Tuesday, November 29, 2005
When I Think About Me I Touch Myself
Along with fellow judges Dave and Matt, I was a college radio guy. From 1989 to 1993, when I wasn't in class or sleeping, I was usually at Middlebury College's WRMC--on the air, in the office going through new releases before they were put out for the djs, combing through the record stacks for forgotten gems, reading Rockpool or College Music Journal (CMJ) in the lounge.
Douglas Wolk was a college dj in the late 1980s, just before my time, and he was managing editor of CMJ during the mid-1990s, just after. Now he writes for Slate, including this recent piece that brings back a lot of memories. This description struck me:
Douglas Wolk was a college dj in the late 1980s, just before my time, and he was managing editor of CMJ during the mid-1990s, just after. Now he writes for Slate, including this recent piece that brings back a lot of memories. This description struck me:
At my old station, we were pretty sure the studio's control panel had been welded together from archaic dishwasher parts, but the staff happily argued for hours over the merits of records pressed in editions of 500 copies, and we'd stay on the air for nine hours straight if the DJs scheduled after us had overslept.That was WRMC, down to the last dishwasher part. It was a fun place, and a great time to discover the possibilities of rock and roll beyond commercial radio and MTV, in that insanely fertile period roughly between Sonic Youth signaling the end of the 80s underground by signing to Geffen and Nirvana breaking the scene wide open a couple of years later. College radio was the perfect hobby for a relatively solitary, late bloomer like me--in other words, the perfect place to hide. Rock and roll's been performing that function on misfit youth for decades, and it certainly did the trick for me.
# posted by Cole Moore Odell @ 11/29/2005 
