For the past four decades, he's come to the rock-guitar aid of childhood friend Bruce Springsteen whenever Springsteen needed the legendary E Street Band for yet another world tour. On television, Van Zandt has deftly played helmet-haired Tony Soprano crew member and confidante Silvio Dante on HBO's "The Sopranos" since the show's 1999 debut.

But for the past three years, much of Van Zandt's time has also been spent ruling over "Little Steven's Underground Garage," a weekly two-hour rock 'n' roll radio party blending new and old music falling under his definition of the garage-rock genre. Hosted by the musically knowledgeable and surprisingly quick-humored Van Zandt, the nationally syndicated program is broadcast locally on classic-rock radio station KPOI 105.9 FM at 10 p.m. Sundays.

Van Zandt's "Underground Garage" is part of a growing national trend on terrestrial and satellite radio toward offering veteran musicians the opportunity to be part-time celebrity deejays.

By doubling or tripling time-period ratings for many of the 150-plus stations that air it, "Underground Garage" hastened the debuts of other hit-or-miss shows hosted by the likes of Alice Cooper (whose show also has been added by KPOI), Mojo Nixon, Rob Zombie, Kurtis Blow and former Sex Pistol Steve Jones.

But Van Zandt dreamed up the idea for "Underground Garage" as a lifelong fan of rock 'n' roll.

Ask him to recommend some new stuff for a budding home garage collection and he'll take the task as seriously as a parent asked to name a favorite child. After some thought, a trio of Swedish bands — Soundtrack of Our Lives, The Caesars and the intriguingly named Hawaii Mud Bombers — were his first choices.

"Soundtrack's new album is just absolutely a classic. Everybody should go out and buy that one," he mused, in an easygoing, just-shooting-the-bull-over-beers New Jersey accent.

"The Launderettes are an all-girl group from Norway ... the song is called 'Fluff And Fold,' which you gotta love that," said Van Zandt, 54, chuckling.

The list went on, as did Van Zandt: "The thing that's missing in most (radio) stations across the world is nobody's encouraging these new rock 'n' roll bands. Nobody's playing 'em. And there's no format that includes new rock 'n' roll," he said. "You can hear new hard rock, new hip-hop and new pop. But you cannot hear new rock 'n' roll. ... That's the main reason we started the show."

Van Zandt launched "Underground Garage" in April 2002, on 23 stations intrigued but a bit unsure of his music collection's place on mainstream radio. He arranged personal sit-downs with each music director to sell them on his passion and belief that an eclectic two-hour garage-rock show would actually find an audience. When the audience showed up, other stations added the program. KPOI-FM, then known as KAHA-FM, began carrying the show in December 2003.

On Van Zandt's era-spanning show, Elvis Presley's chugging rockabilly classic "That's Alright Mama" can and does logically follow The White Stripes' percolating angst-fest "Blue Orchid." Tucked into the "Underground Garage" Mother's Day show was a set featuring Mothers Of Invention ("Motherly Love"), Social Distortion ("Mommy's Little Monster"), The Shirelles ("Mama Said") and Soundtrack of Our Lives ("Mother One Track Mind").

Van Zandt on garage rock: "It starts off with a certain reverence, certain respect and certain direct influence from the '50s and '60s. That's where it begins. ... It's the whole sensibility of rock 'n' roll before it was an art form, particularly in that '64, '65, '66 period, when it was still pop and still fun."

In garage, songs are kept essentially simple — electric guitars, bass, drums, vocals, maybe some synths. Nothing gets moody or slow. Everything pretty much rocks ... loudly.

"That's why most of the songs I play are three minutes long," said Van Zandt, laughing. "People used to dance to rock 'n' roll. (No one) remembers that. But we did."

Van Zandt selects a theme for each week's show — Valentine's Day, perhaps, or the coinciding anniversaries of the film "Easy Rider" and the French Revolution — picks the tunes and writes a 25-page script leaving room for humorous ad-libbing. "Our basic philosophy is we'll celebrate anything," he said. "Give us any excuse — the day they invented Junior Mints — we're there!"

Van Zandt boasts of first introducing The White Stripes, The Hives, The Vines, Jet, Soundtrack Of Our Lives, The Mooney Suzuki and The Donnas to radio listeners. Though Van Zandt estimated the "Underground Garage" playlist ratio as 60 percent "the entire 50 years of rock 'n' roll" and 40 percent new music, he's proud that his unique-for-mainstream-radio mix pays more than lip service to new, little-played rock bands.

"I play 'em back to back," said Van Zandt of the old and new. "The cool thing about having new stuff and old stuff in the same show is that the new stuff has more depth because it is part of a continuum that includes the old stuff. And the old stuff has more relevance because it is directly related to the new stuff.

"Both gain strength by the other. And it all becomes one ... cool ... thing. A great, cool road that goes back to the '50s and extends into the future."

Van Zandt ties the music together with a very distinct personality, part his own and part the Little Steven persona he's cultivated over his years working solo and with Springsteen.

"I don't take surveys. I don't ask anybody's opinion," said Van Zandt. "I play exactly what I want to and I say, 'I dig this. So let me turn you on to some cool new stuff and maybe some cool old stuff you either don't remember, never heard or haven't heard for a long time.' "

Currently pulling 12- to 14-hour days on what he surmised would really be the final season of "The Sopranos," Van Zandt lamented having time for only five albums a day instead of the 20 or so he'd absorb during the first couple of years of "Underground Garage." His downtime on the "Sopranos" set is spent on the phone talking about, on his laptop writing about, or listening to new garage. He's also working to attract sponsors for a multi-act "Underground Garage" tour, and developing several TV projects related to the radio show.

"We're fighting a revolution here," he said. "I'm very old-school about this. I want these bands to sell records and to make a living playing rock 'n' roll, which is almost impossible these days."

Only the suggestion that the success of "Underground Garage" so far should be enough to make him happy — he claims a million listeners in syndication and more than 100,000 on a Sirius satellite radio channel — made the otherwise jovial Van Zandt bristle a bit.

"It hasn't done bad. I wouldn't say I'm happy, though, no. I'm never happy," said Van Zandt. "I'm not gonna be happy until people start listening to the radio again, going to shows, buying records and realizing that there's more in the world than just hip-hop."

Word, Little Steven.

Reach Derek Paiva at 525-8005 or dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.