LATER

...as in, we'll get back to profiling the candidates for cleaning up after the W disaster later. It also means, let's have a look at "Later With Jools Holland", a BBC import that airs every Tuesday night at 8 PM and again on Wednesday at 2 AM locally on public station WYBE, channel 35 in Philadelphia. The program has become one of the chosen few that I record faithfully on my Comcast DVR. "Later" is a live musical cavalcade, staged in the round in a cavernous soundstage at the BBC in London. It's been in business since 1992, and is still going. Host Jools Holland, the hugely talented keyboardist from the UK band Squeeze and now a band leader himself, patrols the center of the circle, introducing the acts and conducting avuncular interviews with the bigger stars, sort of like a modern Ed Sullivan with an indecipherable Cockney accent. The bands are all arrayed side-by-side on the outside of the circle amidst clumps of audience members and a small café-looking area where Jools' piano is stationed and where most of the interviews are done. At the start of the show, in what always strikes me as a surreal moment, each band is introduced as the camera swivels around to greet them. It leads to such unlikely juxtapositions as "It's Ladysmith Black Mombazo, and next to them, Dido!"

What pops out instantly on the first viewing are the quality of the guests and the sheer audacity and inventiveness involved in bringing such a diverse range of excellent musicians into one venue week after week. As an example, last week's show featured Garbage, Macy Gray, The Hives, and Hall & Oates. Hall & Oates! Another week, I saw Radiohead and PJ Harvey. Where else are you going to see Radiohead and PJ Harvey perform live? Every week there is at least one "Wow!" moment, like the show a couple of weeks ago where The White Stripes made their British television debut (the shows on WYBE are about three to five years old, so you often see an established artist making a television debut, which heightens the buzz). "Later" is as geographically diverse as it is musically eclectic. The acts are predominantly from the U.K. and America, but almost every show I've seen has a group from Africa, Europe, or Latin America. There are many pop and rock artists, but even they range from Morrissey to Norah Jones, and there is usually at least one jazz, funk, or hip-hop act per episode. The beauty of DVR, of course, is if you have no interest in a performance, you can just skip ahead to the next one. Having just seen "Dave Chappelle's Block Party", which is fantastic, you can see that Dave must have been influenced somewhat by "Later". That's essentially what "Later" is: Jools Holland's Block Party, only he's been throwing it for over 13 years now. Catch it if you can.