FUV Essentials

As Paul Simon wraps up his 2018 "Homeward Bound — The Farewell Tour" with his three last live concerts ever at New York's Madison Square Garden on September 20 and 21 and Flushing Meadows Corona Park on September 22, and releases a new album too, FUV salutes this hometown Essentials songwriting hero again.

For the last four Thursdays of the summer of 2018, it's #FUVTBT Throwback Thursdays. WFUV is rewinding decades, back to 1998, 1988, 1978, and 1968 — dipping back for day-long flashbacks with songs of that particular year and personal perspectives from FUV's DJs. For 1978, FUV's Paul Cavalconte, host of "Cavalcade," goes back forty years to a high school summer when Debbie Harry, Donna Summer, and the Ramones were on the radio and made New Yorkers dance, rock, and rave.

For the last four Thursdays of the summer of 2018, it's #FUVTBT Throwback Thursdays. WFUV is rewinding decades, back to 1998, 1988, 1978, and 1968 — dipping back for day-long flashbacks with songs of that particular year and personal perspectives from FUV's DJs. For 1988, Russ Borris, FUV's music director and host of "The Alternate Side," goes back thirty years to an era of questionable fashion but wildly eclectic music.

For the last four Thursdays of the summer of 2018, it's #FUVTBT Throwback Thursdays. WFUV is rewinding decades, back to 1998, 1988, 1978, and 1968 — dipping back for day-long flashbacks with songs of that particular year and personal perspectives from FUV's DJs. For 1998, Rita Houston remembers her early years at WFUV.

From the mighty dub lyricism of Linton Kwesi Johnson to the magne

As Tori Amos celebrates her birthday on August 22, FUV returns to Torres' list of her "Five Essential Tori Amos Songs."

Musicians listen to their forebears not only with an ear to an artist's technical imprint — the depth of production or the way a guitar is tuned —

From the ornate grandeur of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" to one of the most stirring protest songs ever written, "Ohio," it's hard to imagine a soundtrack of the late Sixties and early Seventies without the songs of David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. For galvanizing a generation to rise, protest and hope for a better world, CSNY and CSN are FUV Essentials.

One of Jon Batiste's favorite singers and human beings, Mavis Staples, plays New York's AmericanaFest at Lincoln Center on August 11. Batiste is also releasing his first solo album, Hollywood Africans, on September 28.

[August 2018 update: Aloe Blacc has released one of the songs of the summer of 2018, "Brooklyn in the Summer" from his fo