Brian Wilson

|TC Brian Wilson and Don O'Brien -- together again?Not really, but the one-time partners of the "Brian and O'Brien Show" that dominated morning drive-time in the mid-1980s -- and who were widely reported to be off-the-microphone adversaries -- will be on the air at the same time next week, from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.As announced earlier this week, "The Brian Wilson Show" premieres Monday on WOCT-FM (104.3), featuring the personality who most recently was an afternoon talk-show host on WCBM-AM (680)

If you set your clock radio to 104.3 on the FM dial, heed this reassurance: You will not be in a 10-year-old dream Monday morning when you wake up to the voice of Brian Wilson.The raucous radio personality who topped the local morning drive-time ratings in the mid-1980s -- and recently tried two-way talk radio -- is coming back with a new morning show."The Brian Wilson Show" premieres at 6 a.m. Monday on WOCT-FM (104.3), a different station but the same frequency where Mr. Wilson reigned from 1984 to 1988 as the lead voice of the funny and sometimes controversial "Brian and O'Brien" show, with Don O'Brien.

Here's the trouble with talk radio, according to Brian Wilson: "It seems to me that the vast number of talk show hosts don't understand that this is not a pulpit."Stay tuned, he's just warming up."I'm not willing to believe the audience is so stupid to care about what I think. What's your opinion? I'm just an ex-disc jockey, my opinion doesn't matter."He's building."This is just a BS session here, the great American BS session. The bottom line is this is show biz. This is aural voyeurism," he concludes with a grin, making sure a visitor has appreciated the pun.You expect a rim shot here, or a horn, whistle or soundtrack of laughter and applause.

When the American Public Radio Network asked Jim Russell to design a financial news radio show, he responded bluntly: "Did you guys know I got a 'D' in college economics?"But he took the job anyway, and on Monday, the resulting program, "Marketplace," celebrates its sixth anniversary on the air. (It is heard at 6 p.m. weekdays on WAMU-FM [88.5] and at 6:30 p.m. weekdays on WJHU-FM [88.1].)"Business and economics are regarded by most of us as so horribly dull, I regarded it as a challenge I just couldn't forgo," relates Mr. Russell, the show's executive producer, in a telephone interview during a holiday vacation in Florida.

One of early rock's most vivid and enduring myths is that of Brian Wilson, the California dreamer. It's an image easily summoned by anyone familiar with the Beach Boys' saga: pale, pudgy Brian, sitting alone in his room with a piano and a notebook, wistfully writing odes to the waves he never rode, the hot rods he never drove, and the surfer girls he never knew.It's a powerful image despite the irony implicit in his stay-at-home existence, and a marvelous testament to an artist's ability to conjure a whole world though words and music.

One thing about those second generations. You start having kids and 15 or 20 years later, there they are and suddenly you're old.This is bad enough in life. It's flat-out sobering when these new generations start showing up in pop culture."Isn't Laura Dern neat?" says the kid. "Isn't she Bruce and Dianne Ladd's kid?" you say. Bam! You're a generation older.Second generations are always coming along, of course. Kirk Douglas begat Michael. Judy Garland begat Liza Minnelli and Nat King Cole begat Natalie.

WOULDN'T IT BE NICE.Brian Wilson with Todd Gold.HarperCollins.390 pages. $20.BLACKBIRD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PAUL MCCARTNEY.Geoffrey Giuliano.Dutton.293 pages. $22.95. Ever since Albert Goldman's "The Many Lives of John Lennon" recast the rock biography in the same mold as many literary and popular life histories (e.g., meticulously researched, broad in scope, de-iconizing if rehumanizing their subjects), pop biographers have tried, with little success, to capture the private soul behind the public hubbub.