When I got my first job in commercial radio, it was at a “New Rock Alternative” station, which was terminology intended to convey that while we were going to play the biggest of the big when it came to college radio material, artists that sounded like Pearl Jam were going to have a far easier time muscling onto our playlist. My hope was that I’d be able to stay up on music through working there. After all, we were primarily playing the artists that college radio broke in the first place. How far behind could we be?

The issue, as noted above, was that our range was far more limited. While I didn’t always take full advantage of the opportunity, one of the things I loved most about programming a show at the college radio station was the chance to take the sound of a set just about anywhere, putting a thudding hard rock song flush up against a disco workout and then shifting in a acoustic guitar ballad. Often it seemed that the only common denominator between the songs that we played was that they were good. (As bands like B-52s and Love and Rockets took unlikely turns in the Billboard Top 10, we could no longer claim that we were giving exposure to the music that no one else would play.) Before long, I realized that if I was going to get exposed to the more adventurous music being freshly created, it was all on me.

I started to scour music magazines with a different intensity, looking for the stuff I’d never heard of but seemed interesting. This was the mid-nineties, so I didn’t have means to easily sample new releases, meaning that I often bought records note unheard. That was the case with Fun Trick Noisemaker from The Apples in Stereo.

The band was part of the Elephant Six Collective, which was just starting to garner attention. It was also hard to find their records. I looked all over in Madison, where I was living at the time, and had no luck, even though the city had no shortage of great record stores. It wasn’t until I was killing time while visiting friends in Milwaukee that I actually got my hands on the release. I was in the late, much missed Atomic Records and they had the album, stuffed in unassuming amongst a bevy of other releases. I snapped it up without a second thought, like it was some rare treasure that I might never see again.

Some of the albums I bought under those circumstances were huge disappointments, but not Fun Trick Noisemaker. It was as buoyant and clever as I’d hoped, merging the swirling abandon of psychedelia with a pleasing lo-fi sensibility. It was precisely the right antidote to the bludgeoning awfulness I was compelled to play in my late night radio berth. I could play a couple tracks when I got home at 6:30 in the morning and needed to wind down, in part by purging by brain of the mindless hard rock riffs still resonating there. The Apples in Stereo performed that task nicely. Who wouldn’t want their daytime dreaming set to this sort of soundtrack?

The Apples in Stereo, “Show the World”

(Disclaimer: If Fun Trick Noisemaker was hard for me to find then, it would seemingly be impossible now, at least using the conventional route of going into a record store and asking for a CD. I believe the album is out of print in a hard copy format, although it can be obtained through digital download. While Tim Quirk has taught me to be skeptical of that as a point of commerce that will provide due compensation to the artist, it may very well be worth trying in this instance. Regardless, there appears to be no way to purchase this song in a manner that will put money in the pockets of both the artist and the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store. I post the song there under that belief. I will gladly put my convictions aside, however, if I’m contacted by someone with duly designated say over the copyright and use of this song who intends to rattle my proverbial cage. In other words, I’ll gladly take it down if asked.)