Undertones "It's Going To Happen"

A Throwback Thursday post:

It was always fun, on my old alternative show, to play throwback tunes. 

Funny to think that it was nearly 20 years ago, that I was playing this song as a Throwback, then!



Hear the song on Youtube.

Beavis & Butthead with Cher "I Got You Babe"

March 28th, 1994:

This cassette has been packed away for year, but I pulled it out, because it contains my debut as a radio DJ, 20 years ago today.

I've written plenty about how I ended up with a job in radio, and told a few stories about being a DJ on a Pop Station.

This first gig, at WABN in Abingdon, Virginia, was as the host of a nightly, call in Request Radio show.  And I've written about at before, here and here.

And I've even written about my very first time on the air.

But here it is.  Warts and all.  On a cassette.  (And in a stream, below)

All things considered, it's not too bad.  The mishap that happened off air is not heard on this tape.  And I very consciously was careful to say as little as possible on my first day, exercising great caution so as not of make a fool of myself.

I recall that after this first shift, Rita, one of the station owners taught me a very important lesson.

She drew on a piece of paper.  "What's this letter?"

"Dubya?"

"You pronounce it 'Double U.'  Not 'Dubya' or "Double-ya.'  The letter is two U's."

So on this tape, you can hear the one and only day that I went on the air and pronounced the "W" in "WABN" as "Dubya."  I have strictly adhered to Rita's correction for following 19 years and 364 days.

To this day, if I hear another DJ on the radio say "Dubya-MVY" it makes me crazy. 

I'm grateful to her, and her husband Craig, for the early guidance and shepherding.  I honestly had no idea that a little detour into a part-time radio gig would result in a 20-years-and-going career.

And certainly nothing on this tape would suggest a bright future.

So, if you can bear it, it's all here.  My first hour on the radio ever.  It's an hour of requests and dedications on a Pop radio station, with Dionne Warwick and Ace Of Base (and surprisingly, some Grateful Dead!), and yes, the hit of 1994-ish, Beavis & Butthead with Cher.

Enjoy.

Click here to open a stream of my radio station debut, 20 years ago.


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Replacements "Everything's Coming Up Roses"

"Yeah, your late 20s can be pretty dramatic."

I was saying this to a friend of mine, who is in her late 20s.  She'd been telling me tales of drama and awkwardness and other silliness that comes with being single and having roommates and lots of independence and no money and such.

Her stories, and the emotional ups and downs within, made me think back on that same period in my life.  I've had it in my head that this was a pretty dramatic, eventful period in my life too.

But I decided to find out.

For most of my late 20s, I kept a pretty comprehensive journal.  Every month or so I'd fill up an entire yellow legal pad with the comings and goings of my life, the loves and hookups and drama, and the vomiting of feelings onto the page, as I tried to make sense of it all.

I remember it feeling dramatic.  But was it really as dramatic as it felt at the time?

At random, I grabbed a legal pad, of the dozens in a box in the basement and read through it.

In short, either I picked the most loaded journal of the bunch, or yes, life was dramatically dramatic when I was in my late 20s.

Within the month that I read through, I'd found out my Aunt had cancer, and old friend stopped speaking to me, another friend's husband committed suicide, my ex-girlfriend's cat died in the middle of the night and she made me come over to her house to deal with the cat-corpse, and, as the capper, my friends and I all lost our jobs.

Despite all this, the journal ends on an up-note, sort of.

"Well, what can you say about a month like this?  Emotionally exhausting and I'm glad it's over.  It'll certainly be interesting reading at some distant date, but right now it's pretty painful.  

Friday night we did the Relay For Life (American Cancer Society fundraiser).  Somewhere near 6am, an annoying 10 year old who'd been hanging around near me, for reasons unknown, the kid took a tennis ball and threw it as hard as he could intentionally hitting me in the nuts.  

The good news is that I think my luck might be changing."

It's nice to know that despite the drama, I kept my sense of humor and a bit of light in the darkness and pain.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Elastica "Stutter"

Having grown up as the child of a teacher and a coach, it was not uncommon to see young adults come up to my Dad and thank him.  They'd let him know that his guidance in math or sports really made a difference in their lives.  It was something Dad is always quietly, clearly proud of.

While my job isn't as profound or important as a teacher, every now and then I get a taste of what my Dad experiences with each bit of gratitude shown to him.

I got this email on Wednesday:

Hi P.J.,

I found your blog a few months ago by searching for the key words Whats The Alternative, WABN, 92.7, and Abingdon.  My friends and I grew up in Saltville, VA about 20 minutes north of Abingdon.  We loved WTA and listened to it regularly.  To this day I still listen to many of the bands that I heard for the first time on WABN.  The reception in Saltville was pretty bad so me and my skate rat/punk rock friends connected tin foil and unraveled coat hangers to our stereos and hung them from our walls and ceilings in an effort to improve our listening experience and to record better quality tapes.  We had several volumes of tapes that we recorded from Whats The Alternative and traded them with one another.  I was very excited to see your blog and read some stories about WABN.  I had always wondered what happened with the station.  I moved away in 2000 and eventually came back and settled in the Tri-cities.  To this day the area still lacks a station that's like WABN.  WABN was a huge part of my early teenage years as it was always on in our  rooms and on our car stereos.  Again, I enjoy the blog and I hope all is well for you.  Attached are two photos of a tape I recorded from the show.  The tape will not play anymore due to warping from sun exposure.  It is dated 7/28/1995.

Take care,

Jesse Whitt

Mt. Carmel, TN

If you look closely, "Stutter" is one of the tracks on this casette.  And if you search on the blog, you'll find that almost every other track listed on the cassette, has appeared as a fond memory/Weekend Post.


Hear the song on Youtube.

PFR "Goldie's Last Day"

This was the subject of some future Weekend Post.

Though I never heard it anywhere else, this one was a semi-frequent request at the station I worked at in the mid-90s in Virginia.

At the time I had always thought it was pretty dang goofy.  Writing about your dog dying under mysterious circumstances and throwing in a bit of Taps struck me as ridiculous.

A few years later, a friend of mine had her dog poisoned, and the goofiness of the song was undercut by the realness of that incident.

I mention this story because this week, I'm turning over the blog to my friend Scott Lajoie, who is now making his life's work about the concern for animal welfare.  

While it's easy to make light (or be like Nelson Muntz on The Simpsons and suggest we "Nuke The Whales"), there is important work to be done, and important issues to consider.  It is pretty impressive that right on Cape Cod, there is a worldwide-ranging organization working to protect and preserve rights for animals, and bring awareness to issues much larger, including the fur and ivory trade for instance.

Musicians have been bringing awareness to these topics in their songs for many, many years, and Scott will highlight a few of them, and talk about the organization he works for, The International Fund For Animal Welfare.

And if you still need to make thing light, when you say IFAW, you can say it like Nelson Muntz says "HAW-Haw!"

Hear the song on Youtube.