THE NEWS ... WITH LOUDON WAINWRIGHT.

Byline: - David Bloom

This is the summer of Loudon Wainwright's discontent. Or at least his most discontented album in a while - ``Social Studies,'' particularly its centerpiece, ``Y2K,'' which skewers the computer age.

Wainwright, 52, is celebrating the album's release this week in 8:30 shows tonight and Wednesday at Largo, 432 N. Fairfax Ave.

The peppery ``Social Studies'' collects some of the satirical, newsy songs Wainwright wrote for shows such as ABC-TV's ``Nightline'' and National Public Radio programs during the 1990s.

``I was thinking, `Boy I like these songs. Maybe it would be good to put them together in a collection to serve as a look back over the past 10 years,' '' Wainwright said.

But how does 10-year-old satire age?

``It was a concern that obviously didn't stop me. The songs I chose from do have legs,'' he said.

Sometimes, even, the news of the moment continues to be momentous years later, Wainwright said, as is the case with ``Bad Man,'' written about Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in 1991.

``We're still bombing (the Iraqis),'' Wainwright said. ``That one won't go off the shelves - they'll just be updating it for years.''

Where the album looks forward, if only by six months, is on ``Y2K.''

Wainwright grumbles about the millennial computer bug that has sent some into an end-times tizzy, while spawning a mini-industry of code cleaners rooting out possible problems in aging computer systems that run much of Western civilization's complex infrastructure.

Wainwright said forthrightly that he wrote the song ``because I wanted to raise public awareness of the problem, and I wanted to make a lot of money.''

It just may work.

``Y2K'' is getting some airplay and far more notoriety than just about anything the oft-underappreciated songsmith has written since 1972's ``Dead Skunk.'' At the same time, Wainwright admits to being ``discontented'' with the go-go days of the Internet Age.

``I don't have a computer, but I just see people looking at more screens,'' Wainwright said. ``I can appreciate the speed element of it all, the power element of it all, but I suspect things are lost.''

The notion of screens and their impact on life is even stronger in a song that didn't make the album, ``Skies, Eyes and Faces,'' Wainwright said.

``We're not looking at each other anymore, we're not looking up at the sky,''

Wainwright said. ``We're looking into our laps. Just as a cranky old observer, it bugs me.'' Instead of sending e-mail, ``What about a phone call or writing?'' he said. ``I want some more humanity. I don't think that's too much to ask.''

And though he's not too concerned about what Y2K will mean for the United States, seeing a story that said Russia was just beginning to deal with its own millennial bug issues was unsettling.

``When I go to the supermarket, I pick up an extra gallon of water, just in case,'' Wainwright said.

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Photo: Wainwright on the computer age: ``I want some more humanity. I don't think that's too much to ask.''