By Rick Bird
Post staff writer

For music fans, Little Steven Van Zandt is best known as Bruce Springsteen's sidekick, sort of the consigliere to the original musical "boss." He will forever be the bandana-wearing, always-grinning E Street Band guitar slinger.
For fans of HBO's "The Sopranos," however, he is a very different persona, best known since 1999 for playing Silvio Dante, the loyal henchman and occasional hit man for Tony Soprano. Van Zandt was asked to try out for the role by "Sopranos" creator David Chase, an E Street Band fan who "liked his look." It was the first time Van Zandt had acted professionally.
In yet another persona, Van Zandt has now become practically a savior of authentic rock 'n' roll to radio listeners and rock fans, thanks to his two-hour weekly radio show, "Little Steven's Underground Garage." The show, featuring a mixture of old and new rugged garage rock, is now heard in 200 markets. In Greater Cincinnati, WNKU-FM (89.7 south of town, 94.5 in the northern suburbs) just picked up the show last month, airing it at 2 p.m. Saturdays.
Two weeks ago, Van Zandt saluted his newest affiliate based out of Northern Kentucky University by saying, "I finally made it to college. My mother would be so proud of me."
Van Zandt said that, except for some minor shots, shooting for the final nine episodes of "The Sopranos" - they premiere at 9 p.m. Sunday - is essentially over. The finale is done. When asked in a recent phone interview how it ends for Tony and the boys, he laughed, "You don't really want to know, do you?"
He's right, of course. The guessing game over the next nine weeks is a lot more fun for fans than any spoiler. Van Zandt does think the end of the series is likely the end of his acting career.
"I don't have much time to pursue it," he said.
"I love it. It's a whole new world to me, a new craft to learn, and I'm really just getting started with it. If somebody comes to me with something interesting, I'm certainly going to try and do it. But I don't have time. That little two-hour show that WNKU plays takes me 20 hours a week."
Van Zandt is, indeed, plenty busy without getting fitted with Silvio's exaggerated pompadour every week (the hair piece, like his trademark bandana, covers premature balding and a bad scar resulting from a car wreck in which his head hit the windshield). Van Zandt also programs two channels on Sirius Satellite Radio - "Underground Garage" and "Outlaw Country," which features pop culture satirist and former WEBN-FM morning man Mojo Nixon.
Van Zandt has also launched his Wicked Cool Records label, which will specialize in compilations and new bands that fit Van Zandt's definition of "underground garage rock."
Just what is that?  
"Maybe you've really got to be me to see how it's connected," he says with a laugh. "In my mind, it's just straight ahead rock 'n' roll. It's really just the traditional sort of rock structure. It goes back mostly to the rock renaissance period of the '50s and '60s. You can hear those roots in the new bands we play."
The beauty of Van Zandt's radio show - which features "The Coolest Song in the World This Week" - is that it connects the dots from classic to modern rock. It breaks all the corporate radio format rules by playing old and new music. In Van Zandt's programming hands, with his hip, low-key, wry delivery (local radio fans can think WEBN's old "Jelly Pudding" show), it somehow sounds fully integrated.
Van Zandt can segue from an old Yardbirds tune into the Charms (the garage-punk rockers, not to be confused with the old Cincinnati doo-wop group), and it makes perfect sense.
"That's the fun of it," he said. "We really play all 60 years of rock 'n' roll in one place. No one's ever really done that. We'll play Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, as well as the Hives, Jet and White Stripes."
It's taken Van Zandt seven long years to nurture the weekly show because radio programmers - usually focused on programming niche music to a narrow demographic - didn't know what to do with it. Van Zandt, a passionate proponent of his concept, argues it's a format that fits practically every music station in America.
"I think we complement any (format)," he said. "I think we fit in everywhere, since we don't fit in anywhere."
While Bruce Springsteen was once called "the future of rock 'n' roll" before he even had a hit, Van Zandt is seen in some veteran rock circles these days as rock's current savior through his radio shows. Or at least the leading preservationist and champion of the gritty, infectious straight-ahead style that originally defined the genre.
Van Zandt has called his "Underground Garage" work and new label "rock's last stand." He acknowledges it's mostly a fun hyperbole, "but the truth is, when we started this seven years ago, it was over.
"There was no new rock 'n' roll on the radio and not one new rock band signed to a major record company that year. It certainly bottomed out.
"It's on its way back," he said, "but there is still no format in radio for new rock 'n' roll, as odd as that sounds. We are the only ones."
Meanwhile, back to those "Sopranos" tidbits: How does Silvio fair in the finale? Van Zandt's small tease: "He's not in much, but when he is, it's usually something important."
Like all fans, he says simply: "I'm sure going to miss it. I can tell you that.”