One thing with this retrospective that I'm trying to do is not always dwell so much on those tried-and-true musicians that you'd expect to see as part of a list like this. I want there to be some lesser-known talent as well – stuff no one knows about except, apparently, for me.
With that in mind let's discuss Bitter Son. The only thing that comes to mind about this local band is that they were one of a few groups that came out of the woodwork when it was announced we were starting What's New Wednesday (WNW) at my undergraduate station (see I think it's worth it for you to stay awake).
Bitter Son stands out for two reasons, the first of which was that the band had given us a copy of either their album, or the "good" portion of it, on audio cassette. True, we had both analog and digital tape players in our midst and could have played it on the air more than we did – but that would have meant we would have had to listen to the song. There's the second reason, then: while the song wasn't terrible, the pops and clicks from the tape coupled with the lower-than-low-fi attempt of the musicians made it a waste of time to even bother to cue up and spin, so to speak, much less convert to some other format for easier playback.
The host of WNW, John Fletcher, was good to his word and played the song, but I think he was a bit dissatisfied with the tape as well; it soon found its way into the Music Library and probably would have been forgotten had it not been for an asinine idea of mine one Friday night the next year. I was Program Director then and had gotten stuck at the station for most of the day but called back that night when the 9pm host didn't show. I trudged back to the building, still mentally asleep and trying to awaken for something I hadn't planed to do. The Music Director stopped by about 10:30, surprised I was on the air and offered to stick around. Over the next twenty minutes, one thing led to another and we both decided to shed the 11pm playlist and do our own version of What's New Wednesday for no reason other than we could get by with it.
At the top of the hour, we ran the WNW intro and legal ID and started in on the music you normally heard on Wednesday. The two of us co-hosted the hour – dual shifts were frowned upon because they usual turned into mindless banter – but we made a point to not talk too much and played well off each other, each noting at every chance "you're listening to What's New Wednesday...on a Friday." The gimmick must have squeaked by all the right ears as no one called to point out it wasn't Wednesday and the faculty advisor didn't call to say we were breaking rules that we, as program and music director, had been known to call others out about.
The last thirty minutes of the hour I tried to get out of the same standard regional fare that usually got played, and remembering the Bitter Son tape, I ran into the office and recovered it from its certain doom. Neither the Music Director nor I had heard the song recently (if at all), something blatantly obvious over the air: the song opened with almost a minute of sparse drumbeats that we introduced the song over (we eventually faded out our clueless stuttering as the beats droned onward). It wasn't but a few seconds into the song we realized neither of us knew how it ended, either – just that we hoped soon. Minutes later, when the heavy guitar and shaky vocals came to a standstill, we got back on the microphone and started to explain what had just happened. Surprisingly we were caught off guard with even more faint drumbeats and bells that faded into obscurity. Did we care? No, we just cut 'em off.
That surely was the end of Bitter Son after that. And the tape, too.
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Tribal Life
(unknown)
Bitter Son
From their independently self-released cassette
1997