We don't bother anyone, we keep to ourselves

Live's Shit Towne - one of the decent tracks off Throwing Copper – was an exercise in suppression. We couldn't easily identify the track on the air and you'd think no one in their right mind would ever bother to play the song, what with the supposed threat of the FCC showing up unexpectedly at the front door. Tracks like this usually were not in rotation at all, just to avoid the whole issue.

But someone played this song.

Inappropriate words, such as the one in the title, could be "clipped" if one knew how or had the stamina. Allow me to explain clipping. Each device you hear on the radio has a channel, or route the sound goes through to get on the air. Channel 1 is usually the microphone; other channels might be for a CD player, a turntable, a computer or a multitude of other equipment. To activate the channel there is a button or dial – a potentiometer – on the soundboard that you press or rotate and the sound, be it voice, music, or effects, goes out on the air.

Clipping then was the art of turning off and instantly turning back on the channel, thereby deadening the sound of whatever was playing for half a second or so. Grand masters of this ability would often deliberately play tracks such as these so they could 1) show their proficiency in their DJing craft and 2) allow music seldom heard some air time.

But not everyone clipped tracks very well. Some people held the dead air for too long. Some clipped too early and you heard the tail end of what you weren't supposed too. Or, in the case of this song, the DJ didn't know the track at all and missed a few of the words.

Oh, well.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Shit Towne
(Kowalczyk/Live)
Live
From the album Throwing Copper
1994

the weavers live up the street from me
the crackheads, they live down the street from me
the tall grass makes it hard to see
beyond my property
hey man, this is criminal,
this hard line symmetry
of people and pets

we don't bother anyone
we keep to ourselves
the mailman visits each of us in turn

we don't bother anyone
we keep to ourselves
the mailman visits each of us in time

gotta live, gotta live, gotta live
in shit towne
gotta live, gotta live, gotta live
in our town.

Big mouth, drop out, you get what you deserve

To say Republica was a major turning point in my time at the station is to give far too much credit to something so undeserving. 1996 was about the time I was making the change from operations to programming – from worrying about the news department to helping with the day-to-day operations and sound of the station.

As I had already been filling in on weekend mornings and on some of the weekday classical shifts, I was no stranger to the control room or what happened there. But now I was filling in for the more sought-after, primetime modern rock shifts, thereby sealing my fate with the music of that era. In my later years there I would sometimes joke on air about how trivial some of the songs were: “Ah, Sweet 75 – you’ll be hearing great things from them down the road” or “Those kids in Silverchair could whoop Hanson any day, don’t you think?” It was all in jest – though I was certain a lot of what I played would be forgotten within four years – but I always loved how fans of some one-shot group would call and strongly hint that my ridiculing of Republica was uncalled for and that the band was "cool." Whatever.

Republica’s music is lightweight dance pop and this song is fairly easy to identify from its throbbing beat. The England-based group was led by a woman named Saffron who sported around the mid-90s with a group of guys that eventually penned a lyric that I have committed to memory.

Why? You encounter, and sometimes even work with, a wide assortment of characters in college radio stations. Some are convinced that the station should be nothing but Death Metal sign-on to sign-off or are spawn of Les Nessman and insist on nothing but news.

As an undergraduate, I stumbled upon a guy referred to as Top Gun: clean cut, military-background, spoke little and argued his points relentlessly. I forget his real name, and I think he was one of the news or sports reporters that semester, but he would often approach faculty or staff management with his ideas for improvement. He stopped me in the hall one afternoon and insisted I identify the song that had the lyric "on the roof top, shouting out." He was able to identify the general time period he had heard the song the day before (15-hundred hours, of course) and asked I review old playlists and consult air check tapes to give him an answer.

I said okay.

He said preferably within the next ten minutes.

However I got out of that encounter I don’t know; a day or two later it suddenly dawned on me and upon giving my answer, Top Gun solemnly nodded, as if everything now clicked in his world, and announced purposely that he liked the song. With a curt nod he whirled around and went off to find his other shoe or something – I don’t know.

I'm told Republica released another album in 1998 (Speed Ballads) but I missed out on that, as I think did radio stations, and I haven't heard hide or hair of them since they were on the rooftop, shouting out, “Please remember us in a decade!”

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Ready to Go
(Dorney/Male/Saffron/Todd)
Republica
From the album Republica
1996

You're weird, in tears, too near and too far away,
He said, saw red, went home stayed in bed all day,
Your t'shirt, dish dirt,
Always love the one you hurt

It's a crack, I'm back yeah standing
On the rooftops shouting out,
Baby I'm ready to go
I'm back and ready to go
From the rooftops shout it out
It's a crack, I'm back yeah standing
On the rooftops having it
Baby I'm ready to go
I'm back and ready to go
From the rooftops shout it out, shout it out

You sleep, too deep, one week is another world
Big mouth, big mouth, drop out, drop out
You get what you deserve
You're stange, insane, one thing you can never change

It's a crack, I'm back yeah standing
On the rooftops shouting out,
Baby I'm ready to go
I'm back and ready to go
From the rooftops shout it out
It's a crack, I'm back yeah standing
On the rooftops having it
Baby I'm ready to go
I'm back and ready to go
From the rooftops shout it out, shout it out

Abused, confused, always love the one that
hurt ya hurt ya hurt ya

It's a crack, baby I'm ready to go
Baby I'm ready to go...

Jesse James behind the wheel

Weekends provided for experimentation on college radio stations, allowing other musical formats with not a large song selection in the music library to get some airtime. The first radio station I worked at was far more conservative with their music formats than the second. While the second station featured blues, contemporary Christian, world beat and more, the first station didn’t really branch out in terms of different sounds until 1995 with the creation of a contemporary folk program.

Originally airing Saturday mornings from 8am to noon, the program later moved to the same time Sundays and sometimes both days depending on the semester. Because weekend sign-on was at 8am, the folk show was the only four-hour program that station had, with enough variety to make it make it work. In truth, while the original host aimed to make it straight contemporary folk, it soon became a menagerie of music, including traditional folk songs from luminaries like the Kingston Trio, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger and the Weavers; Celtic pieces; acoustic guitar instrumentals and then the odds and ends that really didn’t fit any of the other formats. Speaking of formats, the program never got caught up in the station's bizarre branding and generally was just called, "The Folk Show,” though there was a push one semester to rename it "Eclectic Avenue." The idea was dropped when someone finally came to his or her senses.

Listeners loved the format. Sitting in as substitute host, I quickly found out how pleased people were that the station was showcasing music outside the predictable playlists. One song I soon found that had developed a following was Blow ‘em Away, a rather humorous take on the issue of drive-by shootings. Its frank lyrics and subject matter made it a memorable song, making it the most requested song of the format – quite often seconds after it ended. Yes, people would call and ask for me to "play it again."

David Wilcox’s live version of the Chuck Brodsky song did have its detractors and one weekday the faculty advisor said that the director of the communication program had received "calls" and recommended the song be “ceremoniously dropped” from rotation. Meaning, it was not to be played anymore after the following weekend (read: give it a spin or two this weekend but then loose it after that).

I did get my just revenge: for two and a half years the disc sat at the bottom of a desk. Waiting. I am happy to say Blow ‘em Away was the first and last song I played on my last folk shift before I graduated.

That’ll show ‘em.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Blow 'Em Away
(Brodsky)
David Wilcox
From the album East Asheville Hardware
1996

In the morning
I commute
Mild mannered man
in a business suit
and when I come home
at the end of my day
There's all these other cars in the way
So I pull up behind one
I pull out my pistol
and I blew'em away
I'm driving my car
and I wanna go fast
but there's a slow car
won't let me pass
well I flash my lights
I honk my horn
Well, I have to consider him warned
I pull up behind him
I pull out my pistol
and I blew'em away
I'm Jesse James
behind the wheel
And it's high noon
in my automobile
They call me crazy
they call me sick
Well oh well I'm going to quick
Some Son Of a Bitch
he cut me off
Three whole lanes
he cut across
He made me mad
made me swerve
Well, Son of a bitch got what he deserved
Well, I pulled up behind him
I pulled out my pistol
I blew him away
A motorcycle
he's riding between
He's backed up traffic
Right between the lanes
He looked at me
That's an act of war
I saw him comin'
and I opened my door
I knocked him over
I pulled out my pistol
And I blew him away
Some little old lady
Bless her heart
well she was walking her poodle
across the boulevard
it was wearing a red knitted sweater
a little knitted hat
and it was probably named Fifi
or something stupid like that
Well I said, "Here Fifi"
I pulled out my pistol
and I blew him away.

Let her go!

Like any college radio station, we featured, and catered to, a wide assortment of tastes and trends. You might hear some classical in the morning, some hard rock late at night, with jazz, folk, hip-hop or Led Zeppelin in between.

I think jazz is a mainstay on most college stations; I know it had long been featured at my first station and a large amount of time was devoted to it at the second station I worked at. For many years before I even arrived, the jazz show at the first station ran weekdays mornings for three hours (6-9am); during my freshman year, jazz was temporarily scrapped for a series of morning shows that bombed, resulting in the reinstatement of the format. Because of its daypart, the program was called the Morning Oasis, a sort of sappy name in my book. As popular as the format was, we did not have a library to support it: it was small and full of unknown artists making mediocre music. Even our on-air liners (short promotional cuts identifying the station) that ran throughout the daily program were several years old when I arrived on the scene. One oft-played liner featured a montage of random jazz musicians saying hello. Something like:

“This is Howard Hemlock.”
“I’m Buster Kilpatrick.”
“Hi, this is Pat McFlannery.”
“This is Jackie Kolthayne.”

Then out of nowhere a woman slowly and calmly announced her incredibly long name:

“This is Mary-Alice Winkin Onomatopoeia something-or-other.”

The funny thing was we didn’t own a single CD by any of these artists. One artist we did play – a helluva lot of – was not really jazz, either. Buckshot LeFonque was a jazz-rock/hip-hop fusion group, a one-off project of Branford Marsalis, whose first album featured a rollicking groove piece called Some Cow Fonque (More Tea, Vicar?). Somehow the station had a promotional CD single version and the song got airtime whenever we needed a song to stretch to the top of the hour. Because it was a catchy and popular song, a lot of people tended to play it much more than it should have been. To that end, I remember one of the high-ranking professors in the communication department stopping by the control room one day, poking his head into the studio midway through the song, and telling the DJ "that song isn’t jazz.”

You knew its days were numbered after that. Sure enough, the CD maxi-single, the one with the cow on the cover, soon disappeared from the jazz stacks. Thankfully, the rest of the music was thrown out as well in the following years when a new instructor joined the department who had a background in jazz and helped revitalize the entire format. With his help, my last year at that station saw the library of jazz CDs at least quadruple in size and it moving to a more pristine part of the day: 9am to 3pm, thereby becoming simply the Oasis. I’m told that in subsequent years after I graduated that the classical format was dropped altogether and jazz ran for nine full hours (6am-3pm).

Anyway, Some Cow Fonque still had its fans within the communication department and after the song disappeared from the radio station, it began appearing on more than one of the student-produced programs airing on the campus television station over the next few years.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Some Cow Fonique (More Tea, Vigar?)
(Marsalis)
Buckshot LeFonque
From the album Buckshot LeFonque
1994


(instrumental)

The lily-white cavity crazes

College radio in the 1990s played Beck and rightly so – he was alternative hip and had all the proper rock action. As opposed to random songs available on a preview disc, we actually had the full-length Odelay available at our disposal and therefore had added a number of tracks, including The New Pollution, to rotation far before official singles were released.

One thing about The New Pollution that I’ve always been convinced of – rightly or wrongly – is that it samples a song from some old Christmas special, like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer or the like. The thought hit me instantly when I first heard the song a decade ago. I still hear the trance-like introductory notes of the song and try to recall just where I’ve heard it before? Obviously I don’t fret about it now, but as the moronic college DJ I hit up a number of my colleagues with the question many times. Where have we heard that song before?

We also brought out the turntable for The New Pollution: not long before the end of my junior year, the station received (of all things) a copy of the single on vinyl. I think it was the usual album version along with two remixes. None of us were too sure what we should do with it since we had little use for the turntable to begin with. In the end we did air some of the remixes but usually just let the CD get the most use. Still I do know we had some fun with the turntable a few times during what we called "helium hour," really ten or twenty minutes of a dumb joke.

The idea behind "Helium Hour" started months earlier during our morning classical program. As some of the classical pieces ran longer than what we wanted, a few crafty people (such as the faculty advisor and program director) would increase the pitch control of the CD players, thereby speeding up the songs and getting them over with sooner. As classical pieces are fairly slow, the increased pitch is seldom noticed and no one is the wiser. This trick was not the best with loud, speedy rock music, usually rendering the track to an Alvin and the Chipmunks-sound-a-like.

I remember being an idiot late one night and thinking it would be cool to play The New Pollution on the turntable – but I didn’t bother to check the speed. So what should have been spinning at 33 1/3 went out over the air at 45 rpm. To compensate, I adjusted the pitch on the CD players slightly – noticeable but annoying – and went the next ten minutes with three or four songs all sped up.

At the next stop set, or break, I apologized on air for the fact that there was a helium leak in the studios and therefore things may have sounded a bit high-pitched.

Lame, I know, but such is the goofiness of kids on college radio.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The New Pollution
(Beck, King, Simpson)
Beck
From the album Odelay
1996

She's got cigarette on each arm
She's got the lily-white cavity crazes
She's got a carburetor tied to the moon
Pink eyes looking to the food of the ages
She's alone in the new pollution
She's alone in the new pollution
She's got a hand on a wheel of pain
She can talk to the mangling strangers
She can sleep in a fiery bog
Throwing troubles to the dying embers
She's alone in the new pollution
She's alone in the new pollution
She's alone in the new pollution
She's alone in the new pollution
She's got a paradise camouflage
Like a whip-crack sending me shivers
She's a boat through a strip-mine ocean
Riding low on the drunken rivers
She's alone in the new pollution
She's alone in the new pollution

Insane and risin' in my own weird way

I’ve touched upon the concept of dayparts already and how, back in 1995 at that first station I worked at, student management spent a great effort in branding each daypart, that is, coming up with a unique, one word identifier to fully describe the feel and tone for each three hour shift of music.

Take for instance the weekday 6-9pm rock shift: the Pulse. While all the rock shifts tended to feature similar music, if not similar artists, the first three hours (the Drive - see I'm not listening when you say good-bye) skirted the line of Top 40 pop-rock. As the three hours wore on, you'd start adding in some harder elements until 6pm when the louder and harder alternative superstars took control: your Pearl Jams, your Nirvanas, and your Veruca Salts (ouch – didn’t think you’d see those three group together again, did you?).

Everclear fell into the Pulse many times over. One of the first songs I actually remember playing a lot of was one of theirs and while Santa Monica has never bothered me, I still get a sense of dreadful déjà vu whenever I hear the song. It’s as if I’m telling myself, "You know this song like the back of your hand; move on, it’s over; you’re done." Perhaps I was just over-saturated all those years ago and I haven’t moved on yet. Other songs by Art Alexakis found their way into rotation and for the most part I liked them. As long as it wasn’t Santa Monica, I guess. Sparkle and Fade was also one of the few full albums we had as well; most music came from preview discs, severely limiting other deep cuts.

I also remember that when we played an Everclear song that we were encouraged to make use of what the Program Director called "drops," essentially a 5-to-10-second vocal promotional. We had drops from the university president and other college celebrities (the football coach, the mascot, random students in the quad, and so on) as well a scant few from actual musicians – cool! Somehow or another we ended up with Art Alexakis, Craig Montoya, and Greg Eklund all saying more of less who they were and reminding listeners what station they were listening to, as that guitar riff echoed over and over and over and over and.... It was sort of cool, having big-name musicians like Everclear, Tripping Daisy and others identifying our station by name.

As for the Pulse, the name didn’t last much longer than two or three semesters. The student management team that lauded daypart branding was gone and the faculty advisor dropped all the names, claiming it fragmented the station too much. Most of these daypart designations were forgotten until I had to dredge them out of my memory. I guess I still living with those ghosts.

Oh, yeah - before he graduated, I asked the former music director how they came up with the name. It turns out he and the then program director were out discussing radio station business and one of them stopped at an ATM, itself branded with the name Pulse. There was a tiny, throbbing light on the machine that I’m told eventually meshed in the music director’s mind – and the Pulse was born.

And thus, more pointless trivia.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Santa Monica
(Alexakis/Eklund/Montoya)
Everclear
From the album Sparkle and Fade
1995

I am still livin' with your ghost
Lonely and dreamin' of the west coast
I don't wanna be your downtime
I don't wanna be your stupid game
With my big black boots and an old suitcase
I do believe I'll find myself a new place
I don't wanna be the bad guy
I don't wanna do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just wanna see some palm trees
I will try and shake away this disease
We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die
We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die
I am still dreamin' of your face
Hungry and hollow for all the things you took away
I don't wanna be your good time
I don't wanna be your fallback crutch anymore
Walk right out into a brand new day
Insane and risin' in my own weird way
I don't wanna be the bad guy
I don't wanna do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just wanna feel some sunshine
I just wanna find some place to be alone
Yeah watch the world die

Talk radio is fizzing out

The Pulsars arrived in the music library in 1997 and Tunnel Song became an instant favorite of the staff for various reasons. First, the song mentioned radio stations, which working in radio was something that the staff could identify with. You might say we went Radio Ga-Ga over the song (okay, we weren’t that infatuated with it).

Second, it sounded different, with its catchy singsong chorus that was badly needed in the midst of some the heavy doom and gloom overplayed elsewhere.

Third, it was a short; clocking in at just less than 3 minutes made it easy to sneak in toward the top of the hour, thereby making it one of those filler songs we tended to overuse. But for good reason!

The Pulsars are (or were) David Trumfio and his brother Harry, a perfectly defined indie group from Chicago. I have to wonder what they’re up to and what else they ever came up with, seeing how Tunnel Song seems to have been all but forgotten.

One last thing about the song: the version that arrived did so on vinyl, meaning we had to grease up the turntable to give it airtime. And we did! Often!

Dig that, digital pirates!

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Tunnel Song
(Trumfio)
The Pulsars
From the album The Pulsars
1997

Pittsburgh has a real cool tunnel
Pittsburgh has a tunnel through a mountain
Tunnels are what we like
Tunnels can be dark or bright

And now we're going through that tunnel
Talk radio is fizzing out

So you say you wanna build your own tunnel
Well don't forget a compass and a shovel
'Cause if you dig too deep
You might miss by ten feet

New york has a real cool tunnel
The holland tunnel is just like a funnel
Tunnels are what we like
All the tunnels are out of sight

And now we're going through that tunnel
Talk radio is fizzing out

So you say so you say you wanna build a
So you say so you say you wanna build a

And now we're going through that tunnel
Talk radio is fizzing out

I'm not listening when you say good-bye

Let's talk about dayparts, shall we?

A daypart is the division of the broadcast day into segments with certain types of music regularly scheduled for each segment. Music was generally formatted in accordance of the demographic group listening: the jazz and classical music that we played from 6 am to 3pm was geared toward the community at large while the rock was saved for the afternoon and evenings and the college population, out enjoying their night life.

Third Eye Blind was a staple of our first three-hour block of rock music. I can vividly recall hearing the first few seconds of Semi-Charmed Life ooze out of the speaker on more than one occasion at straight up 3pm. Then that excessive “doo-doo-doo, doo-dah-doo-doo, doo-doo-doos” that followed. It was okay, but nothing I was a huge fan of. For months we played an edited version from our preview discs. Why was it shorter? I think it was edited for lyrical content or drug references. You can’t understand the guy anyway so why bother noting lyrical content? When we did get the album version, complete with that annoying 50-second bridge two minutes and twenty seconds into the song, I remember a few people sort of in awe that we'd play it. Listening to it now, it sounds like some sort of enduring anthem for some lost civilization.

Anyway, the daily rock portion of the broadcast day began at three o'clock and usually featured core pop-rock tracks you'd hear on contemporary hit radio stations – a sort of top 40 slant on things. One of the student managers branded the first three hours as The Drive - as in "drive time." It was a time when the college kids were getting out of class for the day and a time we hoped to hit our target audience with music they wanted to hear. And with no other station in town – except the obligatory country music station – we hoped they would listen.

Third Eye Blind was still too poppy for my likes and therefore I really never caught on to their bandwagon. I know there were some other songs in rotation as the years wore on but because most of their music tended to sound the same (and could be indistinguishable from...oh, let's say Matchbox 20) everything they did eventually became filler in my sonic world.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Semi-Charmed Life
(Jenkins)
Third Eye Blind
From the album Third Eye Blind
1997

I'm packed and I'm holding,
I'm smiling, she's living, she's golden and
she lives for me, She says she lives for me,
Ovation, She's got her own motivation,
she comes round and she goes down on me,
And I make her smile, It's like a drug for you,
Do ever what you want to do,
Coming over you,
Keep on smiling,
what we go through.
One stop to the rhythm that divides you,
And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse,
Chop another line like a coda with a curse,
And I come on like a freak show takes the stage.
We give them the games we play, she said,
I want something else, to get me through this,
Semi-charmed kind of life,
I want something else,
I'm not listening when you say, Good-bye.

The sky it was gold, it was rose,
I was taking sips of it through my nose,
And I wish I could get back there,
Some place back there,
Smiling in the pictures you would take,
Doing crystal myth,
Will lift you up until you break,
It won't stop,
I won't come down, I keep stock,
With a tick tock rhythm and a bump for the drop,
And then I bumped up. I took the hit I was given,
Then I bumped again,
And then I bumped again.
How do I get back there to,
The place where I fell asleep inside you?
How do I get myself back to,
The place where you said,
I want something else to get me through this,
semi-charmed kind of life,
I want something else,
I'm not listening when you say, good-bye,

I believe in the sand beneath my toes,
The beach gives a feeling,
An earthy feeling,
I believe in the faith that grows,
And the four right chords can make me cry,
When I'm with you I feel like I could die.
And that would be all right,
All right, When the plane came in,
She said she was crashing,
The velvet it rips,
In the city we tripped,
On the urge to feel alive,
But now I'm struggling to survive,
The days you were wearing,
That velvet dress,
You're the priestess,
must confess,
Those little red panties,
They pass the test,
Slide up around the belly,
Face down on the mattress,
One,
Now you hold me,
And we're broken.
Still it's all that I want to do.
Feel myself with a head made of the ground,
I'm scared but I'm not coming down.
And I won't run for my life,
She's got her jaws just locked now in smile
but nothing is all right,
All right, I want something else,
To get me through this,
Semi-charmed kind of life,
I want something else,
I'm not listening when you say,
good-bye.

Got my head in the clouds

When you work around this much music you tend to get bogged down in the names. You always hear about the Smashing Pumpkins, the Becks, the Pearl Jams, and all the other heavy hitters, shakers, and movers. So it was always a pleasure to find some obscure gem on a disc that was instantly catchy and memorable. Look Who's Perfect Now easily fit into this category.

Transister was Gary Clark and Eric Pressly, both known in various musical circles as singers, songwriters, and producers, who brought in singer-songwriter Keeley Hawkes for a collaboration that would create 1997's self-titled album. This song was the lead-off track and the only song I have heard by the short-lived group, making them a somewhat one-hit wonder for the station. I don't think I ever knew much about the group until putting this meager article together but it turns out the album was well-liked by reviewers, noting similarities to Garbage. Also, another song off the album, Dizzy Moon, seems to be as popular as this one. How come our station never heard it...?

Anyway, today all three are at work on various solo projects.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Link: Transister Unofficial Site

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Look Who's Perfect Now
(Transister)
Transister
From the album Transister
1997

You mister wearing a crown
Push me around
Draggin' me down
You mister head of the class
Never come last
Pain in the ass
Chorus:
Look who's perfect now
Got my head in the clouds
Look who's perfect now
Got my feet on the ground
Look who's perfect now
Got my head in the clouds
Got my feet on the ground
Look who's perfect now
You mister never to fall
Standing so tall
Knowing it all
You mister living a lie
Flying so high
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
(Chorus to end)

Everyone is so angry and nobody fits

Let me be the first to introduce you to Soda Sandwich, as I suspect no one outside 1995 remembers them.

Working at a college radio station gives you a few perks.  Record companies often call and ask if you'll be willing to play an album and if so, they then send a couple of preview copies.  If a big-name band passes through town, there is always a chance that they'll mix and mingle with an educational institution.  Also, most importantly, you get to promote and encounter the local music scene.  A college or university located in (or near) a large metropolis is bound to experience an area band looking for promotion and proving to a record company a radio station played their music. Any radio station.

If I do my job what would you complain about?

This song is an entry from the "oh, yeah" list: a collection of music on paper not ringing any bells, but as soon as you hear the chorus, you let out a slow, succulent "oh, yeah," thrusting you back to the afternoon when you first heard the song tell you "everything falls...apart."

Chic-chic-ky-boom

Perhaps the best way to begin Backsells is to explain my role at the radio station. Many freshmen started as I did, serving as a newsreader, for which I appeared three mornings a week.