Sometimes a case of chickenpox can change your life.
It was “the summer between 7th and 8th grades when I got the chickenpox,” Scott Hudson, podcaster, veteran journalist, and all-out fan of underground sounds tells us. While he was recovering, his “12-records-for-a-penny from Columbia House records showed up. And in that box was the first Runaways album and the first Ramones album.”
“Then around that same time there was a news magazine show on NBC on Saturday nights when SNL wasn’t on. One night they had a story on this shocking thing in England called the Sex Pistols. I watched it and I fell in love. I mean it changed my life. No more Molly Hatchet for me!”
Before the internet, it was tricky for an up-and-coming punk-rock connoisseur to get his fix in South Dakota. “There was one record store in town that was getting some of it in,” Scott explains. “You know, imports. So I got like a couple of Clash singles and a band called The Drones. I had to hide it ’cause none of my friends liked that stuff. They all liked Journey and Boston and Meatloaf. It exploded from there. That was my British Invasion.”
Doing a shift at the old Augustana College radio station, KAUR, got him access to more music and a platform to share his tastes.
The urge to broadcast his discoveries never left. Scott started up his podcast, The Ledge, in 2010, and is now pulling in a thousand listeners an episode through his distribution on Real Punk Radio.
“I started to create my own shows, at the time Alan Hunter (one of the original MTV VJs) was pushing podcasts and created this giant server where everyone could upload their shows. In the weird community of Replacements fans I met a guy by the name of Jerry who was doing what I was doing, but he was airing his shows on Real Punk Radio. So I joined about a year later. A bunch of them had been in bands, a bunch had run labels. A bunch of super-clever people.” Scott goes live every Friday night at 7:00pm Central with his latest finds.
Journalism filled the gaps in-between broadcasting. “Writing came later,” Scott says. In the 90’s he wrote for the local alternative news weekly The Tempest.
“The Tempest started when I was living in Aberdeen. I was running a record store up there, and I had seen The Tempest, and didn’t like their music coverage. This was very forward of me — I wrote them and told them so. And they said, ‘So, do you want to do it then?’ Shortly after that I moved back and that’s when I started writing.”
“It was a good time to do it,” Scott continues, “because the normals were actually going to live music. We had some really good local bands and good bands were coming through, like Fugazi. We had a great all-ages promoter named Terry Taylor. We had Green Day four times before they were Green Day, when they were young and unknown. You could name about any of the bigger punk bands of that time, they all came here at some point.”
But the scene died in the late 90’s. “Everything went back, the normals went to dance clubs again. The Pomp Room closed, The Tempest got sold to another guy.”
After The Tempest folded, Scott got a call from his old Tempest editor Patrick Lalley who was now at the Argus Leader. Patrick hired Scott to start writing for the Argus’ entertainment section.
At the Argus Leader, Scott interviewed “the good, the bad and the ugly,” including Tommy Stinson, Barry Manilow, Nickelback, David Cassidy (secretly from rehab), Dawes, Andrew WK, Wreckless Eric, Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, Aquadolls, Lydia Loveless, and many others, with a few comedians like David Cross and Bill Maher thrown in too.
“I ended up writing for the Argus for about four years, but with all of their cutbacks that came to an end,” Scott sighs. “I was so disappointed when that happened. In my opinion, I was given a lot more free rein than I would have thought. I always fought for (the smaller shows) because the arena shows already sold.”
“An article on whatever run-of-the-mill country act was coming wasn’t going to sell any more tickets, but for something coming to a place like Total Drag or The Icon, I was told that I could impact 20% of the ticket sales. So maybe instead of selling 50 they sell 70,” Scott explains. “Why write about something that everyone already knows about when I can write about something really cool that’s coming that you might actually like if you just took a chance?”
Scott’s other adventures in music and entertainment include co-promoting a show in town for his all-time-favorites The Replacements. He’s traveled with music documentarian Gorman Bechard, running audio gear for the filming of Who Is Lydia Lovelace?, and got behind-the-scenes on The Replacements rockumentary Color Me Obsessed, later hosting a screening and interview with Gorman at the Washington Pavilion.
Curiously, he also topped the Apple iTunes entertainment charts with The Big Brother Gossip Show, a podcast analyzing the “reality” of the TV show Big Brother.
“Here’s the thing with me,” Scott says, “I’m obviously very opinionated. I’m not afraid to say that I hate this or that or whatever. But I will never tell somebody you’re wrong to like what you like. We all have our different journeys.”
“One of the reasons I do The Ledge to begin with is that too many people my age say, ‘there’s no good rock ‘n roll anymore.’ To me, there’s just as much good music, if not more good music now than ever.”
Need to inject some new rock in your rotation? Tune in to The Ledge for Scott’s picks of the best in punk and punk-adjacent rock every Friday night at 7:00pm at Real Punk Radio, as he continues his 2023 series “52 Weeks of Teenage Kicks,” (http://theledge.realpunkradio.com/) and follow his page on Facebook for any episodes you might have missed! (https://www.facebook.com/TheLedgeWithScottHudson)
Note: The original version of this story appeared on SoDakMusic.com. It’s archived here for my personal reference, and of course, your future enjoyment.
