I think it's worth it for you to stay awake

/>I was saddened to hear of the passing of Mark Sandman in 1999, thereby bringing to a close the band Morphine. I won't pretend to be a fan of their jazz-rock sound – no guitars but a wailing saxophone – but I know they were unique to my undergraduate station and, more so, to the host of What's New Wednesday (WNW).

Starting in 1996 the station began a series of one-hour specialty programs during the last hour of the broadcast day (11pm). The first program we developed was by far the best, aiming to break out of our usual playlist milieu and venture through tracks not in rotation and often breaking the mildly strict format borders. The program director at the time, a guy named John Fletcher (Syd "the Kid's" successor), hosted the program the first year and really put a lot of time and effort into the music – trying to DJ out of the box, if you will. One could say WNW was an attempt at bringing back the sounds of the Pit (see Kill the Crow), underground artists that had not over saturated our station or made a dent in commercial radio. John would essentially pull two or three recent preview discs, or any recently received albums, and listen to a few cuts to discover what was out there. I mean, really out there.

One week in the spring of 1997, a package from Dreamworks brought us Like Swimming, Morphine's major label debut, featuring the track Early to Bed. Morphine had actually formed seven years prior in Massachusetts and by this time featured Sandman, sax man Dana Colley and multi-percussionist Billy Conway. I tend to think there were a few other cuts that we played but I'm reminded that Early to Bed often made an appearance at the end of the broadcast day with John playing it as a midnight lullaby to our listeners.

If there was a problem with WNW it was that once John graduated, the music he had accumulated was not immediately entered into regular rotation. It floated around the office for a few months, until we updated our computer playlist software. Of course, John was long gone and each subsequent host put less effort than the predecessor into planning What's New Wednesday and soon the program faded into memory within a few long semesters. More so, by this time Morphine had disbanded with Sandman's exit, off to never-never land.

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Early to Bed
(Mark Sandman)
Morphine
From the album Like Swimming
1997

Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man or woman miss out on the night life
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man or woman miss out on the night life
One drink call it a early night
Soon you're curled up beneath the reading light
Or you bathe in the TV's blue tint
On your pillow an after-dinner mint
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man or woman miss out on the night life
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man or woman miss out on the night life
Early to bed so you can wait
For three buses a trolley and a train
I think it's worth it for you to stay awake
Maybe tomorrow you'll be a little late
But early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man or woman miss out on the night life
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man or woman miss out on the night life
You'll miss out on the night life (x2)

You can't run away from these styles I got

For many years, rap and R&B danced around the schedule; during my time at the undergraduate station it was a featured format during the week from 9pm to midnight, when we signed off the station. As with everything else, student management had come up with yet another name for this daypart (see I'm not listening when you say good-bye), the Groove, featuring a steady diet of what was given the generic label of “contemporary hit urban,” or, as I insisted, "Churban.” Yes, I really thought that was funny. Still, the Groove is where I first heard of the Fugees. I still remember the Groove coordinator sitting in the music library going over with me which Fugee was which:

"Okay, this is the easy one. This is Lauryn."
"Right."
"Yea, and this is Prakazrel."
"Pra...kra...?"
"Yea."
"Wait – Praz?"
"Yea. And this is Wyclef Jean."
"Gene?"
"Nah, Jean."
"Oh, okay. Cool."

We really had a hard time with this blended format of rap and R&B. Some DJs went all hip-hop, others went straight and smooth R&B and the remainder – the uninformed – played it all the same without any clue of what they were doing. I remember there being a bit of ire with the Groove format coordinator, who wanted more hours of the day devoted to the format per his listeners. The faculty advisor said indications he'd received were the opposite: people didn’t like three hours of rock interrupted at 9pm for an entirely different format. Either way our biggest problem was that we didn’t have enough music to support extended hours. While the rock format got a lot attention musically from our weekly preview discs, there was rarely any R&B or rap included on them. Somewhere in previous years, the station sprung for GoldDiscs, essentially weekly preview discs that featured a mix of urban sounds (these discs were yellow-tinted, as opposed to the blue of the rock discs). Still, there were only about 30 or so GoldDiscs and many of them either 1) didn't have much to choose from in the first place or 2) were dated and unpopular. Thus we had to rely on receiving actual albums – either CD or vinyl – and those were always a chore to get our hands on.

Staffing was also an issue – outside of a handful of people, it was apparent no one wanted to host the Groove either. Therefore the next school year the format was rescheduled to weekends 6pm to midnight and modern rock would now run from 3pm to midnight.

The Refugee Camp didn't fare much better: the Fugees have all but vanished since The Score, choosing solo releases and guest appearances. But maybe they'll show up together – ready or not.

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Ready Or Not
(Thom Bell/Hart, W./Lauryn Hill/Jean, N./Michel, S.)
The Fugees
From the album The Score
1996

Chorus: Lauryn Hill

Ready or not, Here I come, You can't hide
Gonna find you, and take it slowly
Ready or not, Here I come, You can't hide
Gonna find you, and make you want me

Verse One: Wyclef

Now that I escape sleep walk away
those who convolate knows the world they hate
Jails bars ain't golden gates
those who fake they brake when they meet they four hundred pound mate
if i could rule the world, everyone who have a gun
and together of course we'd get the up in our their horse
I kick a rhyme drinking moon shine
I poor sip on the concrete, for the deceased
but no don't weep, Wyclef in a state of sleep
thinking about the robbe-RY that I did last WEEK
Money in the bag, bank a look like a drag
I wanna play with pelicans from here to Bagdad
Gun blast, think fast I think I'm hit
My girl pinch's my hips to see if I still exist
I think not, I send a letter to my friends
A born again, hooligan only to be king again

Chorus

Verse Two: Lauryn Hill

yo, I play my enemies like a game of chess
where I rest no stress if you don't smoke cess, less
i must confess my destany's manifest
to some gortex and sweats I make tracks like i'm homeless
Rap orgies with Porgie and Bess
capture your bounty like Eliot Ness YES!
Bless you if you represent the FU
but I hex you, with some witches vu if you do-do
Voodo, I could what you do, EASY!
Believe me, frontin' niggaz
gives me heebe-geebes
so why you imitatin' Al Capone
I be Nina Symone and defacating on your microphone

chorus

Interlude: Lauryn Hill

You can't run away from these styles I got
Oh baby, hey baby cause I got a lot oh yeah...

Anywhere you go, my whole crew gonna know
Oh baby, hey baby you can't hide from the black gold no...

Verse Three: Pras

Ready or not, refugees taking over
The buffalo soldier, dread like rasta
On the twelve hour flyby in my bomber
crews went for cover now they under pushin' up flowers
Superfly, true lies do or dies
toss me high only profile with my crew from Lacaille
I refugee from Guatanamo Bay,
dance around the border like I'm Cassius Clay

Chorus

Something Wicked This Way Comes

"Bed music" is an instrumental background tune that DJs mix with their voice. The music was usually recorded from CD to tape cartridges (the unending loop of tape) and then played at a lower modulation while the DJ talked live on the air over the music. DJs at my undergraduate radio station had the option of using them during stopsets, or breaks, in the rock shifts. There were only about three or four different "beds" to use, all created in previous years by then Program Director, Syd ("the Kid"), who had popularized the practice as another way to make us sound like a commercial top 40 station.

A lot of people were uncomfortable using them – myself included – as it meant you spent more time fiddling with knobs and meters than focusing on something intelligent to say. In time, as we moved away from that "top 40 sound" to a more low-fidelity, college-type atmosphere, the music director and I pulled the bed music from the control room. It was seldom used and, by my senior year, it was time for a change. However, no student comes to mind as an example of someone who depended on bed music than Super Ron (see You got to take the elevator to the mezzanine).

His affiliation with the radio station continued into my senior year but by then he was noticeably cocky and irresponsible. I believe his ego was first inflated when he interned the previous summer in New York State, returning to us commoners with ideas of how "real" stations sounded. With his seniority at our station, Ron soon became the bane of those who had to work with him: he began showing up late to music shifts and tried to get away with antics on air that he knew wouldn't work. He had also taken to parking right in front of the Communication Building, giving university police a chance to constantly ticket his sad excuse for a truck.

I believe it was the issue of bed music that finally dissolved any bond between the two of us. Even though bed music had been removed, Ron found ways to sneak music out of the station office and on to the air. After using one of the tape cartridges, I dropped in unannounced and explained to him we weren’t using bed music anymore. His response was something along the lines of he either "forgot" or that he would play what he wanted. Fine: I pulled both the tape and him into the production room across the hall and proceeded to bulk erase the tape cartridge in front of him, thereby wiping out any trace of the music. The next week he resorted to CDs, pulling out the Barry Adamson disc from the production library and using Something Wicked This Way Comes. As the disc was used in various radio productions, we couldn't break the disc. And who would want to? I even went out after I graduated and bought a copy and still listen – and laugh – at the memorable grooves, beats, voices and textures.

We weren't speaking by the end of the spring semester and I refused to contribute any report to the faculty advisor when it came to grade suggestions. I did discover, the following year when I was a graduate student and station manager at the other station, that "Super" Ron was glad I was gone and said, in his eyes, I was a horrible program director. The only other thing I learned was that he had not paid off the previous school year's parking tickets and had already amassed another thousand on the then-current school year.

Things were not as super for Ron as they had been the previous year. I hope everything worked out for him, wherever he is.

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Something Wicked This Way Comes
(Barry Adamson/Blackwell/Datin/Del-Naja / Marshall/Middlesbrooke/Shapiro/Vidalin/Vowel)
Barry Adamson
From the album Oedipus Schmoedipus
1996

(Instrumental)

Sleeping Beauty

Both Communication Departments I worked with treated their radio stations as hands-on training facilities for students, allowing them the experience of working in a professional environment. As such, both had a fairly large listener radius, composing of not only the university population (students and staff) but also the city and even the county. It was to these demographic areas that we attempted to provide alternative programming, including news, information and music not available elsewhere.

Therefore students not only served as DJs but also prepared live, five-minute news and sports broadcasts. There was a taped introduction, a vocal over some sort of music, identifying the following as a news or sports update and then the student began speaking. At my undergraduate station it seemed every year that these intros were redone or recreated (again, by students) for various reasons: the station had a new nickname they wanted to incorporate into all on-air spots; the student doing the voice had graduated and someone wanted to remove all traces of him or her; the bed music didn't seem "right;" or, in the case of the semester I was in charge of production, the intros from the previous school year, those that were more or less perfect, couldn't be found. I don't recall the semester this took place but I vividly remember being told that I needed to have a sports intro before we started the full fall schedule.

Half the problem in creating one of these introductions was finding music that fit. Sports update introductions were always a chore because everyone expected them to sound like ESPN's Sportscenter – which is why I instead decided on Timbuk 3's Sample the Dog. You know, something really out of left field. And yes, I got some strange looks at that one.

News intros were the same: they were expected to sound serious and have some sort of recognizable element, like ABC or NBC's broadcasts. That made little sense to me. Since someone changed the music every semester, there was no way you could build upon a "recognizable" element outside of one school year. But then we stumbled upon a track from the Mission Impossible soundtrack called Sleeping Beauty that we thought somehow worked – it had the right urgency, it had the right pace, and had a noticeable effect at about 17 seconds into the piece. Perfect. So perfect, in fact, I was surprised to discover two of three years after I was gone that it still garnered daily airtime.

Talk about longevity.

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Sleeping Beauty
(Danny Elfman)
Danny Elfman
From the album Mission Impossible [Score]
1996

(Instrumental)

You got to take the elevator to the mezzanine

Soul Coughing wheezed its way on to my radar in the mid-1990s. I don't recall hearing them for a first time, as they always just seemed to be there. I think of the words "Soul Coughing" today and I immediately think of Super Bon Bon, probably the band's biggest single and possibly the only Soul Coughing song we had in rotation. And since student management found it irresistible, the song got plenty of airtime during our modern rock shifts. Its hyperactive beats and scraggily-sounding vocals echoed out of the control room almost daily. However I cannot think of Super Bon Bon without quickly being reminded of the rise and fall of Super Ron Ron.

First, a few words on the bon-bon: Soul Coughing was formed in 1992 by vocalist and guitarist Mike Doughty. Mark De Gli Antoni, Sebastian Steinberg, and Yuval Gabay soon were introduce to "M" Doughty and began working the New York circuit, eventually signing to a major label and releasing three albums between 1994 and 1998. Two years later the group broke up and each went their separate, but musical, ways.

Then there was Ron. Like any other student DJ at my undergraduate station that rose through the ranks, Ron began his tenure in the Communication department as an eager freshman or sophomore ready to get his ears wet in broadcasting. I don't remember when he first showed up (perhaps 1996) but I know he was in the category of students who had the drive as well as the talent – though both traits were not always in top form. Ron was very much into popular music and made his bones doing his required three-hour shift as well as picking extra hours and experience throughout the semester. In fact, it could have been argued at the time that he was one of the top ten most heard student announcers that year.

His gung-ho attitude and likable personality made him easy to get along with and, as his experience grew, so did the student management team's willingness to give him more responsibility. Soon he was working one of the best time slots our station had, the weekday 3-6 PM rock shift, and being one of the prime go-to guys for station promotions or live remotes.

Many students took air names for their music shifts: nicknames or pseudo alter-egos they used to sound a bit more hip than they really were. On air, Ron was simply "Ron." However his dedication and ability to juggle many varied hats eventually won him a new name: Super Ron Ron.

And, as it sometimes goes, Super Ron eventually got super big. Meaning, in the head.

Now that I think of it, there was another Soul Coughing track in the studio, a meaningless remix of Super Bon Bon, that I remember as sounding undistinguishable from the original. I'm sure we all salivated at the sight of that preview disc the week it appeared....

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Super Bon Bon
(Mike Doughty/Soul Coughing)
Soul Coughing
From the album Irresistible Bliss
1996

Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Through

If I stole
Somebody else's wave
To fly up.
If I rose up
Up with the avenue
Behind me.

Some kind of verb.
Some kind of moving thing.
Something unseen.
Some hand is motioning
to rise, to rise, to rise.

Too fight that you must cut clean.
You got to take the elevator to the mezzanine,
Chump, change, and it's on, Super bon bon
Super bon bon, Super bon bon.
Too fight that you must cut clean.
You got to take the elevator to the mezzanine,
Chump, change, and it's on, Super bon bon
Super bon bon, Super bon bon.

And by
The phone
I live
In fear
Sheer Chance
Will draw
You in
To here.

Too fight that you must cut clean.
You got to take the elevator to the mezzanine,
Chump, change, and it's on, Super bon bon
Super bon bon, Super bon bon.
Too fight that you must cut clean.
You got to take the elevator to the mezzanine,
Chump, change, and it's on, Super bon bon
Super bon bon, Super bon bon.
Super bon bon, Super bon bon.
Super bon bon, Super bon bon.
Super bon bon, Super bon bon bon bon

Move up and let the man go let the man go
Move up and let the man go let the man go
Move up and let the man go let the man go
Move up and let the man go let the man go through

Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through
Move aside
and let the man go through
let the man go through