About Franz Nicolay

Franz Nicolay is a musician and writer living in New York's Hudson Valley. His first book, "The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar," was named a "Season's Best Travel Book" by The New York Times. Buzzfeed called his second book, the novel "Someone Should Pay for Your Pain," "a knockout fiction debut;" and Rolling Stone named it one of the best music books of 2021. He teaches at Bard College.
Franz Nicolay is a musician and writer living in New York's Hudson Valley. He teaches at Bard College. www.franznicolay.com
Franz's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Franz:

Lily E. Hirsch, "Weird Al: Seriously" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)

March 17, 2022

Weird Al

Lily E. Hirsch
Hosted by Franz Nicolay

Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than co…

Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021)

October 22, 2021

Major Labels

Kelefa Sanneh
Hosted by Franz Nicolay

Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a po…