There was a time in the ‘90s when Chicago’s rival rock critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot barely talked. Now, they can’t stop. Every Friday, the former Sun-Times and Tribune scribes meet in a studio on Chicago’s North Side to record an episode of their long-running unscripted rock ‘n’ roll talk show, “Sound Opinions.”
On Jan. 24, the series will release its 1000th syndicated episode. And while they’ll touch on the milestone, it’ll largely follow the same routine the two hosts have had since 1998. That is, bringing their handwritten outlines and spending an hour in some conversational mix of discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of new releases, dissecting classic albums, interviewing special guests, adding to a “desert island jukebox” and introducing the world to “buried treasures,” or artists that would otherwise be overlooked by the mainstream.
“I am anti-nostalgia to the core of my being. That’s what often got me in trouble,” DeRogatis jokes during a Zoom interview. “I’m always most excited about the next one — the next record I’m gonna hear, the next show I’m going to go to, the next person I get to talk to.”
It’s a formula that has worked over the past 26 years as he and Kot have stayed on the pulse of music and shared their findings with a growing audience of radio and podcast listeners.
Since debuting on WXRT-FM (93.1) during a Tuesday night “dead zone” in 1998, the DeRogatis/Kot era of “Sound Opinions” has gone national via 110 stations — including WBEZ-FM (91.5), which airs it at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays — and brought in an average monthly listenership of 300,000 fans. Not to mention logged some incredibly special moments like coaxing Radiohead’s Thom Yorke into playing rare hit “I Want None of This” for episode #30 or heading down to Third Man Records in Nashville to interview Jack White for episode #601.
Nostalgia be damned, DeRogatis does fondly remember how it all started. In 1998, he was behind the wheel of a U-Haul destined for Chicago to begin his second stint with the Sun-Times (not long after Rolling Stone gave him a pink slip for dissing founder Jann Wenner). While on the road, he had the urge to pick up his cellular and call Kot, recalling that he began the conversation with, “Let’s do ‘Sound Opinions’ right this time. Let’s really get the Siskel and Ebert thing right.”
“At the Movies” — but for music — had always been the model DeRogatis and Kot aspired to and one they had tried in previous iterations of “Sound Opinions.” In 1993, DeRogatis brought a primitive version to WLUP/The Loop with co-host Bill Wyman of the Reader. And after DeRogatis and Wyman took the show to Q-101 a couple years later, Kot picked up the vacancy with “Rock Tonight” alongside Illinois Entertainer’s Michael Harris. But the magic truly happened when DeRogatis and Kot tapped into the unique relationship started by their kindred Tribune and Sun-Times colleagues and mentors.
“[Roger and Gene] weren’t professional TV guys either. They didn’t look like TV personalities or talk like TV personalities, but they had a successful show because they had a smart conversation about culture,” says Kot in the Zoom chat. “We thought, if they can do that for movies, we can try this for music.”
Kot and DeRogatis have been getting thumbs-up ever since. Well, except maybe from the small bunch who scold the hosts for talking too much about Nirvana or for taking a professorial attitude about lyrics while ignoring composition. “I don’t think that’s true at all,” DeRogatis jokes after sharing a recent piece of fan mail. The show’s tagline is “everyone’s a critic,” after all, and DeRogatis and Kot thrive on rich perspective.
“We like to talk about stuff where we feel we can add some value to a discussion as opposed to just 10 million people who are all going to review the same record,” says Kot. It’s why they started their first episode on WXRT with deep thoughts on Black Sabbath (an artist the station has never played) and why they still are most excited about finding new artists, throwing around names like forceful Guam singer-songwriter Rosa Bordallo, the Irish band Sprints and New York City Taishogoto quintet Abazaba.
As Kot says, “One of the things that links all good journalists is curiosity. … That is the engine that drives the show.”
“Sound Opinions” is an extension of the hunt that has long defined the two men’s careers. “First and foremost, you are always a reporter and a journalist,” says DeRogatis, who harps on that fact in his classes at Columbia College. His extensive investigation into R. Kelly, which produced his 2019 book “Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly,” actually started with a response to a record review that kept him on the case. “I reviewed ‘TP-2.com’ and I got a fax in response to it, and that story seemingly never ended until finally it did.”
As for Kot, who penned “I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers and the March Up Freedom’s Highway” in 2014, among other titles, he believes, “Popular music is the most immediate reflection of who we are as people. … If you look at the pop charts, you will get a reflection of who we are as a species. … I love getting up every morning and saying I’m going to learn something new today.”
And so they keep at it. As “Sound Opinions” eyes its next 1,000 episodes, DeRogatis and Kot have found new ways to expand the model and keep it viable, such as adding on Patreon bonus content, including a brand-new segment, “Everything Else,” where they discuss movies and books, even what they made for dinner. “People may not realize it,” Kot says, “but we have much to say about other things besides music.”