While I still have some fleeing memories of my freshmen year, I feel something must be said about a silly little radio program called "A Matter of Heart" that ran weekdays during the mid-morning hours.
Not every aspect of college-operated radio stations was always student-created. While most programming elements will have had student involvement, there are going to be some public service announcements (PSAs) from the Ad Council or some syndicated public affairs programs airing alongside similar student fare.
"A Matter of Heart" was one such syndicated program: a boring, sixty-second, thinly disguised show about better health and heart issues that was underwritten by some medico group. It was the exact type of program that most college-aged student would find interesting in no way at all. An announcer with doubtful medical credentials spoke at length on issues involving the heart in a way that seemed to only drive home the medico company line. Nothing about the program was inviting by any stretch of the imagination, and all these years later I have to wonder why station management bothered using it in the first place, much less why it ran as long as it did. But I suppose it was part of our rumored responsibility to broadcast material that was beneficial to the listening public.
What stands out about "A Matter of Heart" was the theme music. I got the impression upperclassmen students had heard the music for a number of semesters prior to my arrival; those of us who were new would soon recognize it, too. It was a piece of music that everyone seemed to know by...well...heart, a miserable combination of generic production music plus a lethargic pulsation that sounded vaguely like an electronic Morse code message that looped itself continuously. Someone joked it was the announcer's electrocardiogram set to "closet music" (a term to describe generic music found in a production room the size of a closet). There was a short burst of this music at both the start and end of the program, each thankfully fading out to silence after six or seven seconds.
However this theme music also played the entirety of the thirty-second promotional spot that we had in rotation. Barking the benefits of listening, the announcer went on for about twenty-five seconds before finishing his generic promotion of his program. However, while he stopped talking, the music continued. Someone in charge of production was to tag the spot – that is, adding his or her voice to identify what day and time people could hear this wonderful program on our station. When I arrived, the spot was in rotation and tagged with Dr. Propel's voice, spoken in its trademark mock-important voice: "A Mah-tah...of HEART! Weekday mornings at 9 on FM 89.3." Or something like that.
It seemed Propel's vocal on the spot was just as memorable as the music (and for those who knew Propel, it was audible proof of his sheer goofiness). The following school year Propel was gone and teaching at another university in another state but his voice remained on the spot. For only a month or so, I’m afraid – the student Program Director my sophomore year (Frankie TNT) decided his voice needed to be heard and new version of the promo was debuted. That seemed to be the downfall for "A Matter of Heart," as the program seemed to soon fade from our station. Frankie TNT would soon fade away as well, but that’s another story.
I would assume "A Matter of Heart" aired during either classical (likely) or jazz (very likely) music shifts, and would also assume that the poor DJ who had to suffer through sixty seconds of health information would be redeemed by the music that made up his or her shift. And of that music, there’s as good a chance as any that there may have been some Joe McPhee in the mix. McPhee is the composer and instrumentalist who first made his name in the 1970s with a string of albums (led by Nation Time and Trinity) that were part of the improvisational jazz movement. After a series of albums in the 1980s and finding success overseas, McPhee later met up with fellow musicians Ken Vandermark and Kent Kessler (bass) to record a series of songs that resulted in the album, A Meeting in Chicago. McPhee continues to record and tour to wide acclaim, music never far from his heart.
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Matter of the Heart
(Kent Kessler/Joe McPhee/Ken Vandermark)
Joe McPhee with Ken Vandermark and Kent Kessler
From the album A Meeting in Chicago
1998
