Send us a text Warren Zanes knows the joy of speeding down the ski slopes and cycling miles of bike lane. He knows the rush of getting on stage and performing. And he certainly knows the fulfillment of sitting in front of a blank computer screen and then finding the words to touch music lovers everywhere. Author. Musician. Academic. And yes, serious skier and cyclist. Dusty Springfield. Johnny Cash. Tom Petty. Bruce Springsteen. Th...

Send us a text We witnessed some historic days in the Middle East this week. What lies ahead is uncertain at best. What is certain is that David Broza will be singing, bringing joy, optimism and a hope for peace, as he has all over the world for 50 years. He co-wrote one of his most famous songs, “Yihiye Tov (There Will Be Good), as a peace anthem when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel in 1977. David expected to sing the song for a few months and there wou...

Send us a text This episode is truly a labor of love. Steve Albert and I have been friends for almost forty years. For all of those years, he has made me laugh. I thought I knew all of the stories. I wasn’t even close. His new book “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Broadcast Booth” has tons of funny stories, such as honing his broadcasting skills by doing play by play of family dinners growing up in Brooklyn. There are unusual stories, such as Steve’s tea...

Send us a text This week’s episode of “Before The Cheering Started with Budd Mishkin” is a bit different. It’s a conversation that is part of a new series that I am hosting, a series of conversations with public artists whose work is found all across America. These conversations will be found in the Otocast platform, an immersive, innovative, location-based mobile audio guide. More information at www.otocast.com. If we are fortunate, there is a moment in our lives when the door to...

Send us a text Public art is everywhere, in towns big and small across the country. The reaction to public art can be subtle. It can be emotional. The impact can be economic. And the reaction is almost always positive. I’m hosting a new series of conversations with public artists found in the Otocast platform, an immersive, innovative, location-based mobile audio guide. More information at www.otocast.com. This is one of these conversations. When you think of Ne...

Send us a text AMY ARBUS Seeing Life Through The Lens You might think that a life in photography was always a given for Amy Arbus since her mother Diane Arbus was a photography icon and her father Alan Arbus was also in the field. It was not a given. But after her mother died in 1971 and her father focused on acting, Amy felt a pull towards photography. She eventually landed a position at The Village Voice and put a stamp on her own style with the feature belov...

Send us a text It’s been forty years since we first heard Suzanne Vega on record. That haunting, lyrical sound is still there on her latest album “Flying With Angels.” The songs are poignant and personal. Suzanne’s songs have taken her around the world, including a friendship with the late Czech poet, activist and former President Vaclav Havel. Her musical journey started in New York and that’s where it continues.

Send us a text A little bit of a different Before The Cheering Started episode this weekend. A mid August weekend always brings memories of Woodstock. It was a pleasure and privilege to create and host this radio documentary for CBS News Radio in 2019, "Back To The Garden," with stories from the musicians, the festival goers, the organizers, the people who worked the festival and the locals. Enjoy.

Send us a text Author Judy Batalion knows from Holocaust trauma, growing up with survivor grandparents in Montreal. So when she chanced upon a book written in 1946 about a female resistance fighter in Poland, she was ready to start a journey that lasted more than a decade and resulted in the 2021 book “The Light Of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.” It is the largely unknown story of Jewish women in Poland during World War II who showed incre...

Send us a text I always smile when I think of the apt title of Steve Forbert’s terrific debut album “Alive on Arrival.” Because he was. “Alive on Arrival” speaks to the excitement of coming to the big town and making it work. For Steve Forbert, that meant plenty of hard work, indefatigable optimism and the inspiration of an uncle’s unorthodox career. Steve has known every up and down of the music industry. But there is still the joy of playing, writing and creati...

Send us a text Peter Asher has been part of the music that has elated and sustained me for some 60 years. The songs of Peter and Gordon as part of the 1960’s British Invasion still sound fresh and wonderful six decades later. And the musicians he produced and managed, especially James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, created the soundtrack of my life. And Peter still has the touch, co-producing Barbra Streisand’s beautiful album of duets, “The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Tw...

Send us a text Luis Miranda Jr.’s story is a great American story. It’s a great New York story. It’s a great Puerto Rican story. Long before Hamilton became part of our vocabulary, Luis Miranda Jr. created a new life for himself in New York as a respected and influential advocate, organizer, politico and much more. And then, thanks in part to the creativity of his son Lin-Manuel, he was able to take these skills and apply them on a bigger stage, more than he could have...

Send us a text Larry Charles’ comedy journey has taken him to some of the familiar places for a comedy writer, such as on set for Seinfeld, Mad About You and Curb Your Enthusiasm. At other times, it’s found him running for a waiting van to escape when a scene in the Borat and Bruno movies goes great but upsets the locals. And then there have been moments in Iraq and Somalia, finding out that there is indeed standup comedy in some not so funny places for his series Larry Charles’...

Send us a text Willie Nile is a musical lifer, still going strong in his late 70’s with a new album “The Great Yellow Light.” He’s been a New York singer songwriter who has traveled the country and the world with his guitar for decades. But when it comes to the lessons learned that shaped his life and musical career, it always comes back to the Buffalo home where his parents raised him, providing Willie with a moral compass that served him well all those years ago. And now.

Send us a text The story of the 1969 New York Mets, the Amazin’ Mets, has been told for more than five decades. It will no doubt be told for decades to come. Art Shamsky has experienced it as a player and an author, playing a key role as a left handed hitter and outfielder in 1969 and then hitting the keys to write several books about the Mets. His latest is “Mets Stories I Only Tell My Friends.” Art Shamsky had a long career in baseball. But his career and hi...

Send us a text David Gabriel is a young dancer on the rise as a soloist with New York City Ballet. The love affair with dance began early. Really early. He started watching ballet videos of Mixhail Baryshnikov while growing up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. David was 2. Not long after, the goal became “get to New York, “a dream he has realized.

Send us a text How many people have written for Sports Illustrated and the Harvard Law Review?Jamal Greene is one of the rare few. His own story is compelling, growing up in a Brooklyn home that produced a constitutional law professor, Jamal, and a world-renowned rapper, his brother Talib Kweli. Jamal’s experiences at Harvard, Sports Illustrated and Yale Law School eventually led him to teaching constitutional law at a time in our history when its teaching is perhaps more importan...

Send us a text Did I think that I would read a 500 page book about lacrosse? Uh, no. But if S.L.(Scott) Price is writing it, I’m reading it. Scott has long been one of our preeminent writers about people through the prism of sports, primarily during his more than two decades at Sports Illustrated. There were more than a few chapters before he became a must read for so many of us. There was an early love of reading and newspapers, a cross country trip that fortuitously incl...

Send us a text It’s hard to imagine Judy Collins pursuing anything but a life in music. Music and performing were in the air as she was growing up in Colorado. There were classical piano lessons with her beloved teacher Antonia Brico. And Judy’s father was a performer with a radio show. But it was actually a broken leg in her teens that led Judy down the path to pursuing music full time. Sorry about the broken leg, Judy, but millions of us are happy that i...

Send us a text For some 20 years, Simon Shuster has reported from Russia and Ukraine. He speaks the language and he understands the history of the region, making him the ideal foreign correspondent to report on the lead up to the Russian invasion in 2022 and the subsequent war in Ukraine. This is not exactly what his folks had in mind when they emigrated from the former Soviet Union in the early 90’s when Simon was a boy, landing in the Bay Area. But it is in Russia and no...