film school background, too. And I certainly don't think of him as a "mere" anything. There are probably areas where I could certainly do pretty well against Marc. If they ever wanted a Robert Altman Geek or a Peter Greenaway Geek, I could hold my own. But Marc cares about everything film-related and I don't. And also, I know records and I know musicians, but I never tend to memorize actors and parts. I've never done that. That's the kind of thing that Marc does that I wouldn't have a prayer of competing against.

14850: I tend to get hung up on character names.

Zax: Yeah, well, Marc doesn't. He actually really knows that stuff. That's why he's a national treasure.

14850: Why film? My editor even wondered, "Gee, you'd think he'd get a Music degree."

Zax: Robert Altman would be one [reason], and Lindsey Anderson (If, Britannia Hospital) would be another. Those [directors] were really big for me in high school. In Ithaca, I just went to Cornell Cinema, endlessly, soaking up Fellini and Antonioni and Lynch and Godard. Repo Man was an amazing movie for me and a lot of my friends, because it felt like someone was swiping our sense of humor. It felt like [writer-director] Alex Cox -- I was obsessed with all his movies in the 80's -- Cox had been jotting down our conversations or something. We all had that weird, deadpan, super-ultra-sarcastic tone that you find throughout that movie. I loved that, and his three or four follow-ups, including Sid & Nancy, which are great.

14850: A lot of people are good at Trivial Pursuit, but that doesn't get them a slot on a game show. How did you get this gig?

Zax: There was a producer whose job it was to find people to be on the show. I guess he started canvassing around L.A. -- I know they talked to bunches and bunches of people, because a lot of them were people that I know quite well -- and I gather that a lot of people recommended me. [The producer] would say, "Is there anybody else that you think would be good for this?" Apparently, my name came up a lot. A big recommendation came from this guy who worked at Rhino -- who I barely knew -- who was friendly with this producer; he said, "You know, the guy you really ought to talk to is Andy. You should definitely call him."

The phone rang one day, and it was this producer. I came in; they had a simple set of questions that they were asking people to make sure they knew stuff. I chatted with the producers, I met the co-creators, and so we met again, I played some practice games and we went from there.

14850: When we spoke, you talked about "learning how to do the show." What was the learning curve there? What was the breakthrough where it all clicked?

Zax: I think the earliest episodes that I'm in are really difficult for me to watch. I just cringe, because I'm stiff, and I'm not as comfortable as I got later. Some of it was just kind of being familiar with the game, and understanding of how it was going to work and what was going to be expected of me. There's a certain comfort that comes from having done something enough that you kind of know what you're doing. It probably took 10 or 15 episodes before I felt really settled in. Eventually, it got to the point where you would sort of forget that you were even on camera. It was just kinda like hanging out in the living room, only in a weird robe.

14850: Take me through a day on the show. You tape five episodes in one day?

Zax: Five episodes in a day, yeah. Call-time is usually around 8:15 in the morning. We have dressing rooms, I say hello to Marc and Paul, somebody eventually takes us to make-up, wardrobe delivers the robes, I have a cup of coffee or a bottle of water. They usher us out onto the stage, and we do three shows with about a 20-minute break between each one. Then we break for lunch, and then we do two more. We're usually finished by 7:00, 7:30 pm.

14850: What's the deal with Tiffany Bolton, the show's magically babelicious announcer and co-host?

Zax: Tiffany's great. She's really fun to work with, she's an incredibly nice person, and I think her little banter-y moments with us are quite amusing.

14850: J. Keith asks every contestant "What's the geekiest thing about you?" Apart from music, Andy, what's the geekiest thing about you?

Zax: I have a collection of lurid 1950's paperbacks, and I have so many of them that they're actually on a spinning book rack that I had to buy from a library supply company.

14850: Assuming that you haven't been challenged for the final round, what's your favorite junk food to chew on while you're cheering for the Challenging Geek?

Zax: Pretzels.

14850: I swear I saw what looked like ripple potato chips.

Zax: They vary. It's been potato chips of various kinds, Doritos...the wardrobe people don't like the Doritos or anything coated with the cheesy stuff, because it gets on the robes and it's hard to clean off.

14850: Ah, the orange cheese dust..

Zax: Yeah. Um...peanuts in the shell, you'll see those a lot, 'cause somebody bought, like, way too many of them, so we went through more shows than I care to remember with the peanuts. Did I mention Bugles? I think we had Bugles once, that was pretty good.

14850: Is that it for craft service?

Zax: No. I mean, there's a craft service table, obviously, for the crew and cast. We have stuff around. There's an assortment of tasty snack treats in my dressing room, and beverages, and we get lunch.

14850: Love those remote pieces. Did you suggest the record shop? [Videotaped segments bracket certain episodes, in which the Geeks hold geek court and spout opinions; Zax does endorse Joe Tex but not The Odd Couple -- at least musically.]

Zax: [The producers] were like, "Can we come over to your place and shoot there?" and I was like, "Ehhh, why don't we go to a record store instead?" The segments running now, where I mention Jack Palance [and Tex and Klugman and Randall], those were shot at an oddball store in L.A. that caters to high-end collectors. The one that's on the Comedy Central website, that was shot at a different place on a different day.

14850: And you have a musical lair, where you listen to Yoko Ono a lot.

Zax: Sure! Doesn't everybody?

14850: Well, that's my last question, Andy. Thanks for talking to us, and congratulations on being picked up for a second season!

Zax: Thanks, Bryan. It was fun.

Images courtesy Comedy Central. All rights reserved.