Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight®

The legendary free-form radio show is right at home on WFUV, Saturday nights from 8pm-12 Midnight.

There are three essential Commandments:

Respect The Elders.
Embrace The New.
Encourage The Impractical and Improbable,
Without Bias.
- David Fricke

Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight® has quite a cult following in the NYC area - Vin's been on the air here for over 35 years. He's found his broadcast home on WFUV Saturday nights from 8pm to 12 Midnight. What Vin does is like no other show on the radio dial - or on television, the Internet or anywhere else, for that matter.

Famous for spending long, in-depth time with his guests, Vin's "interviews" go beyond the usual "promo tour" fare - listening to Idiot's Delight is like eavesdropping on a private intimate visit between friends, complete with impromptu studio performances.

Vin only invites the musicians, writers, actors and directors he truly admires and is personally thrilled by, and he encourages them to talk about a wide range of subjects beyond their own projects - books, politics, film, music and anything else that interests them. (Steve Buscemi, Wim Wenders, Tim Robbins and many others all brought music from their own collections to play on the show.)

Idiot's Delight has featured a wide array of guests through the years, both musical and non - e.g. Elvis Costello, Tim Robbins, Steve Buscemi, Norah Jones (her first radio appearance ever.), Ryan Adams (with and after Whiskeytown), Gus Van Zant, Dar Williams, Cesaria Evora, Paul Auster (several times), Lou Reed (many times), Laurie Anderson, Sheryl Crow, Ben Folds, Counting Crows (their first New York radio appearance), Emmylou Harris w/Daniel Lanois, Leonard Cohen, Yoko Ono, Pete Hamill, Luna, the belated Soul Coughing, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Joshua Bell, John Berendt, Kurt Vonnegut, John Sayles, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the Fugees, Carl Hiaasen, Joey Ramone (who was a frequent guest), June Carter Cash, Rosanne Cash, Odetta, The Emerson String Quartet (playing Shostakovich.), Don Byron, Kris Kristofferson, Marianne Faithfull, James Carter, Aimee Mann, Shawn Colvin, John Cameron Mitchell and the entire cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (three times.), Allen Ginsberg, Joseph Heller, Yo La Tengo (many times), Anne Rice, Richard Russo, Stephen Rea, Warren Zevon, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, Eddie Izzard, Steven Van Zandt and countless others.

Miss a week? Listen to past shows in The WFUV Archives.

More about: Vin Scelsa

Extra:

Idiot's Delight Archive Entire past shows
'Be My Guest' Archive - Select interviews from past shows
cherk.com: A listener-run web site about Idiot's Delight [opens in new window]