On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, Reed Tryte wrote:
> How did you find out about it? I was sure I'd be right about that,
> because Dennis is the first person I've heard mention Andy Breckman
> since a friend of mine in college loaned me his album.
I heard "Railroad Bill" on the radio, thought it was wonderful, and called up the station to get the album data. (Fortunately for me, Gadfly Records had their phone number on the back of the CD or I'd never have tracked them down; this was pre-internet.)
Part of why they played it is that Andy Breckman had long been associated with this particular radio station, WFMU, a lister-supported freeform station (available over the web at www.wfmu.org). The articles Dennis cited appeared in their zine, Lowest Common Denominator, which goes out to people who pledge. FMU is famous as a house of weirdness. By their standards, Breckman songs are models of normalcy, and he himself a pillar of the establishment.
Michael