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

Another summer, another 90FM Reunion Weekend. My alma mater college radio station has spent the past decade and a half invited alumni back to take a fresh spin with the airwaves of student-run radio station WWSP-FM, and I’ve been lucky and honored to be a part of most of those homecomings. For some time, I’ve been holding down the 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift on the Thursday night of the the long weekend, often building the playlist using music that was a big part of the station’s sounds during my era as an undergraduate who was part of the student leadership team.

For this year’s iteration, I opted for a variation of what I did last time around, when I recreated what a general programming shift might have sounded like in the summer of 1990. I again turned back the clock thirty-five years, though I didn’t limit myself to the material that would have been in the station’s new music rotation roundabout the beginning of August. Instead, I tracked through the album of 1991, presenting my selections in roughly chronological order of their release.

For posterity’s sake, and my own record-keeping, this is the playlist for my Reunion 14 shift on July 30, 2026:

Drivin N Cryin, “Fly Me Courageous”
Chickasaw Mud Puppies, “Do You Remember”
Hollow Men, “November Comes”
Divinyls, “I Touch Myself”
Jesus Jones, “International Bright Young Thing”
Blue Rodeo, “Trust Yourself”
Eleventh Dream Day, “Rose of Jericho”
The Judybats, “Daylight”
Material Issue, “Out Right Now”
Kitchens of Distinction, “He Holds Her, He Needs Her”
Hypnolovewheel, “I Dream of Jeannie”
The Feelies, “Sooner or Later”
Frazier Chorus, “Cloud 8”
Too Much Joy, “Sandbox”
R.E.M., “Near Wild Heaven”
Throwing Muses, “None Too Soon”

The Godfathers, “Unreal World”
The La’s, “Son of a Gun”
Harm Farm, “Daisy, I…”
Dave Wakeling, “Sex with You”
King Missile, “Sex with You”
LaTour, “Involved”
Hoodoo Gurus, “Something’s Coming”
Julian Cope, “Beautiful Love”
Inspiral Carpets, “Grip”
Dream Warriors, “Wash Your Face in My Sink”
Fishbone, “Behavior Control Technician”
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, “Happy”
The Farm, “Groovy Train”
Joe Jackson, “Jamie G”
Violent Femmes, “Look Like That”
Pere Ubu, “Oh Catherine”
EMF, “When You’re Mine”

Primus, “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver”
Smashing Pumpkins, “I Am One”
The Wonder Stuff, “Welcome to the Cheap Seats”
Sam Phillips, “Where the Colors Don’t Go”
Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Cry”
Kirsty MacColl, “Walking Down Madison”
Mock Turtles, “Mary’s Garden”
Meat Puppets, “Sam”
Fish Karma, “God Is a Groovy Guy”
Big Audio Dynamite II, “The Globe”
Mary’s Danish, “Bombshell”
Psychedelic Furs, “In My Head”
Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, “Ultra Unbelievable Love”
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, “Backlash”
Voice of the Beehive, “Monsters and Angels”
Toad the Wet Sprocket, “All I Want”
Pearl Jam, “Oceans”

Altered State, “Step Into My Groove”
Trip Shakespeare, “Down My Block”
The Smithereens, “Tell Me When Did Things Go So Wrong”
Billy Bragg, “You Woke Up My Neighborhood”
Nirvana, “Breed”
Soundgarden, “Drawing Flies”
Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Naked in the Rain”
Blur, “Fool”
Thompson Twins, “Queer”
Public Enemy, “How to Kill a Radio Consultant”
Pixies, “Head On”
This Picture, “Naked Rain”
Erasure, “Love to Hate You”
Matthew Sweet, “Thought I Knew You”
My Bloody Valentine, “When You Sleep”
Millions, “Smiling and Shaking”
Teenage Fanclub, “Sidewinder”
U2, “Even Better Than the Real Thing”
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “(I’ll Love You) Til the End of the World”

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