Old Men on the Radio - WRCT Pittsburgh July 3, 2011

Time to revive this zombie with a five-hour mega-post.

Sometime in October 1990, at 3 AM on a Wednesday (if I remember correctly), as a sophomore civil engineering student at Carnegie Mellon, I turned on the radio transmitter for WRCT 88.3 FM in Pittsburgh, PA, and began my 17-year love affair with college radio. To put things in perspective, some of the hot new singles at the station were Nirvana's "Sliver/Dive" and Beat Happening's "Red Head Walking/Secret Picnic Spot" on Sub Pop, Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker/Night Creatures" on Merge, and Jesus Lizard's "Mouthbreather/Sunday You Need Love" on Touch n Go. It was a magical time...

My last regular radio gig was a summertime shift in 2006. My last radio show was sometime in January 2007 over winter break, during what WRCT calls "random schedule." After that I started spending more of my free time on babies, home improvements, and all the other "adult" responsibilities I managed to put off until my mid-30s.

I turned 40 earlier this year. My wife asked me what I wanted to do. I'm not the "guest of honor" type so I refused any ideas for a party - surprise or otherwise. After a few weeks contemplation it struck me - Radio. I wanted to go back on the air with a couple close friends from back in the day. So we did. This is the bumbling result. Five hours of college radio by three guys with musical tastes obviously rooted in the late-80s/early-90s punk and indie scenes.

Thanks to modern technology you can download a zip file containing five 128 bitrate mp3 files covering the whole nerdly affair. WRCT records mp3 archives of every minute of broadcast in 1:10 blocks. The last 10 minutes of each file roughly overlaps the first ten minutes of the following file. To compensate for this in iTunes I set start/end times for each file to approximate continuity from one file to the next. It's not perfect but for me its close enough... and a hell of a lot easier than recording my shows on c90 cassettes back in the old days. Anyway, I don't know if my start/end times are embedded in the mp3 files here, so I noted them in the Comments field of each files' ID3 metadata just in case.

I hope you enjoy listening to this because I sure as hell enjoyed doing it.

Metalhead phone tree

Playlist: Chavez - top pocket man
Minutemen - shit from an old notebook
Come - car
Bailter Space - splat
The Speaking Canaries - life like homes
The Dead C. - This scary nest
Evergreen - petting the beast
Shorty - Hot for Teacher
Big Star - september girls
My Dad Is Dead - cool rain
The Vaselines - son of a gun
The Celibate Rifles - pretty colours
Implodes - song for fucking damon ii (trap door)
Battles - Dominican Fade
salt chunk mary - You Can't Hang
Zombi - Digitalis
Sludgehammer - Dynamite Lady
Devo - Uncontrollable Urge
thomas jefferson slave appartments - cheater's heaven
Gaunt - bored girls
Death of Samantha - geisha girl
Rocket From the Tombs - ain't it fun
Hot Snakes - hatchet job
The Ex - Burnsome
The Wave Pictures - canary wharf
Deerhunter - basement scene
Pavement - Box Elder
the dynamic truths - you take it all
the Warmers - snake charmer
Silkworm - Wet Firecracker
The Hold Steady - Banging Camp
Prisonshake - Crush Me
The Walkmen - The Rat
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Johnny Appleseed
The Librarians - peace & quiet
Registrators - i call your name
The Jam - in the city
The Mono Men - took that thing
Prisonshake - almost always there
Chavez - nailed to the blank spot
Guided By Voices - jar of cardinals
The Testors - time is mine
Kurt Vile - Peeping Tomboy
Subvert Blaze - Fool
Polvo - bombsthatfallfromyoureyes
The Fall - Hip Priest
John Spencer Blues Explosion - Train #1
Beat Happening / Screaming Trees - Polly Pereguinn
Kustomized - the day i had some fun
The Effigies - body bag
Mclusky - to hell with good intentions
Volcano Suns - jak
Claw Hammer - succotash
The Embarrassment - (i'm a) don juan
Pitchblende - A Penny for the Guy
The Gordons - Sometimes
Dead Moon - Johnny's Got a Gun
Dustdevils - Throw the Bottle Full
Tom Waits - Way Down in the Hole
the 1985 - Deepest Blue
Great Plains - Letter to a Fanzine
LCD Soundsystem - Home
Nirvana - On a Plain

The 1985 - Nerve 80

Since my friend John commented on my last post, I will respond by taking food out of his mouth.

The 1985 began as visionaries.  In the mid 90s, the most common indie rock touchstones were from the early 70s - a la Neil Young  - and the early 90s - a la Slint.  The early 80s were treated like that kid in middle school who still peed with his pants around his ankles.  A handful of bands, though, dripped with golden inspiration from the likes of PiL, Gang of Four, Devo, MX-80, and Contortions.  Among those prescient tastemakers were Pittsburgh's own The 1985.

The '85 were not mere revivalists.  There was a (most likely) conscious similarity to contemporaries like Nation of Ulysses and Arab on Radar, and a (perhaps more) coincidental sonic kinship with The VSS and Clikitat Ikatowi.  

Nerve 80 was the first of two full length albums from the '85.  I am proud that I contributed to its creation, while also disappointed in my inability to gain them any greater exposure.  Several dozen copies of the CD are likely still in the possession of "John," occasional commenter on this very blog.  If you dig this CD please consider making contact with him for a hardcopy, as well as his more recent musical adventures in ((microwaves)).  

red hot party favor

Hurl - Bessemer Process 2x7" | Shale - Truth/Lie 12" EP | Swob - The Explosion of Scilence 7"

I was a DJ at WRCT 88.3 fm at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh during my college years.  I didn't play guitar or drums, the standard indie rock instruments of the day, but I wanted to be a part of the burgeoning local scene.  My solution was to pool resources with several of my station alumni friends and help release records by some of our favorite local bands.

Fiscally speaking, our independent record label failed horribly.  It was a common story then and now, and it's not worth retelling.  Suffice to say that our enthusiasm for the business did not match our enthusiasm for the music.  

Musically speaking, however, I am pleased with our legacy.  Among our releases were Hurl's The Bessemer Process 2x7" and Shale's Truth/Lie 12" EP.   If memory serves, those were two of the three to be celebrated at the advertised "TRIPLE RECORD RELEASE PARTY!" on your left.  Also included, mostly because of dumb luck and a wealth of photos archived at Hurl's MySpace page, is the third and final 7" release by local art damage no wave scoundrels Swob.

For the unfamiliar:

Hurl = midwestern indie rock a la Bitch Magnet, Don Caballero, Hum, Slint (fun fact - Hurl bassist/vocalist Matt Jencick has been Slint's bassist for their recent reunion performances)

Shale = heavy post-punk indie crossed with screamo/hardcore

Swob =  psychopathic musings accompanied by atonal guitar splattered with tribal thuds.

touch that dial and you're history

(PS, if anyone reading has some good digital images of any of these records' artwork, please pass 'em on, eh?)

Thee Speaking Canaries - The Joy of Wine LP

Right about the time that Don Caballero began turning heads outside of Pittsburgh, drummer Damon Che's "other band," Thee Speaking Canaries, started playing out around town.  They began as a trio with Che on guitar and lead vocals, Karl Hendricks on bass and occasional vocals, and Ian Williams on drums.  Williams was succeeded by Noah Leger in time for the recording of this, their first LP.  

The Joy of Wine was released in a limited edition of 500 vinyl copies on the local indie Mind Cure.  It's mostly reminiscent of midwestern indie rock styles from the time, and quite a few steps away from the Canaries' later and better known turn as the bastard child of a Sonic Youth-Wayne Rogers-Van Halen three way orgy.  

Hate your war on cool