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 now done for several years running, I spent a certain night in August staying up way past my bedtime in the name of revisiting past radio glories. Thanks to the dogged work of a couple dedicated souls, the college radio station where I spent my undergraduate years stages an annual reunion that invites alumni back to commandeer the airwaves once again. Although I’m currently lucky enough to work within the offices and studios of a student-run broadcast outlet as my day job, returning to my first on-air booth for 90FM Reunion remains a special gift.

As usual, I opted for a 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift in an attempt to properly recapture the feel of my origins at the station holding down the Monday night Soundstreams slot. I didn’t bring any music with me, opting instead to pull entirely from the 90FM music library. For the time officially assigned to me, I stuck with music that was released while I was at the station as a student, from the fall of 1988 to the spring of 1993. I hung around for an extra hour, because in the midst of the show I’m so reluctant for it to end. In that final sixty minutes, I felt free to drift from my own era to music from before and after. That expansiveness included solidifying a new tradition of which act is the last I play before signing off the station for the remainder of the overnight.

For posterity’s sake, and my own record-keeping, this is the playlist from my Reunion 12 shift on August 8, 2024:

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, “So You Think You’re in Love”
Chris Mars, “Stuck in Rewind”
Elvis Costello, “Pads, Paws and Claws”
Dream Warriors, “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style”
Charlatans UK, “Weirdo”
James, “Born of Frustration”
Animal Logic, “I Still Feel for You”
Billy Bragg, “She’s Got a New Spell”
Aztec Camera, “The Crying Scene”
Joe Jackson, “Tomorrow’s World”
Del Amitri, “Always the Last to Know”
The B-52’s, “Dry County”
Beastie Boys, “Stand Together”
The Breeders, “Oh!”

Adrian Belew (with David Bowie), “Pretty Pink Rose”
Best Kissers in the World, “Miss Teen U.S.A.”
The Godfathers, “Something Good About You”
The Lemonheads, “Alison’s Starting to Happen”
The Bangles, “In My Room”
Midnight Oil, “King of the Mountain”
Julian Cope, “5 O’Clock World”
Lightning Seeds, “Pure”
The Chills, “Part Past, Part Fiction”
Hoodoo Gurus, “1000 Miles Away”
Lloyd Cole, “She’s a Girl and I’m a Man”
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, “Happy”
The Pop Will Eat Itself, “X Y & Zee”
Inspiral Carpets, “Caravan”
The Primitives, “Secrets”

The Call, “Let the Day Begin”
Social Distortion, “Bad Luck”
Teenage Fanclub, “What You Do to Me”
Pogues, “The Ghost of a Smile”
Boom Crash Opera, “Onion Skin”
Fury in the Slaughterhouse, “Every Generation Got Its Own Disease”
Smashing Pumpkins, “Tristessa”
Eleventh Dream Day, “Love to Hate Love”
Too Much Joy, “Donna Everywhere”
Dead Milkmen, “Bleach Boys”
Soup Dragons, “Pleasure”
The Go-Betweens, “Love Goes On!”
PJ Harvey, “Dry”
Pixies, “Is She Weird”
Lush, “Leaves Me Cold”

Fishbone, “Everyday Sunshine”
R.E.M., “Half a World Away”
10,000 Maniacs, “The Lion’s Share”
The La’s, “I Can’t Sleep”
Sam Phillips, “Now I Can’t Find the Door”
Material Issue, “Next Big Thing”
Blue Rodeo, “Til I Am Myself Again”
Guadalcanal Diary, “Whiskey Talk”
Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Cry”
The Judybats, “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)”
The Darling Buds, “Shame on You”
The Juliana Hatfield 3, “Spin the Bottle”
Sugar, “Helpless”
Sonic Youth, “Wish Fulfillment”
Throwing Muses, “Golden Thing”
Mary’s Danish, “Hey There Man”
Easterhouse, “Come Out Fighting”
Matthew Sweet, “Don’t Go”

The Blue Nile, “The Downtown Lights”
The Cure, “Disintegration”
Concrete Blonde, “Caroline”
Vivian Girls, “I Have No Fun”
Ben Folds Five, “Emaline”
Tracy Chapman, “Born to Fight”
Soul Coughing, “Sugar Free Jazz”
La Luz, “Moon in Reverse”
Indigo Girls, “Land of Canaan”
The Proclaimers, “Then I Met You”
Melissa Etheridge, “No Souvenirs”
Wet Leg, “Wet Dream”
Michelle Shocked, “Come a Long Way”
boygenius, “Cool About It”

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