The student office at my first station was two doors down from the main studio and was generally referred to as the "Music Library," named for the three or four floor-to-ceiling metal bookcases full of music. There were attempts over the years to group music together by format and therefore give a shelf of "office space" to each format coordinator, a student who helped the music director (also a student) keep tabs on all the jazz, rock, hip-hop or whatever else we had in rotation. How the shelves actually fit in the cramped space is one thing but they always managed to be full – mostly CDs but also some old vinyl, audio cassettes for air checks, and then some tape cartridges – those devices that look like 8-tracks, smell like 8-tracks but – brother! – ain't 8-tracks.
My first year in senior student management was probably the fall of 1996 when I was named Production Director – since, I'm sure, no one else felt it a worthy enough position to apply. As Production Director I also got my own shelf in the office and was now able to officially use the office to "hang out," "relax," and "do stuff." One of the things we did to spruce up the place was utilize a bunch of the old CDs we had floating around the office. There were always extras discs: the Ad Council sent public service announcements that were only good for six months; musicians sent music in formats we hadn't even heard of; or discs in the control room got damaged and couldn't be used on the air anymore.
For grins, it was decided to hang the discs on the wall of the office, spelling out the station call letters. The idea sounded good on paper; carrying it out was another problem. The K looked okay but the other letters...well, let's just say we had to explain to visitors what they were looking at on more than one occasion. One of the discs used in this loving project was LP by the Rembrandts, an album I didn't know we even had. I'm sure we only had one track from the disc in rotation – the hastily added theme from Friends – that probably was taken out of our control room after the song hit its saturation point. So Danny Wilde and Phil Solem, the two members of the Rembrandts, hung around on our wall for a year or so.
Most of the discs were never fastened properly so in two or three months there were gaping holes in our artwork. When what was left became too much of an eyesore a few of us grabbed a handful of the discs and went outside the Communication Building to launch them into the air, like Frisbees. I know we tried to throw LP hard enough so that it could break but since corrugated cement with pebbles wasn't strong enough, we just made a mess.
I think we ended up giving it away to someone.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I'll Be There for You
(David Crane/Marta Kauffman/Michael Skloff/Phil Solem/Danny Wilde/Allee Willis)
The Rembrandts
From the album LP
1995
So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job's a joke
You're broke
Your lovelife's DOA
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
And it hasn't been your day, your week, your month
Or even your year, but
Chorus:
I'll be there for you
when the rain starts to pour
I'll be there for you
like I've been there before
I'll be there for you
'Cause you're there for me too...
You're still in bed at 10 and work begins at 8
You burned your breakfast so far things are going great
Your mother warned you there be days like these
But she didn't tell you when the world was brough down to your knees
Repeat Chorus
No one could ever know me
No one could ever see me
Seems you're the only one who knows
What it's like to be me
Some one to face the day with
Make it through all the mess with
Someone I'll always laugh with
Even at my worst, my best with you, yeah.
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
And it hasn't been your day, your week, your month
Or even your year, but
Repeat Chorus
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Maybe We’ll Get There, Maybe We Won’t
Let me be completely honest when I say that I had never heard of Charlie Peacock when the music director came in one afternoon during my senior year and said that he was going to add a track or two of Peacock’s into our rock rotation. I looked at him blankly, giving him an answer of something like, "You're the music director...you know our format...whatever works."
For my final semester before graduation – spring 1998 – I reluctantly added Program Director to my list of duties. The PD the previous fall had butted heads with the faculty advisor and therefore dropped all affiliation with the station. Perhaps a fitting way to end my four-year association with the station and the university in a role of such seniority, I instead chose a weekend shift as my three hour requirement and focused on training the directors that would take over that fall.
From what I recall, the song the music director chose seemed to fit our first three hour block of modern rock music (the more adult album alternative daypart) and while I liked it, I don't ever recall there being much interest elsewhere. No one I knew of called in demanding we play Struck Blind. It's been years since I heard the song or read the lyrics and most places I see online say the album is long out of print.
I also discovered that Peacock had been doing the music thing for a while, having released his first album back in 1984 and has been one of the most popular and well-respected artists on the contemporary Christian music scene. He continues recording and has released three albums since Strangelanguage.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Struck Blind
(Douglas Kaine McKelvey/Charlie Peacock)
Charlie Peacock
From the album Strangelanguage
1996
[Lyrics not known]
For my final semester before graduation – spring 1998 – I reluctantly added Program Director to my list of duties. The PD the previous fall had butted heads with the faculty advisor and therefore dropped all affiliation with the station. Perhaps a fitting way to end my four-year association with the station and the university in a role of such seniority, I instead chose a weekend shift as my three hour requirement and focused on training the directors that would take over that fall.
From what I recall, the song the music director chose seemed to fit our first three hour block of modern rock music (the more adult album alternative daypart) and while I liked it, I don't ever recall there being much interest elsewhere. No one I knew of called in demanding we play Struck Blind. It's been years since I heard the song or read the lyrics and most places I see online say the album is long out of print.
I also discovered that Peacock had been doing the music thing for a while, having released his first album back in 1984 and has been one of the most popular and well-respected artists on the contemporary Christian music scene. He continues recording and has released three albums since Strangelanguage.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Struck Blind
(Douglas Kaine McKelvey/Charlie Peacock)
Charlie Peacock
From the album Strangelanguage
1996
[Lyrics not known]
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Pissing the Night Away
Forever stuck somewhere in the top ten on our list of "Where the hell did this come from?" songs and probably just as high on the "What the hell does this mean?" list was Chumbawamba, an abnormality that arrived on a preview disc one Tuesday afternoon. It was new. It was different. It was played continuously for far too long by those of us who bit into its chant-like charm – myself included. Wisely, a few of the more seasoned students took it upon themselves to actually find out just what the hell Tubthumping was and what a tubthumper did – probably using the information to impress their friends during their music shifts.
So contagious was the anthemic chorus that, a month or so later in my guise as Production Director, I took it upon myself to edit together a version of the song containing nothing but the chorus – for three minutes we played the "I get knocked down" bit over and over and over.... Why did we do this to ourselves?
A lot of people liked the video for this one, too. In case you forgot (or were trying to), it had the Chumbawambians in a bar setting with some singing, some dancing, some playing instruments and one – the one everyone at the station seemed to wonder about – was shouting his lines through a megaphone. We all thought that was odd. Odd, too, were the lyrics that no one could understand, making them simultaneously mundane and profane to our untrained ears. Surely she wasn’t singing, "pissing the night away," was she?
We weren’t the only ones to milk that song. Months later I was driving home from college and, far out of range of my station, found myself listening to a commercial modern rock station. They too were "pissing the night away;" as the song faded into oblivion the DJ announced, quite proudly I might add, words to the effect that his station was the first station in the area, or in town, or whatever geographic region, to play Tubthumping. I had to laugh out loud at that comment because it was wholly unnecessary. No station should have to brag or remind anyone they were the first to inundate Tubthumping across an area. That’s as bad as a station declaring themselves "Your Official Madonna station" – which I once heard on another station during the late-1980s during her Who’s That Girl phase.
Chumbawamba originally formed in 1982 in the UK and was unheard in America until Tubthumping hit the airwaves in 1997 and have released albums in the subsequent years – though nothing as memorable.
Trivia: the album version of the song opens with a sample of dialogue from the movie Brassed Off: "Truth is I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it? Bollocks! Not compared to how people matter."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tubthumping
(Chumbawamba)
Chumbawamba
From the album Tubthumper
1997
We'll be singing
When we're winning
We'll be singing
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
Pissing the night away
Pissing the night away
He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the better times:
"Oh Danny Boy
Danny Boy
Danny Boy..."
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
Pissing the night away
Pissing the night away
He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the better times:
"Don't cry for me
Next door neighbour..."
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
We'll be singing
When we're winning
We'll be singing
So contagious was the anthemic chorus that, a month or so later in my guise as Production Director, I took it upon myself to edit together a version of the song containing nothing but the chorus – for three minutes we played the "I get knocked down" bit over and over and over.... Why did we do this to ourselves?
A lot of people liked the video for this one, too. In case you forgot (or were trying to), it had the Chumbawambians in a bar setting with some singing, some dancing, some playing instruments and one – the one everyone at the station seemed to wonder about – was shouting his lines through a megaphone. We all thought that was odd. Odd, too, were the lyrics that no one could understand, making them simultaneously mundane and profane to our untrained ears. Surely she wasn’t singing, "pissing the night away," was she?
We weren’t the only ones to milk that song. Months later I was driving home from college and, far out of range of my station, found myself listening to a commercial modern rock station. They too were "pissing the night away;" as the song faded into oblivion the DJ announced, quite proudly I might add, words to the effect that his station was the first station in the area, or in town, or whatever geographic region, to play Tubthumping. I had to laugh out loud at that comment because it was wholly unnecessary. No station should have to brag or remind anyone they were the first to inundate Tubthumping across an area. That’s as bad as a station declaring themselves "Your Official Madonna station" – which I once heard on another station during the late-1980s during her Who’s That Girl phase.
Chumbawamba originally formed in 1982 in the UK and was unheard in America until Tubthumping hit the airwaves in 1997 and have released albums in the subsequent years – though nothing as memorable.
Trivia: the album version of the song opens with a sample of dialogue from the movie Brassed Off: "Truth is I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it? Bollocks! Not compared to how people matter."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tubthumping
(Chumbawamba)
Chumbawamba
From the album Tubthumper
1997
We'll be singing
When we're winning
We'll be singing
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
Pissing the night away
Pissing the night away
He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the better times:
"Oh Danny Boy
Danny Boy
Danny Boy..."
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
Pissing the night away
Pissing the night away
He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the better times:
"Don't cry for me
Next door neighbour..."
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
We'll be singing
When we're winning
We'll be singing
Sunday, May 7, 2006
I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one
Can you think of one word to describe Meredith Brooks? If the word is also a song title, then we weren't allowed to use that word on the air. Yes, thanks to our constant playing of that Meredith Brooks song, the Communication Department decided that to avoid any sort of conflict and ruled that the radio station would not use the word on the air – be it this song, a song by the Rolling Stones, or to identify the group the Four Bitchin' Babes.
This mandate wasn’t right away so we were able to say Bitch the first month or so we had the song in rotation. Afterwards there were a few clever ways to say the name of the song that I tried, such as recording the word backwards, but I tended to the bizarre route and gave it a new title. Meaning, for weeks I identified the song as The Sky is Blue. That is, until some listener who missed the joke called and bitched me out for not saying "Bitch." From there I just came up with names and descriptions from the top of my head: her ode to chocolate milk, that it stood for "Brooks Irritated, Time Changes Happen" or just saying the playlist was smudged and I hadn't a clue what the song was.
It was hardly my favorite song: it sounded like a cheap knock-off of other angry white women, which was all the rage at the time thanks to Alanis Morissette. But it was angry girl at its best and sounded slick and sexy coming from Meredith's mouth (not to be confused with Merril Bainbridge's Mouth) - that's what made it so much fun.
Brooks released her third album in 2002 and since has been writing and producing for Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hooray.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Bitch
(Brooks/Peiken)
Meredith Brooks
From the album Blurring the Edges
1997
I hate the world today
You're so good to me
I know but I can't change
Tried to tell you
But you look at me like maybe
I'm an angel underneath
Innocent and sweet
Yesterday I cried
Must have been relieved to see
The softer side
I can understand how you'd be so confused
I don't envy you
I'm a little bit of everything
All rolled into one
Chorus:
I'm a bitch, I'm a lover
I'm a child, I'm a mother
I'm a sinner, I'm a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I'm your hell, I'm your dream
I'm nothing in between
You know you wouldn't want it any other way
So take me as I am
This may mean
You'll have to be a stronger man
Rest assured that
When I start to make you nervous
And I'm going to extremes
Tomorrow I will change
And today won't mean a thing
Chorus
Just when you think, you got me figured out
The season's already changing
I think it's cool, you do what you do
And don't try to save me
Chorus
I'm a bitch, I'm a tease
I'm a goddess on my knees
When you hurt, when you suffer
I'm your angel undercover
I've been numb, I'm revived
Can't say I'm not alive
You know I wouldn't want it any other way
This mandate wasn’t right away so we were able to say Bitch the first month or so we had the song in rotation. Afterwards there were a few clever ways to say the name of the song that I tried, such as recording the word backwards, but I tended to the bizarre route and gave it a new title. Meaning, for weeks I identified the song as The Sky is Blue. That is, until some listener who missed the joke called and bitched me out for not saying "Bitch." From there I just came up with names and descriptions from the top of my head: her ode to chocolate milk, that it stood for "Brooks Irritated, Time Changes Happen" or just saying the playlist was smudged and I hadn't a clue what the song was.
It was hardly my favorite song: it sounded like a cheap knock-off of other angry white women, which was all the rage at the time thanks to Alanis Morissette. But it was angry girl at its best and sounded slick and sexy coming from Meredith's mouth (not to be confused with Merril Bainbridge's Mouth) - that's what made it so much fun.
Brooks released her third album in 2002 and since has been writing and producing for Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hooray.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Bitch
(Brooks/Peiken)
Meredith Brooks
From the album Blurring the Edges
1997
I hate the world today
You're so good to me
I know but I can't change
Tried to tell you
But you look at me like maybe
I'm an angel underneath
Innocent and sweet
Yesterday I cried
Must have been relieved to see
The softer side
I can understand how you'd be so confused
I don't envy you
I'm a little bit of everything
All rolled into one
Chorus:
I'm a bitch, I'm a lover
I'm a child, I'm a mother
I'm a sinner, I'm a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I'm your hell, I'm your dream
I'm nothing in between
You know you wouldn't want it any other way
So take me as I am
This may mean
You'll have to be a stronger man
Rest assured that
When I start to make you nervous
And I'm going to extremes
Tomorrow I will change
And today won't mean a thing
Chorus
Just when you think, you got me figured out
The season's already changing
I think it's cool, you do what you do
And don't try to save me
Chorus
I'm a bitch, I'm a tease
I'm a goddess on my knees
When you hurt, when you suffer
I'm your angel undercover
I've been numb, I'm revived
Can't say I'm not alive
You know I wouldn't want it any other way
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