From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment, the Home Edition. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You may know my guest as Miami-Stey before he gave his shirts to Jimmy Buffett.

You may know him as Little Stephen or still know him as Little Stephen, or most likely you may

know him for wearing really wide-shouldered, double-breasted suits on the Sopranos. I'm of course

talking to and about Stevie Van Zent, whose book Unrequired Infatuations has sitting in

front of me right now. First of all, Stevie, it's a thrill to have you on from the underground

garage or wherever you are right now. My pleasure, man. Good talking to you, Ellis.

It was so great about the book is that your interest in social justice comes in.

And so many interesting places,

like I was thinking at the beginning of the chapter of this time is for real, which, by the way,

is one of my favorite songs. You've got a line about the riots. Rites they were called,

but they were really a matter of a seventh of our population waiting for the civil war to end

and still are, which I thought was such a terrific and telling line.

And the book is full of lines like that about your understanding of social injustice,

not just in the United States, but around the planet.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just, it became part of the DNA of the art form once Bob Dylan

introduced the idea.

And I actually mentioned exactly the moment he did introduce the idea in the first two

lines of subterranean homesick blues in 65, I guess that was.

It was a new kind of idea to bring the consciousness of the blues, you know,

country blues and folk music to the pop idiom, you know, which is soon to become the rock

idiom.

...