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

In recent years, I’ve had the good fortune of having several opportunities to step into the radio studio where I spent countless hours as an undergraduate student. Acknowledging that all the shifts I’ve presided over have been a gift to me, there is something extra special about the radio time I claim as part of the annual 90FM Reunion weekend. That sensation is partially attributable to the thrill of listening to the shows hosted by fellow Reunion attendees and feeling how I’m part of a lineage of amazing talent, and it’s partially attributable to settling into the late night time slot that stirs tremendous nostalgic affection in me.

Reminiscing about past glories is built right into the weekend’s concept, so I devoted my airtime during the past two years to playing music releases during my original tenure at WWSP-90FM. Much as I loved it, those shifts were an incomplete version of my radio autobiography. This year, I felt obligated to tell more of the story. I decided that each of my four hours would be devoted to a distinctly different era of my time in radio: first as a listener, finding my way to a love of music through the music I heard played on stations in the Madison, Wisconsin area; then as a member of the 90FM staff; then as DJ at a commercial “new rock alternative” state in the grunge rock boom years of the nineteen-nineties; and finally as the advisor to the students at Rollins College’s WPRK. An unexpected twist in my personal narrative led me to feel obligated to steal an extra hour, but let’s leave that cryptic for now. The fifth, bonus programming chunk was devoted to music from the past couple years, the sorts of things that fill college radio playlists right now.

I’m tempted to offer annotations to several of these songs. I won’t, though, because those stories were for radio listeners. Some things need to be reserved for the more ephemeral experience that comes from tuning in. I will note that the lead song in the third hour was played as a honest reportage about what my time in commercial radio was like. It is not an endorsement of the track in question, which I think is quite icky, just like the album it comes from and the artist who recorded it. As soon as I settled on this plan for the Reunion show, I was dead certain which cut would lead off that hour. I couldn’t look back to that time without it.

For posterity’s sake, and my own record-keeping, this is the playlist from my Reunion 11 shift on August 10, 2023:

Hour One – As a radio listener (before 1988)
Billy Joel, “Pressure”
John Hiatt, “Thing Called Love”
John Mellencamp, “Paper in Fire”
Bruce Springsteen, “Ain’t Got You”
Bob Dylan, “Simple Twist of Fate”
Jerry Harrison: Casual Gods, “Rev It Up”
INXS, “Mystify”
10,000 Maniacs, “Hey Jack Kerouac”
Billy Bragg, “The Saturday Boy”
R.E.M., “Welcome to the Occupation”
Robbie Robertson, “Showdown at Big Sky”
Camper Van Beethoven, “Eye of Fatima (Pt. 1)”

Hour Two – as a WWSP-90FM staff member (1988-1993)
Sinéad O’Connor, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
Sugar, “Helpless”
Juliana Hatfield 3, “This Is the Sound”
Close Lobsters, “My Days Are Numbered”
The Cure, “Lullaby”
Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Kiss Them for Me”
The Candy Skins, “Never Will Forget You”
Rebel Waltz, “Umbrella”
The Replacements, “Asking Me Lies”
U2, “Desire”
Michelle Shocked, “On the Greener Side”
Edie Brickell and New Bohemians, “Beat the Time”
Too Much Joy, “Kicking (That Gone Fishing Song)”
Public Enemy, “911 Is a Joke”
Guadalcanal Diary, “Look Up!”

Hour Three – as a DJ at WMAD-FM, a new rock alternative station (1994-1997)
Bush, “Everything Zen”
Belly, “Super-Connected”
Elastica, “Stutter”
Mike Watt, “Against the 70s”
Weezer, “Buddy Holly”
Ben Folds Five, “Underground”
No Doubt, “Spiderwebs”
Wilco, “Box Full of Letters”
Hum, “Little Dipper”
Garbage, “Queer”
Soul Asylum, “Bittersweetheart”
Alanis Morissette, “You Oughta Know”
Beck, “Where It’s At”

Hour Four – As the General Manager and Staff Advisor for WPRK-FM, the student-run radio station at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida (2001-2007)
Death Cab for Cutie, “Blacking Out the Friction”
The White Stripes, “I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart”
The Killers, “Somebody Told Me”
The Pipettes, “Pull Shapes”
The Shins, “Caring Is Creepy”
Rilo Kiley, “The Good That Won’t Come Out”
Firewater, “She’s the Mistake”
Sonic Youth, “The Empty Page”
I Am the World Trade Center, “Dancing Alone”
Enon, “Carbonation”
Sleater Kinney, “O2”
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Me and Mia”
The National, “Fake Empire”
The Heathens, “Stickin’ Around”

Hour 5 – The future
Waxahatchee, “Witches”
Big Thief, “Certainty”
Courtney Barnett, “Rae Street”
Wet Leg, “Ur Mom”
MUNA, “Anything But Me”
Sunflower Bean, “In Flight”
Kara Jackson, “Pawnshop”
The Beths, “Knees Deep”
Wednesday, “Chosen to Deserve”
Jess Williamson, “Hunter”
Alvvays, “Pressed”
Mitski, “Love Me More”
Soccer Mommy, “Feel It All the Time”
Indigo de Souza, “Younger and Dumber”
boygenius, “Not Strong Enough”

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