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

WWSP-90FM, the college radio station where I hung my headphones during my undergraduate years, is now in the thirteenth year of devoting a summer weekend to giving the airwaves back to its alumni. I’ve been lucky enough to participate for about half the time this nostalgic shindig has been going on, and, even my current day job gives me a much-appreciated opportunity to play music for the masses on a fairly regular basis, settling into that air chair on the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point campus for this particular shift is unquestionably one of the highlights of every one of my spins around the sun. As always, I claimed the Thursday, 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. timeslot.

As I drove home from the last year reunion, I alit upon exactly what I would do with my allotted airtime this year. The simple mental math made me realize that Reunion 13 would take place exactly thirty-five years after the summer of 1990, which just so happened to be only prolonged stretch during my roughly five-year tenure at the radio station as a student, running from the fall of 1988 to the spring of 1993, that I wasn’t on the air on a regular basis. That summer was the only time I went home for a school break. Every other summer, winter, and spring break, I stayed in Stevens Point specifically to help out at the radio station. I still dramatically refer to it as My Summer in Exile, and it pains me to this day to think of all the shifts I missed, all the albums I missed tracking through the new music rotation. So, I decided to recreate what I thought one of my shifts would have sounded like during that long-lost summer.

Of course, I couldn’t make the preparation for this shift easy on myself. I could have grabbed a whole bunch of 1990 album releases and put together a perfectly satisfying playlist. Instead, I wanted to properly, accurately recreate what one of the 90FM general programming shifts would have been like exactly thirty-five years earlier. That process started with me digging deep into my memory to come up with a reasonable representation of the station’s programming clock at the time. This was the guide for on-air staff to use, directing them as to which section of the new music rotation or the general library they should go to for each track selection. To the best of my recollection, it looked a lot like this at the time:

Golds were tracks that had made the Billboard Top 40, and Whites were tracks that has made the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked between #100 and #41, identified on station albums by dot stickers of the respective colors. The new music rotation was comprised of Heavy Rotation (HR), Medium Rotation (MR), Light Rotation, and New Music Stacks (NMS). New albums started in Heavy Rotation, which usually had fifteen to twenty albums in it, and stayed there for two to four weeks before marching their way through Medium Rotation, Light Rotation, and New Music Stacks, each slightly bigger in size than its predecessor. Albums stayed in each of those other sections for three to six weeks, depending on their popularity. After albums went all the way through the new music rotation, they transferred the A, B, or C stacks, depending on how well-known the artist in question was. The best known acts went to A stacks, the most obscure went to C stacks, and those in between wound up in B stacks.

To prepare for the shift, I pored through summer 1990 issues of the CMJ New Music Report and other radio trade publications that have been archived online to assemble my best guess as to what was in the 90FM new music rotation in late July of that year. I also tried to determine exactly where in those rotation those albums would be. The whole process was ridiculous, unnecessary, and brought me an immense amount of joy and satisfaction. Best of all, following the clock and pulling from the rotation led me to songs that were fresh discoveries or happy rediscoveries, exactly the experience I valued so much in those bygone radio shifts.

For posterity’s sake, and my own record-keeping, I am providing the playlist from my Reunion 13 shift on July 31, 2025. For anything that was in the new music rotation, I’m including the album title and where in the rotation it resided. For everything that was pulled from stacks, I’m noting which spot on the clock it represented. Here’s the playlist:

The Police, “King of Pain” (Gold)
The Cavedogs, “Tayter Country,” Joyrides for Shut-Ins (HR)
Big Dipper, “Love Barge,” Slam (LR)
The Jack Rubies, “Lost in the Crowd,” See the Money in My Smile (MR)
Aztec Camera, “Get Outta London,” Stray (HR)
The Go-Go’s, “How Much More” (A)
World Party, “When the Rainbow Comes,” Goodbye Jumbo (NMS)
Lone Justice, “Ways to Be Wicked” (White)
A House, “I Want too Much,” I Want Too Much (MR)
Bob’s Your Uncle, “Walk on Land,” Tale of 2 Legs (HR)
Was (Not Was), “Elvis’ Rolls Royce,” Are You Okay? (HR)
The Wonder Stuff, “Don’t Let Me Down Gently” (C)
John Doe, “Let’s Be Mad,” Meet John Doe (LR)
The Strawberry Zots, “Waste of Time,” Scratch and Sniff Car Crash (MR)

Blondie, “The Tide Is High” (Gold)
Devo, “Stuck in a Loop,” Stuck Noodle Maps (HR)
The Hummingbirds, “Word Gets Around,” loveBUZZ (LR)
Jesus Jones, “The Real World,” Liquidizer (MR)
The Jazz Butcher, “Mr. Odd,” Cult of the Basement (HR)
Randy Newman, “Dixie Flyer” (A)
Midnight Oil, “King of the Mountain,” Blue Sky Mining (NMS)
10,000 Maniacs, “Like the Weather” (White)
Mazzy Star, “Holah,” She Hangs Brightly (MR)
Katydids, “All Above Me,” Katydids (HR)
Kirsty MacColl, “Days,” Kite (LR)
Dread Zeppelin, “Immigrant Song,” Un-LED-Ed (HR)
Johnny Clegg & Savuka, “Dela (I Know Why the Dog Howls at the Moon)” (C)
Adrian Belew, “Men in Helicopters,” Young Lions (LR)

Joe Jackson, “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” (Gold)
Jellyfish, “The Man I Used to Be,” Bellybutton (HR)
The Lightning Seeds, “The Nearly Man,” Cloudcuckooland (LR)
Hothouse Flowers, “Eyes Wide Open,” Home (MR)
Blues Traveler, “Mulling It Over,” Blues Traveler (HR)
Paul Simon, “I Know What I Know” (A)
Lloyd Cole, “Downtown,” Lloyd Cole (NMS)
XTC, “Mayor of Simpleton” (White)
The Stranglers, “Sweet Smell of Success,” 10 (MR)
Baby Flamehead, “Life Song,” Life Sandwich (HR)
Concrete Blonde, “Lullabye,” Bloodletting (LR)
Andy Prieboy, “Montezuma Was a Man of Faith,” …Upon My Wicked Son (HR)
Field Trip, “Cool Buzz” (C)
O Positive, “Back of My Mind,” Toyboat Toyboat Toyboat (LR)

The Cars, “Why Can’t I Have You” (Gold)
Gene Loves Jezebel, “Jealous,” Kiss of Life (HR)
Hunters and Collectors, “Love All Over Again,” Ghost Nation (LR)
The Dream Syndicate, “Weathered and Torn” (B)
Rebel Waltz, “Umbrella,” Rubber Walls (MR)
The Red House, “Shot in the Back,” The Red House (HR)
Warren Zevon, “Detox Mansion” (A)
The Sundays, “I Kicked a Boy,” Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (NMS)
R.E.M., “Fall on Me” (White)
Billy Bragg, “The Internationale,” The Internationale (MR)
Sonic Youth, “Kool Thing,” Goo (HR)
The Wedding Present, “Crushed,” Bizarro (LR)
David J, “A Longer Look,” Songs from Another Season (HR)
The Triffids, “Bury Me Deep in Love” (C)
Poi Dog Pondering, “The Ancient Egyptians,” Wishing Like A Mountain and Thinking Like the Sea (LR)
David Baerwald, “All for You,” Bedtime Stories (MR)

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