The Beat Goes On
FOLLOW THE WIND NEW YORK—Floridians Steven Katz and Lane Steinberg became friends during their senior year in high school, where they both took piano classes. A shared disgust in modern pop became a partnership they called the Wind. “Since the radio was invented there’s been a Top 40,” Katz explains.
The Beat Goes On
DEPARTMENTS
FOLLOW THE WIND
NEW YORK—Floridians Steven Katz and Lane Steinberg became friends during their senior year in high school, where they both took piano classes. A shared disgust in modern pop became a partnership they called the Wind. “Since the radio was invented there’s been a Top 40,” Katz explains. “The original Top 40 was Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart, and jazz artists covered their stuff making jazz accessible. But now it’s gotten to the point where the stuff on the radio has no roots except in what else is on the radio right now.”
Steinberg concurs: “A lot of the stuff that’s out now has lost the warmth and diversity of older pop .music.”
By 1981, the Wind had added a drummer—and, after the usual apprenticeship in the local clubland, came in third at a University of Miami Battle of the Bands. In 1982, they selffinanced their debut LP, Where It’s At With The Wind, a nervous, sometimes brilliant, collection of 14 live staples. It melded such diverse elements as mod, power pop, classic pop (and—the new gods same as the old gods—the Beatles).