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Howard Stern crapped all over me today on his radio show. The opening salvo came just after he admitted that he really doesn't listen to music anymore, couldn't care less and couldn't bring himself to play David Bowie's new album.

Of course this is precisely the point I have been making for years: for whatever reason or reasons, digital does not connect with the emotions. Therefore over time, you lose your connection to music. Howard chalked it up to age, but he was mistaken.

So after his admission it was time for Howard to take apart Gary Dell'Abbate, Jon Hein, their television show and me. It didn't help that the song Gary and Jon chose to demonstrate vinyl vs. CD was The Thompson Twins' "In the Name of Love."

That gave Howard an unbeatable launching point from which to fire his salvos dumping on the music, on vinyl on caring about sound, etc. Howard couldn't imagine why anyone cared, how I possibly could make a living etc.

All of that was fine until he accused us all of being LIARS for claiming to hear differences. That was going too far.

Then he asked Gary if he churned his own butter, the point being why go to the bother?

This from a guy who loves good food, talks up Nobu, etc. Hey, I make my own pasta too. And you can bet Howard Stern doesn't eat microwaved fish sticks instead of going to the "bother" of starting a charcoal fire to grill some fresh (and easily spoilable) fish. Hey Howard! I also make my own pasta. It tastes better!

They pulled a segment from the show where I talk about hearing Roxy Music's Avalon at an AES (no one knew what that was) and said that digital preserves music the way formaldehyde preserves frogs: you kill it then it lasts forever.... but Howard was too incensed to get the joke....

He kept stopping the clip and attacking. You have to have a strong stomach to take the assault but I had no problem with it, mostly because when people feel threatened that's what they do! Plus it was funny. And after saying he didn't listen much to music anymore, maybe in his subconscious something was clicking!

They even sent Richard Christy and Sal out to interview homeless people about CD vs. vinyl and the homeless of course sided with Howard. It was pretty funny.

Even funnier is that I was a phone in guest on the Stern show back in June of 2001 there to talk about the upcoming introduction of HDTV and what did Howard do? He shat all over me saying "Who needs HDTV? What we have now is good enough." I made the Nobu point: "So Howard, why go to Nobu when you can eat frozen fish sticks?" I also brought up the vinyl resurgence then. If you think what I was subjected to now was bad you should have heard the reaction then!

You know what they say: "Say whatever you want as long as you say something." And if that's true, today was a good day for vinyl on The Howard Stern Show and a good day for me even though they didn't mention my name or especially Analogplanet.com.

I'm still smiling...