In its simplest terms, a play list is an ordered record of songs that have been scheduled for air during any given time period (usually, in our cases, for one hour). While play lists (be it on paper or an electronic list via a computer screen) were a necessary requirement in commercial radio, I discovered throughout my years that play lists could often be bane of some college stations.
Many university-run stations I was aware of a decade ago seemed to be set on this idea of a free form fun-for-all shift, where the host plays "whatever" for two or three hours, followed by someone else with the same “whatever” mentality. That's fine and I think it's wise to allow that freedom; however I always felt it was horrendously disorganized and had the potential to leave out mass quantities of music that DJs didn’t always enjoy.
Hourly play lists at my undergraduate station were generated by a specialized computer application, one that had been in use for a long time, I always assumed. Midway through my association with the station, the music office received a number computer and we tried to install the application and transfer all our data – neither task worked, meaning bought us some new software and we had to start over from scratch with entering music. And this transition period was hardly enjoyable.
For the play list application to do its thing, station management (mainly the music director with the assistance of the music format coordinators) had to enter every potential playable track into the system. Or, as it usually was, every potential playable track that fit the sound of the station (see A falling star that you cannot live without). That meant every compact disc (or playable media – like vinyl discs for the classic rock show) was assigned a unique, incremental number; e.g. classical discs might be in the 10000 range, rock in the 50000 range, hip-hop the 30000s, and so on. Tracks, or cuts, from each album (record, disc, media – whatever) were then entered into the system, including basic information such as the title, artist, and song length.
Let's use one of our weekly preview discs as an example: the next available album number was 30451, and we wanted to add the eighth track on the album (Fugazi's "Blueprint") into rotation. This album/cut number was added into the software and thusly appeared on the play list as 30451-08. Whoever the music director was usually had his or her hands full with ensuring music was 1) labeled correctly on the disc, and 2) entered correctly into the computer application. Another responsibility of the music director was to print play lists in advance of the DJ shift so that the student on duty could simply go down the list and easily pull their three hours of music from the shelves.
So, yes, it did serve as a blue print of the hour, as it were. Some students had input into the creation of their play list, and most everyone’s list was edited during their shift to accommodate listener requests.
I don’t recall many requests for Fugazi, as I don’t think the music director entered much, if any, of it back into the computer system after the software transition. There were occasional “finds” of such music that someone would have to have come across by accident, and occasionally a knowledgeable DJs would play such a find as their own request; “Waiting Room” was one such track.
Band members Brendan Canty, Joe Lally, Ian MacKaye, and Guy Picciotto released Fugazi’s most recent album in 2001 (The Argument).
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Blueprint
(Fugazi)
Fugazi
From the album Repeater + 3 Songs
1990
I'm not playing with you,
I'm not playing with you,
I'm not playing with you,
I clean forgot how to play.
But you can still come around,
In fact I invite you down,
Maybe together we can wipe that smile off your face.
'Cause what a difference, what a difference, what a difference
A little difference would make.
We'll draw a blueprint, it must be easy,
It's just a matter of knowing when to say no or yes.
Frustrating, frustrating, always waiting for the bigger axe to fall.
A patient game that i can't find my way to play.
Never mind what's been selling,
It's what you're buying
and receiving undefiled.
