What is the best album ever created?
Paul: "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars."
Pete: "Astral Weeks" and "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"; "London Calling" and "Highway 61." Each is a belated version of the other. You wouldn't want to leave out Minnesota, with "Purple Rain" and the Replacements' "Let It Be," both I believe from 1984.
What's the best band to see live?
Paul: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Pete: The Pogues, fronted by Joe Strummer, is the best live band I've ever seen. Recently, I'd say the New Pornographers put on as bruising and fine a show as you could wish for.
What song pumps you up?
Paul: "There She Goes My Beautiful World."
Pete: Right now, "Morbid Craving" by the Mendoza Line, though it's awful hard to argue with Superchunk's "On the Mouth."
What song brings you down?
Paul: Anything by Limp Bizkit.
Pete: In a good way, Gillian Welch's dizzying and beautiful "My Morphine"; the whole of "Amplified Heart," by Everything But the Girl. In a bad way: "emo."
If you were dictator of a small country, what would be your national anthem?
Paul: "The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum" (Fun Boy 3).
Pete: "Jackson" by Johnny Cash and June Carter; we could be a nation of infidels.
If you were onstage with a mic in front of thousands of screaming fans, what would you say?
Paul: "Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome to Birmingham, the forgotten city of Rock."
Pete: "Wendy," I'd say, "Is the water warm enough?"
Comaskey and Coviello can be heard on "The Post-Punk Show," 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays on WBOR 91.1 FM. Coviello is an associate professor of English at Bowdoin.