What is the best album ever created?
DW: Of albums produced during my student years, "Freak Out" by the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. During my student years, this was something completely different. It was the one that said we were living in different times.
LVS: All the albums with the music of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jules Stein, Mel Torme, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, early Barbara Streisand and all the great duet albums of the '90s. And any albums or single made by the great Ray Charles.
What's the best band to see live?
DW: It's been so long since I've gone to live concerts. Do videos count? In that case, I'd go with Rage Against the Machine.
LVS: Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Lionel Hampton, Stan Kenton, Cab Calloway, Spike Jones, Louis Armstrong, and all the bands at the Cotton Club.
What song pumps you up?
DW: "No Woman No Cry" by Bob Marley.
LVS: Anything sung by Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Helen O'Connell, Rosemary Clooney, Jack Jones, Vic Damone, or Tony Bennett.
What song brings you down?
DW: "Bowdoin Beata."
LVS: All the stupid so-called "songs" today that scream and shout about killing and murder and rape.
If you were the dictator of a small country, what would be your national anthem?
DW: I would not be a dictator of anything. As an American, I do not believe in dictators. But the fact that you pose such a question reveals our cultural megalomania. I say, let the people make their own choice.
LVS: I would hope to be a benevolent dictator and my national anthem would be "Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends, For a Duck Could Be Somebody's Mother"...In other words, sings the praises of the simple Golden Rule.
If you were on stage with a mic in front of thousands of screaming fans, what would you say?
DW: "Go home and make your own music."
LVS: "Please stop all that insane screaming. It's not good for your vocal chords and it's bad for my ears. Shut up, sit down, and let's hear some real music."
Wilkinson can be heard on "The Howlin' Hour," 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Wednesdays, followed by Van Savage's "Senior Moments" from 1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. on WBOR 91.1 FM.