Brian Williams Wants to Tell You About Civil War in Sri Lanka, New Camera Obscura Album
How great is NBC News anchor Brian Williams? Seriously. One moment he’s reporting on the latest at the Gaza Strip, the next he’s fielding booty calls on 30 Rock or yukking it up with Conan O’Brien. But the latest departure for the extremely likeable talking head may be more along the lines of the Talking Heads themselves. In the new music-themed video blog BriTunes, hosted at MSNBC’s website, Williams takes on the bassist for Deer Tick in the same fashion he might take on Joe Leiberman.
It’s safe to say that Williams seems like a pretty hip cat, indeed, telling Rolling Stone that his wife and kids know him to be “a music freak..You can hear an emerging bar band from Moscow or an emerging bar band from Red Hook, Brooklyn.”
Williams has long shown his appreciation for indie-rock, as evidenced by the sporadic music posts on his NBC-hosted nightly blog, where he has written about up-and-comers White Lies, who he refers to as “a couple of Brits who sound a lot like Interpol” and the Chris Martin-esque stylings of English darlings The Doves. The video blog features in-depth conversation with newcomers and stalwarts, a latter example being Williams grilling cellist Yo-Yo Ma on who’s on his iPod (Sting and Diana Krall, if you’re wondering).
As Cronkite once became the media figurehead of a cold-war United States, perhaps Williams is as well an accurate personality for his own time, a buttoned-down and trusty news anchor well-aware of his world, without pretension or stuffiness. After all, America trusted Cronkite for his all-knowing, elder statesman’s voice of information — and perhaps we can trust Williams because beneath that navy suit and well-parted hair, he’s a little like us: just getting his freak on.
Link: Brian Williams Embraces Inner “Freak” as Rock Video Blogger (Rolling Stone)
