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

This week, I’m participating in the eleventh annual staging of Reunion Weekend at the college radio station where I toiled happily during my undergraduate education. As noted the two preceding days, I’m devoting each hour of my shift to a different stop on my extended journey, including my sojourn in commercial radio. A couple years after graduating college, I returned to my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin and got a gig with a station billing itself as a “new rock alternative” during the post-grunge boom years of that format. It was actually the same station I’d listened to religiously through high school, at least by call letters, frequency, and physical location of the studio: WMAD, 92.1 FM, Sun Prairie. There was new ownership and a different programming plan, but I have to admit I still felt a little thrill when walking into that studio for the first time.

I’ll also admit that the thrill faded over time, and not all that much time at that. After several years at my college radio station, where everyone on air had almost unfettered say over the music they played, following a regimented playlist proved to be a grind. That the music we pumped out over the airwaves more or less matched my taste was a help, but the repetitiveness demanded in the commercial radio space was tough. Songs that I initially loved grew irritating, and songs I loathed from the jump burrowed themselves so deep into my memory that I helplessly sing along on the blessedly rare occasions when I’m exposed to them now.

No cut represented that exhaustion of exposure more than “Buddy Holly,” from Weezer’s self-titled debut album. It was released as the album’s second single a few months before I got to the station, but it was peaking on the alternative rock charts when I punched in there for the first time, an ascendancy boosted by a music video that was conceived and directed by Spike Jonze with his customary cleverness. (“Buddy Holly” peaked at the runner-up slot on that chart, blocked from the top by R.E.M.’s “Bang and Blame.”) Our consultant-driven, computer-generated playlist inserted “Buddy Holly” into the mix a lot, presumably with algorithmic appreciation for the usefulness of its relatively short runtime when trying to get as many songs as possible into a hour that also needed room for commercials for local head shops and convenience stores. I was mostly on the air for overnights, and it was a common occurrence that “Buddy Holly” would show up on the playlist three times my six-hour shift. I maintain that would break anyone.

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