college radio stuff

[Halfman]

Hey,

Here’s your chance to post stories about your college radio experiences. Anything goes here, even just hearing a cool band on yr local station.

Mine is kind of lame, I think. I was just languishing around the house trying to get a bead on life. Fooled around and found a station at local Goshen College, (yes, the same Goshen that made national news for the factory shooting yesterday), a private school ran by the Mennonite Church (similar to Amish, but uses electricity, cars and is inconspicuous in daily dress and affairs) here in Indiana.

The station allows students to take over from 11pm to 1am during school semesters. What caught my ear was a guy who had a show called "Vagrant Radio". Old boy played everything from the Ramones, to Black Flag, to Big Black and a weekly dose of Wesley Willis. I ended up calling the guy and found he was like five years younger than me. Instantly, I became old school [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] !

Anyway, me and the guy became friends and I even got to appear on the show once. Lost track of him for a year or so. Suddenly, he popped up one day as my next-door neighbor. We got reacquainted, or rather, I got to bug him more often and in person instead of over the phone.

He eventually got a new show together and I got to doing a speaking bit, kind of playing a guy, or bum, if you will, living under a bridge in the area here. He got a little tyrannical about this deal since he went to a lot of trouble organizing and enlisting a troupe, of sorts. I didn’t suffer him well and I ended up disassociating myself from him and the show. It turned out to be camp toliet humor and other contrived blatherings. The music was obscure and rarely, if ever, did he mentioned who he played.

As you could guess, it folded up after about 2 months of episodes. Old boy split from where I live and now has investigators looking for him.

The experience was fine in retrospect. If he and I didn’t fall out, I probably wouldn’t have made it to FreakScene and rekindled my Dino Jr. interest. He thought J was passe. That must have been the subconscious clue to drop him [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img] .

Goshen College still has the slots. Most of the folks on it this year have sucked, playing a lot of electronica and sharing a lot of useless in-jokes. Last week, a pair of morons were playing some Fugazi and I forget who else, but it was good enough to make me call them up. Congratulated them on their taste and mentioned the J show and gave them the web address. The losers got on the air and had named someone else’s website as the one I mentioned and made a mock out of it and promptly stewed in the suckage of all of their next selections. They punished themselves enough so I didn’t have to call them back.

Notre Dame also has a decent show on the weekends called Nocturn NightFlights. They are playing some Mouse, MXPX, etc. Good jams every week. This show has been around for about 3 years.

Lastly (whew!), the high school system in South Bend also has a station they use during the daytime to let students play what they want for grades in a vocational class. Heard one segment in which this mellowed out punk girl would play Rancid, MXPX, Five Iron Frenzy etc.. Emailed her a few times, never hooked up. Not really into pursuring jail even for the sake of shared music….Thanks for reading.

Tom
P.S. am listening to N.D.’s now, Heard Elliot Smith, Radiohead, Ben Folds Five and some Sesame Street cover of Shiny Happy People called Furry Scary Monsters or something…. pretty funny [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[ December 08, 2001: Message edited by: Half-Man ]</p>

[rosa]

Hey Tom,

When I was in college, I had a big crush on a guy who lived in my dorm. He was a rich boy from Atlanta; can guarantee he never looked twice at me. But he landed a show on the college station, along with another guy from our dorm, and they split up their airtime so it was half "indie rock" and half "hardcore". It’s so lame, but part of the reason I dug Clark so much was his thick southern drawl; I used to tape their radio show, but hit pause during the actual music, so I had a good half hour of just him talking.

I visited the station a couple times during their show. It was really small and outsiders weren’t allowed in, but we snuck in anyway. A bunch of my guy friends decided to form this fake band called Grass Mantis, and Clark set up a mock interview which they deadpanned all the way through. It was totally improvised and totally funny, really mimicking the other snooty college shows around at the time. The Grass Mantis had a washboard player, 8 tracks of keyboards, and their main influences were D. Boon and John Fogerty.

So that’s my little story. Last time I saw Clark, he was going to Germany for a year, and his parents were building a recording studio onto the house for him. Musta been nice. But he did always sneak stuff out of the college station for me to copy. And he was a big Dino fan. Ah well.

take care
Rosa

[SG]

Good topic Tom!
From late 89 to 97 I listened to alot of college radio,over the last few years I have`nt tuned in much,alot of the people who were there years ago are gone.
The first show I listened to was a jazz/blues show,it was hosted by a relative of Sarah MacLachlan if you can believe that.Played a good mix of early jazz:Louis Armstrong,Jelly Roll Morton,Bix Beiderbecke,etc. including some lesser known artists from that era like Tiny Parham.Played some big band era stuff:Count Basie,Woody Herman,Les Brown,etc. and singers:Billie Holiday,Sarah Vaughan,Ella Fitzgerald,etc. and lesser known singers like Nellie Lutcher.
For blues stuff it ranged from Robert Johnson to Buddy Guy to Jimmy Witherspoon.

Another cool show was half classic rock(obsure stuff,not hits) and jazz/blues in the 2nd hour.The first hour ranged from Soft Machine to Family to Fairport Convention.In the second hour it ranged from Son House to Mal Waldron,one night he played a long Manfred Mann song(the do wah diddy diddy guy,that`s all I thought that guy did)that was jazzy.

There was also some other jazz shows that great as well,played alot of stuff the CBC would`nt play like free jazz.

post more later.

[SG]

More college radio memories:
There used to be a show on fridays that was cool,mostly punk but he threw some other stuff in there sometimes.Every week you could hear Black Flag,Minor Threat,Descendents,Crass,Mekons,Gang Of Four,X, etc. he also used to read articles talk about movies he saw and play related songs.He saw a movie called Repulsion,guess what song he played?(he did`nt like Dinosaur but played them sometimes anyway).

Another cool show I used to catch was on Sunday nights,he played Dino,Sebadoh,Buffalo Tom,Unrest,Vic Chesnutt,Sonic Youth,Red Red Meat,Palace Brothers,Velvet Underground,etc.
he also threw in alot of crooners and jazz singers:Frank Sinatra,Tony Bennett,Ella Fitzgerald,Billie Holiday,Dean Martin,Sammy Davis Jr,Sarah Vaughan,etc.

One of the last shows I listened to before I stopped listening to college radio was on Monday nights,they used to play alot of Superchunk,Polvo,Archers Of Loaf,Swervedriver,Helium,June of 44,Grifters,Blonde Redhead,Flying Saucer Attack,Fugazi,etc.

[Halfman]

Good replies, folks!

Sorry that dude was blind, Rosa [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] Some folks don’t know to bask and ask for prayers [img]images/smiles/icon_cool.gif[/img] .

Ol’ boy wanted me to track down Wesley Willis and get him to come on the show. I tried but it is pretty difficult without combing all the clubs he played at. Willis doesn’t have good info on the net to send inquiries here. If someone else has suggestions, it would be appreciated.

I have two suggestions to add on reforming Grass Mantis. I’ll let you decide who….

Salami, it is no wonder you would reply to this thread and in such a fashion. What is odd is why you no longer listen. Seems like a lot os going on there as far as people with taste.

Glad to hear you have something out that way Tony. Figured you would be pulling the Atlanta signals, though.

Would like to hear some info from the Northeast, Northwest, Cali, the Raleigh/Charlotte/Durham Triangle, always a good scene comes from there, and anyone else. For Criminey’s sake.

[rosa]

Tom,

There’s some sort of little radio station out here (Bay Area) that plays some pretty obscure stuff; I’m guessing it’s a college station. You can tell by the way they let the rap songs run with absolutely no censorship, which is cool. The format also seems kinda college-radio; 3 or 4 hour blocks of different genres. The thing is, I can only pick it up in certain neighborhoods when I’m driving around.

Sorry I don’t know more; I’ll see what I can find out. Anyone else in the Bay Area? Maybe buckingham rabbit knows. I think it’s 90.3 FM?

take care
rosa

p.s. I’d be interested in hearing if any of you have access to a good dirty rockabilly show. There was a great one in Vermont called Cockfight…probably the only thing I miss about college.

[ December 12, 2001: Message edited by: rosa ]</p>

[SG]

Tom-One reason why I don`t listen to the radio much is where I live now the station does`nt come in as clear as it did where I used to live.Another reason is I have so many cd`s and tapes to listen to I`d rather spend time listening to that.Alot of the people who did shows years ago are gone,it`s not the same without them.

I should mention when I first heard Wesley Willis,around 94 I think,this woman on the college station lived in Chicago for awhile,she was back here visiting friends and decided to play some Wesley Willis,I think it might have been his first album,she met him a few times since she got into the music scene there,she even dated Steve Albini for awhile.
Ever see that video for "Alanis Morrisette" he did?Wesley does cartwheels in it,he`s 300 pounds!
Is he a BEARS fan?maybe he could end his songs with ROCK OVER LONDON ROCK ON CHICAGO GO BEARS!

[AGAP]

I don’t listen to a lot of radio anymore but when I did we have a local station that started playing all kinds of punk which was cool. One of the great thing about the local University stations is they sponsor some great shows…recently brought PSOI in. Way back they were sponsoring local punk shows…where I met most of my current pals…gotta love them for that. Some of those old pals have shows on the local radio now, mostly heavy mod stuff though…sometimes some Wayne Kramer and Hellacopters though which is great. On the internet there are some great radio stations available, best of course being Freakscene Radio…J 24/7…doesn’t get much better than that.

Although on Dec 27 9:03 Swedish time (I think thats around 1pm my time…central time) will be broadcasting a Hellacopters live concert. Recorded live at Roskildefestivel in Denmark just awhile ago. Think I will check that out…

http://www.streaming.telia.com/startmedia/default.asp?k=137&n=P3

Allison

[ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: Another Girl Another Planet ]</p>

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