This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves.

As I’ve been lucky to do several times over the past years, I spent my Sunday night in my absolute favorite place. Through the ongoing generosity of my pal who’s held down the one of the weekend-closing shifts on WWSP-90FM for a couple decades now, his trio of weekly hours were turned over to me. Although I’ll occasionally use the cunningly curated but also free-for-all nature of his program’s format to build the playlist around a theme or constraint (and plan to do just that when I guest host again in June), this time I just went wherever the notion took me, with the small exception of the chain of 1985-released songs that followed the song that kicked off the second hour.

With a sheepish, tentative expression of ego, I’ll note that, one aggravating blunder excepted, the show really clicked last night. The flow of music worked nicely, and the segues were tight. In particular, the transitions from Talking Heads to TV on the Radio and from Blondie to Elastic were, as the youngs say, fire.

For posterity’s sake, and my own record-keeping, this is my playlist from Then and Now on May 15, 2022:

Sleater-Kinney, “Oh!”
The Linda Lindas, “Oh!”
All Girl Summer Fun Band, “Grizzly Bear”
Devo, “Through Being Cool”
Spacehog, “Mungo City”
Fountains of Wayne, “Denise”
Allo Darlin’, “Kiss Your Lips”
Weezer, “Surf Wax America”
Regina Spektor, “Fidelity”
Caitlin Rose, “Menagerie”
Mental As Anything, “If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?”
Wilco, “Forget the Flowers”
Gunga Din, “Crabcakes”
Anna Meredith, “Paramour”
The Demos, “Can’t Win Me Over”
Talking Heads, “Seen and Not Seen”
TV on the Radio, “Golden Age”

Passion Pit, “Lifted Up (1985)”
R.E.M., “Maps and Legends”
Lone Justice, “East of Eden”
Run-DMC, “King of Rock”
Hoodoo Gurus, “In the Wild”
Wire Train, “Skills of Summer”
Divinyls, “Pleasure and Pain”
Bishop Allen, “Click, Click, Click, Click”
Soul Coughing, “Sugar Free Jazz”
Loretta Lynn, “Portland Oregon”
Nick Lowe, “So It Goes”
Robyn Hitchcock, “Trash”
The Cigarettes, “Paul Westerberg”
Paul Westerberg, “Someone I Once Knew”
The Drovers, “Insulated Man”
Adia Victoria, “Born to Die”

The Stooges, “Loose”
Pom Pom Squad, “Honeysuckle”
The Dream Syndicate, “Still Holding on to You”
Blondie, “X Offender”
Elastica, “Smile”
Chvrches, “Never Ending Circles”
Corinne Bailey Rae, “Put Your Records On”
Tanya Donnelly, “Pretty Deep”
Phoebe Bridgers and Maggie Rogers, “Iris”
Arcade Fire, “Keep the Car Running”
Cactus World News, “Worlds Apart”
Beck, “Minus”
The Rural Alberta Advantage, “Muscle Relaxants”
Hole, “Violet”
The Clash, “The Four Horsemen”
Sonic Youth, “Total Trash”

Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Radio Days” tag.