College Radio Show: WDCV 88.3 FM, April 1991

WDCV 88.3, Dickinson College, April 1991, DJ Pete Bilderback by Pete Bilderback on Mixcloud

This is another of my college radio shows that I recorded. I don't believe this was my finest hour. The tape is dated April 1991, so this would have been just before I graduated. I seem to have already checked out. Three times I just let a record run into the next track, including the entire three song b-side of Sebadoh's "Gimme Indie Rock" 7". On the positive side, I let a little kid do one of the station IDs. I recorded some Beat Happening LPs over side two of the cassette, so I'm guessing the show didn't get any better from there.

A lot of my better radio shows went missing when my car was broken into outside the 9:30 Club (in the nearby paid lot no less). Or at least, I'd like to believe they were better than this.

Includes music by: Antietam, Dogbowl, The Fluid, Hypnolovewheel, Icky Joey, TAD, Beat Happening, Azalia Snail, Fishbone, Sly & The Family Stone, Buffalo Tom, Bongwater and Yo La Tengo.

College Radio Show: WDCV 88.3 FM, Summer 1990

Here's another of my college radio shows from 1990. This one is kind of weird. First of all, I must be the only DJ ever to follow Public Enemy's "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" with The Young Fresh Fellows' "Taco Wagon." I have no idea what I was thinking there.

At the time the station had hip-hop shows and it had college rock shows, but there was zero overlap between them. I viewed it as a kind of musical apartheid. I felt that the best hip-hop ought to be getting airplay outside of the ghetto of "urban" shows. While my attempt at musical integration was a good idea in theory, following Public Enemy with the Young Fresh Fellows just shows how hard it was to successfully pull it off in practice. It also arguably smacks of tokenism. I was trying anyway.

Another odd thing about this tape is that in over 50 minutes I did not speak once. I guess I was ignoring the "When You Play It, Say It" stickers record labels were slapping on their promos back then.

All that said, there is some good music here, including a track from Kirk Kelly that I had recorded live in the studio earlier in the year. Other artists featured include: ALL, The Jack Rubies, Thee Hypnotics, Iggy Pop, The Pretenders, King Missile, Sonic Youth, Game Theory, Christmas, The Walkabouts and Beat Happening. Lots of good music, but it doesn't fit together very well.

I recorded over side two of this cassette, so I hate to think how embarrassing that side must have been.

WDCV 88.3, Dickinson College, Summer 1990, DJ Pete Bilderback by Pete Bilderback on Mixcloud

College Radio Show: WDCV 88.3 FM, February 1989

Here's another old college radio show I uploaded to MixCloud. From February 1989, this is the earliest surviving tape that I have. Unfortunately, I lost lost a lot of tapes when my car got broken into outside the old 9:30 Club in D.C. many years ago.

This show features The Stump Wizards, Buzzcocks, Camper Van Beethoven, Half Japanese, The Chills, XTC, Elvis Costello, Iggy and the Stooges, The Divine Horsemen, Giant Sand, Chris McGregor, Tom Waits and others.

WDCV 88.3, Dickinson College, February 1989, DJ Pete Bilderback by Pete Bilderback on Mixcloud

College Radio Show: WDCV 88.3 FM, November 1990

I just discovered MixCloud and uploaded one of my old college radio shows.

Featured artists include: Redd Kross, Bongwater, TAD, Mark Arm, Teenage Fanclub, Das Damen, Screaming Trees, Sister Double Happiness, Paleface, King Missile, Roky Erickson, Superchunk, Sun Ra, Three, Squirrel Bait and others.

WDCV 88.3, Dickinson College, November 1990, DJ Pete Bilderback by Pete Bilderback on Mixcloud

Another Old Radio Show

WDCV has audio from another of my old radio shows up on their tumblr blog. You'll need to go there directly to hear it. This show aired sometime in March of 1991, which means that the cassette tape I took the audio from will be old enough to buy a drink sometime this month.

Here is my playlist from that evening:

0:00 PSA Followed by bitter DJ Rant

0:38 Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - "Green Peppers"

2:05 Tom Zè - "Mã"

5:49 Sly And The Family Stone - "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"

10:18 Daniel Owino Misiani - "Joshirati Misiani "

15:10 DJ Announcements

15:30 Fugazi - "Waiting Room" *listener request

18:20 Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band - "Ella Guru"

20:48 Robyn Hitchcock - "The Ghost In You" [Psychedelic Furs Cover] *listener request

23:59 Phil Ochs - "Tape From California"

30:38 DJ Announcements

31:25 Chris McGreggor Brotherhood Of Breath - "Country Cooking"

36:30 Bad Brains - "Day Tripper/She's A Rainbow [Live]" [Beatles/Rolling Stones Cover]

41:00 Kip Kyler And His Flips - "Jungle Hop"

43:00 The Busters - "Bust Out"

45:30 Elvis Presley - "Patch It Up [Live]" *listener request

48:56 DJ Announcements

49:35 Rahsaan Roland Kirk - "Multihorn Variations"

54:26 Das Damen - "Sky Yen"

57:05 Gilberto Gil - "Quilombo, o El Dorado Negro"

61:28 Snakefinger - "The Man In The Dark Sedan"

65:46 Tom Waits - "16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six"

70:18 Sun Ra And His Arkestra - "Space Is The Place"

79:10 DJ Announcements

79:51 Sly And The Family Stone - "Ride The Rhythm" and "Family Affair"

85:23 Love - "You I'll Be Following"

87:40 Yung Wu - "Aspiration"

91:17 The Mekons - "I Can't Find My Money" [Cuts Off]

I think I was in a slightly pissed off mood that evening, in part because I was going to be graduating in a couple months and wouldn't have a radio show anymore. Also, at the time I felt certain songs were getting overplayed on the station (I specifically mention Material Issue's "Valerie Loves Me" in my opening rant, and I have to confess I still find that song slightly annoying). I was very much of the view that college radio should have a freewheeling, "anything goes" kind of vibe to it, and not simply mimic the highly repetitive nature of commercial radio with a different playlist of "hits." Not everyone shared, or even appreciated, that vision which is understandable. 

My playlist that evening was an attempt to redress that balance, although I notice that some college radio favorites of the era also make appearances. Some of those were listener requests, but even at my most bitter I wasn't the kind of person who was going to turn down a request for music by Fugazi or Robyn Hitchcock in order to prove some pedantic point. And I certainly would never turn down a request to play Elvis the King under any circumstances.

While I winced a couple times listening to my opening rant, I still find this pretty fun to listen to, and when the tape cut off during The Mekons' "I Can't Find My Money" I was pretty bummed, not just because it's a great song, but because I found myself wondering what I was going to play next.

Kingface, Fugazi, Scram, Slush Puppies...24 Years Ago

This is from today's post at the WDCV tumblr blog, and I noticed the date was exactly 24 years ago today. This show happened during my freshman year at Dickinson, and was booked by my friends David Brower and Michael Lenzi. Four bands for $3. Adjusted for inflation this would work out to about $5.70 today. Still, not a bad deal.

At the time Fugazi had yet to release their debut EP. Kingface was another D.C. area post-hardcore band, you can hear them on Dischord's State Of The Union compilation LP. SCRAM was white-boy ska/reggae act from Philly. The Slush Puppies featured a pre-Superchunk Mac McCaughan. They showed up selling a really cool box set of 7" singles called "Evil I Do Not" with contributions from other North Carolina acts like Wwax, Egg Egg, Black Girls and Angels of Epistemology. I foolishly sold my copy on eBay when I was in grad school because I needed to eat or something. If anybody has a copy, let me know, as I'd love to hear it again.

Old Radio Show

My old college radio station, WDCV at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, has started a tumblr blog to document the station's history in honor of its 50th anniversary year. Brenda Landis, the station's advisor, has posted some really interesting artifacts there, including audio from a radio show I did back on February 16th of 1989 (almost 23 years ago to the day).

Here is my playlist for the evening:

0:00 New Order - "Dream Attack" [From Previous Program]
0:12 DJ Introduction
0:41 The Stump Wizards - "Firemine"
02:36 Buzzcocks - "Orgasm Addict"
04:32 Camper Van Beethoven - "Harmony In My Head" [Buzzcocks Cover]
07:14 Half Japanese - "Day And Night"
10:01 The Chills - "Bee Bah Bee Bah Be Boe"
12:32 PSA
13:03 DJ Announcements
13:28 Elvis Costello - "Let Him Dangle"
17:54 XTC - "Mayor Of Simpleton"
21:37 Station ID by Vitus Matare of Trotsky Icepick
21:58 Trotsky Icepick - "Mar Vista Bus Stop"
24:53 DJ Announcements
25:31 Angst - "Time To Understand"
28:51 Christmas - "This Is Not A Test"
31:45 Throwing Muses - "Fall Down"
35:18 Lou Reed - "Good Evening Mr. Waldheim"
39:49 DJ Announcements
40:11 Ben Vaughn Combo - "She's Your Problem Now"
43:39 Spinal Tap - "Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight"
46:12 Iggy And The Stooges - "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell"
50:39 Spinal Tap - "Hell Hole"
53:44 Nine Pound Hammer - "Bye, Bye Glen Frey"
55:32 DJ Announcements
56:19 Chris McGregor Brotherhood of Breath - "Country Cooking"
61:26 Tom Waits - "Swordfishtrombone"
64:20 Bongos, Bass And Bob - "The Clothes Of The Dead"
67:46 Captain Beefheart - "When I See Mommy I Feel Like A Mummy"
72:21 DJ Announcements
73:19 Sweet Baby - "Pathetic"
75:07 Field Trip - "Tunneling"
78:03 The Divine Horsemen - "Someone Like You"
82:06 Giant Sand - "Mountain Of Love"
86:00 DJ Announcements
86:54 The Feelies - "Slipping (Into Something)"
91:59 Roger Manning - "The #14 Blues" [cuts off]

Listening to this today is a little embarrassing, especially when I hear my younger self introducing a song by Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath as "sort of a, um, a jazz inflected, um, with reggae type music." Ouch. Perhaps the reason I spoke so little during this program was because I was following Abraham Lincoln's dictum that it is "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Unfortunately, I said just a few words too many that evening to leave room for doubt. But I have to remind myself I was only 19 years old at the time, and even if I didn't know how to describe it, I was at least adventurous enough to play Chris McGregor's music alongside such typical college radio fare as Elvis Costello and XTC.

Some of the music I played on that night I still listen to today, some of it I don't even remember. On the whole, the program is probably a decent snapshot into what was going on in college radio during the late 80s. By this time R.E.M. had become platinum sellers thanks in part to support from college radio, and major labels were starting to look to college radio as a sort of "farm system" where they could break artists before pushing them to larger commercial stations. Further, the spread of industry trade magazines like CMJ were helping to establish an identifiable "college radio" sound, while at the same time homogenizing the medium to some degree. 

For myself, at the time, I just thought I was just playing some music I liked, maybe exposing people to stuff they hadn't heard before, and most of all having fun. Thanks to Brenda for finding room on the internet for this little time capsule. I hope you enjoy it.