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WGSU Official Site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGSU
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Listen to WGSU live (only active during Sports broadcasts)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGSU
Map of territory
Flickr tagged photos
Listen to WGSU live (only active during Sports broadcasts)
This site is not affiliated with SUNY Geneseo.
19 comments:
On September 18, 2003, I sat at the computer in the on-air studio and made a list of all the CDs in the brand new, Fall 2003 Rotation. Here's the list!
Heavy:
Polyphonic Spree – The Beginning Stages of…
Mogwai – Happy Songs for Happy People
Ben Lee – Hey You. Yes You.
Bjork – Livebox Sampler
Beauty Pill – You are Right to be Afraid EP
Guided By Voices – Earthquake Glue
Appleseed Cast – Two Conversations
The Juan MacLean – Give Me Every Little Thing (Split with Rapture) Pretty Girls Make Graves – The New Romance
Super Furry Animals – Phantom Power
Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn – Songs From the Black Mountain Music Project The Tyde – Twice
The Stills – Rememberese
Saves the Day – College Sampler
Sister Sonny – The Bandit Lab
Sufjan Stevens – Greetings from Michigan
Startime International Presents: Supercuts - Various
Beulah – Yoko
Puffy AmiYumi – Nice
Cex – Being Ridden
Medium:
From Monument to Masses – The Impossible Leap in One Hundred Simple Steps
Black Box Recorder – Passionoia
The Sleepy Jackson – Lovers
Nigel – Nigel
Criteria – En Garde
Juana Molina – Segundo
Enon – In This City (Maxi-Single)
Thursday – College Sampler
Dandy Warhols – Welcome to the Monkeyhouse
The New Amsterdams – Worse for the Wear
TV on the Radio – Young Liars
Dear John Letters – Stories of Our Lives
Ween – Quebec
Summer Hymns – Clemency
Benjamin Gibbard – HOME Vol 5 (Split with Andrew Kenny)
Small Brown Bike – The River Bed
Fountains of Wayne – Welcome Interstate Managers
Brookville – Wonderfully Nothing
Metric – Metric
Alkaline Trio – Good Mourning
Light:
Fireside – Get Shot
American Analog Set – Promise of Love
The Red Hot Valentines – Summer Fling
The Mars Volta – Deloused in the Comatorium
A Northern Chorus – Spirit Flags
Pernice Brothers – Yours Mine and Ours
Junior-Senior – D-D-Don’t Stop the Beat
Zykos – Comedy Horn
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Symphonies for Lonely Subway Cars
Gemma Hayes – Night on My Side (NOTE: THIS CD WAS ALREADY MISSING WHEN I MADE THE LIST)
Dakota/Dakota – Shoot in the Dark
Club 8 – Strangely Beautiful
Yes New York - Various
The Swords Project – Entertainment is Over if you Want It
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
Medicine – The Mechanical Forces of Love
Little Darla Has a Treat For You – Various
Why? – Oaklandazulasylum
The Jealous Sound – Kill Them With Kindness
Rockets and Bluelights – The Smashed City
Rec A:
Radiohead – Kid A
The Shins – Oh, Inverted World
Manitoba – Up in Flames
Fugazi – The Argument
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell
Blur – Think Tank
Bright Eyes – The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
The Dismemberment Plan – Change
Les Savy Fav – Go Forth
Ted Leo/Pharmacists – Hearts of Oak
…And you Will Know us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags and Codes
Stephen Malkmus – Stephen Malkmus
Cat Power – You Are Free
Piebald – We are the Only Friends We Have
Saddle Creek 50 – Various
Spoon – Kill the Moonlight
Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights
Holopaw – Holopaw
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The Strokes – Is This It
Cursive – The Ugly Organ
The Postal Service – Give Up
Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American
The White Stripes – Elephant
The Thermals – More Parts Per Million
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Built to Spill – Keep it Like a Secret
Earlimart – Everyone Down Here
AFI – The Art of Drowning
At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command
Rec B:
Yo La Tengo – Sampler
Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West
Helium – Superball (Single)
Ben Lee – Consult Your Local Minions
Pixies – Doolittle
Belle and Sebastian – Tigermilk
The Promise Ring – Nothing Feels Good
Neutral Milk Hotel – In an Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Breeders – Divine Hammer (Single)
Elliot Smith – XO
Radiohead - The Bends
Billy Bragg and Wilco – Mermaid Avenue Volume 2
Weezer – The Blue Album
The Avalanches – Since I Left You
The Walkmen – The Walkmen
Weakerthans – Left and Leaving
Supergrass – I Should Coco
Blur – The Best of
Pedro the Lion – It’s Hard to Find a Friend
That Dog – Retreat From the Sun
Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary
The Cure – Live
Built to Spill – Perfect From Now On
Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Archers of Loaf – White Trash Heroes
Get Up Kids – Something to Write Home About
R.E.M – New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Sebadoh – Harmacy
They Might Be Giants – Factory Showroom
Ash - Trailer
I’m not implying that this should be a forum for long lost secrets that WGSU alums been waiting so many years to spill. No, I'm just saying it straight out. Here's a secret:
Me and Mike Morrissey used to turn off the lights in the music office, close the door, and listen to “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team)” by Taking Back Sunday – just that one glorious track – and then open the door and switch the lights back on like nothing had happened. What a brilliant song. If you e-mail me I can tell you why it’s so good, but I won’t mess up this page with all those delicious details.
The closed-door was to keep this listening activity under wraps. The lights-off was the agreed protocol at the time for any telling of any secret. I’m not sure if this is still practiced at WGSU today.
At the end of Spring 2002 the instant replay had a bunch of cool songs including:
Desaparecidos - Greater Omaha
Mates of State - Uber legitimate
Those were ones I really loved.
Also, the summer of 2003 was when I programmed the Instant Replay machine to do constant broadcasting with my recorded mic breaks announcing songs. Joe Marhamati, Colleen Butler, and Russell Lake also helped with this. This gave WGSU a voice during the summer and during non-live air shows. It helped the audience know the names of bands and songs, and it helped win over listeners by providing a longer stream of music without songs repeating at any point during the day. The whole loop, at it's peak, was around 10 hours.
Some of the music played:
Broken Social Scene - tracks from You Forgot It In People
Yo La Tengo - Summer Sun
Idlewild
M Ward's cover of "Let's Dance" by David Bowie (still one of my favorites)
Dntel - "This Is The Dream of Evan and Chan"
Oh wow, I forgot you guys were at that show! I THINK it was me, Morrissey and Russell Lake, and we ran into Meghan McKenna who brought us to an all-night diner on Elmwood Ave afterward for a 4am meal. And yes, the sun was definitely coming up when we were maneuvering back to Geneseo.
Russell posted a review of this show on the short-lived "Geneseo Makeout Club" Website, along with a review of the second "All-Girl Summer Fun Band" record. No idea whether this still exists anywhere.
I heard about Neko before I met Neko. Some emphasized his large straw hat, others mentioned first his glaring blue eyes, and others still the large headphones that Neko wore draped around his neck, which played selections from the Warp Records catalog at such a loud volume that a person seated in the music office might mistakenly believe that some sort of robot had entered the building when it was really just Neko coming up the hall.
For most of the time we knew him, Neko was on some sort of heavy drugs, or so he would have us believe. He told me he had been kicked out of Cornell for his raucous behavior, like throwing insane parties, blowing coke off of antique furniture and so on. Based on the person before me, I had no reason not to believe him. Perhaps inspired by these same drugs, Neko's days were spent in a lyrical assault upon anyone and everyone who crossed his path. The guy was a battle rapper at heart, venomously improvising about popping glocks, tearing up motherfuckers, etc. We actually had to ask him to stop showing up at random DJs' shifts and rapping at them as they nervously tried to carry on with their shows.
One time I handed him a new Squarepusher vinyl and he immediately marched over to the vacant on-air studio and played the entire thing from beginning to end. Neko really did appreciate the radio station as a way to bring music that he loved to a wider audience. Probably more than we did at times. I think that's why he dropped in so often in during fall of 2002.
At the start of Spring 2003, the Union got a facelift and there were musical festivities arranged to celebrate the new union in the new year. To our shock, Neko was listed as a musical performer for that afternoon. We all showed up expecting to be startled and frightened by an insane and profane electronic noise music shock show. Which is why it was so surprising to find our boy in khakis and a sweater playing some original tunes on an acoustic guitar. Neko soberly explained that he had cleaned himself up over the winter break and taken a job at a men's clothing store. He even found a girlfriend! Our brief confusion quickly gave way to cheerful relief that our odd pal was going to make it after all.
Sadly, one night soon after when the WGSU crew was out wandering from one party to another, we heard a voice call out to us from the darkness. It was Neko on a front porch with his girl and her friend. Without getting out of his chair, he reported sadly that he wouldn't be able to stay at Geneseo because he had to go away to get himself taken care of. We wished him luck and we never heard from Neko again.
Next time I'm at my parents' house I am going to unearth the CMJ 2002 trip diary!
Killer! I was hoping that was with you and not pasted to the wall of the station.
I'm preparing something about the 2002 scavenger hunt...
DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY MUSIC FROM THE ALBUM WE RECORDED FOR JARED AT PLANETARY???
In late Fall 2002, a team of WGSU staff participated in the Scavenger Hunt of Doom, an annual contest run by the music promotion company AAM. They were offering an incredible prize to the winner: a copy of every CD promoted by AAM in 2002. More than 100 free albums!
The list of 25 items ranged from the mundane to the extreme. It included a restaurant menu (easy), a haiku about the scavenger hunt (easy), a beach ball (harder than it sounds in the dead of winter) a rare G.I. Joe action figure (I actually threw down some money for this) and a Bellboy hat (Meghan McKenna actually BUILT this).
One item was a laughable long shot: a lock of hair from the head of Jared W, a promoter at AAM's rival The Planetary Group. I don't remember how we decided on our plan, but we got right to work on it: we would get to Jared's hair by way of his heart and record a full-length album in his honor in the WGSU production studio.
I wrote and recorded the first track by myself. But when I realized it was missing something I enlisted Mike Morrissey to come in and "sweeten it up" with some noise guitar. Instant classic! The rest of the album was recorded when a bunch of us got really drunk one night and tramped over to the station where Morrissey curated five or six songs worth of insane noise. Morrissey and Meghan's shrieking Jared's name over ear-splitting cymbals and guitar feedback stands out in my memory. Emily Isler had a lovely voice and she sang a charming waltz tune for the album, though maybe not that same night. I'm not sure if anyone but Jared himself ever got a copy of this album. We sent it in a one-of-a-kind CD sleeve and named all the songs on the spot, so the tracklist remains elusive as well.
With Jared's hair out of the way, there was just one item remaining: a sealed can of Crystal Pepsi (out of production since the early 90s). There was no hope of finding this at any store, and eBay searches were worthless; we couldn't hedge our bets on a can that could be grabbed away by another station in the final seconds of an auction, and who knew when the thing would actually arrive? But with just days remaining before the deadline, we had a stroke of luck: A friend of a friend of Emily's had several cans of Crystal Pepsi in his basement for some reason and he was willing to donate one in exchange for whatever metal CDs we won from AAM! We had found every item on the list!
Over the next few hours and days, though, when we tried to arrange a pickup time, our guy had suddenly vanished. We went crazy trying to reach him, but no luck. Out of options and with our heads hanging a little, we were forced to submit our entry without the Crystal Pepsi. A week later we learned that we were beaten by a station in St. Louis that had retrieved every single item.
So what went wrong with our Pepsi connection? Laziness? Forgetfulness? Conspiracy? Well, it turned out the young man with the cans was stabbed in a crack house in Buffalo that December, and he spent the several days we were desperately trying to reach him laid out in the hospital. In other words, fate stepped in and prevented WGSU from taking the title. Incredible.
Here's a link to the waltz with Emily on Vox, possibly the Castawaves on guitar and drums(?):
http://glassanimalindex.com/wgsu/3_3_for_Jared.mp3
Here's the words to the song I wrote for Jared.
We're so exhausted
We're gonna send this off to Boston
And pay anything it costs, yeah
For one of Jared's hairy locks, yeah.
And once you've lost it
You're gonna put it in a box and
Send it quicker than a fox, yeah
So fast like feet on hot sand, well,
CHORUS:
Jared, we hope you know that your
Hair went, away along with all
Cares, 'cause
WGSU is the truth
(2x)
In Geneseo
We're all busier than bees here
and outside is like a freezer
Made colder by the breeze, yeah still
We thank you if you please yeah
for Planetary LPs yeah
And your hair which is the reason
some people call you Jesus, oh
(Chorus)
(Repeat first verse with phrases reversed)
In Spring 2001 they gave me a good on-air shift - Saturday 12-2 in the afternoon. At my first show I got 12 phone calls! Trouble was, I had taken over the timeslot of Dino and The Don, and everyone calling me just wanted them back. D+D had abandoned the station because they weren't allowed to play classic rock music during a regular rotation shift. They wrote an angry missive for The Lamron encouraging their fans to take a stand. Their letter never saw a formal reply from WGSU.
I also got Kenny Z to give me a Sunday Switch show, where I played music from the Matador Records catalog for an hour every Sunday night. This was cool because I got dibs on Matador Records releases at music staff meetings. It was fun to make a big deal about "world debuts" of things like the new Arab Strap record.
I planned to apply to be WGSU's production director for the following school year, but someone convinced me to try for assistant music director instead. They chose for Meghan McKenna and me to share the position. That summer, Drew, Meghan and I met in the music office once or twice to take CDs home and get a jump on the rotation for the fall. Megh and I agreed that the new Sugar Ray ("When it's Over") single was really great. It's still the jam now.
I seriously don't even know where to start, but here's a few topics I hope to expand upon:
-Frisbee cds & destructive games in the WGSU hallway
-Exploring/breaking into the abandoned portion of Blake Hall and "borrowing" furniture for the music offices
-The infamous green chair
-Smoking cigarettes on the WGSU "porch" (in other words, on the window sill)
-On a whim I painted the music office red (and did it poorly, at that)
-No lights, no pants
-The pizza box we wrote our loves/hates on
-The vinyl records used as a way to block drafts from the crappy old studio window
-The smell of the archive room...
-The catawaves recording in the WGSU bathroom
-Love notes found from past music directors
-The instant replay seemingly always starting with "Jenny and the Ess Dog" by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
-Multiple CMJ music festivals (which deserve their own book...)
-Har Mar Superstar jam sessions
-The artistic "Strictly OA" rendition of Drew Metzar draw crudely on the WGSU computer by Mike Yudachik
-Reselling old cds to Geneseo's Soundgarden music store in exchange for music staff beer party money (I think this only happened once, but it made for a great Halloween party, complete with pumpkins, Christmas lights, and dreamy pictures of Drew pasted all over his Court Street apartment...)
-Sigur Ros fieldtrip to Philadelphia in Mahoney's station wagon, with the role of mascot filled by a coffee can bunny Liz Boylan's mom made for her after Liz made one of her famous "unreasonable requests" to her poor, sweet mother
-I remember hearing about Blair Schmelzer, Drew Metzar and their friend Sean, in the summer of 2000, taking a box of about 200 shitty "Evan Olsen" cds and throwing them on the lawns of Geneseo residents. In the course of things, Sean threw a cd and broke the side view mirror of Drew's dad's car, which he had borrowed to get the station set up for fall.
-Mike Di Caprio was famous for taking "diggers" all over Geneseo's icy hills...once he was carrying a pile of about 20 cds, which exploded on contact with the ground--cds rolling down the hills in all directions
-WGSU/GSTV softball games
-CP
-Spaghetti party at Margret's apartment...they lived across the hall from Dave Weiss. On the way to that party I made Mike Mahoney listen to the Alkaline Trio, which he quite obviously, but politely, hated.
-The day we reviewed the McClusky Does Dallas cd during music staff and all raucously danced our asses off
-WGSU's support of Universal Buzz, which was good, because we saw Brendan Simms, their sound engineer, recording at virtually every show we went to in the greater Rochester/Buffalo area. We also got a few party invites out of that relationship...
-Mike Morrissey would eat Tostitos and Cliff bars every day for lunch
-We participated in the MS walk each year and did the UNICEF fundraising concert featuring Kalpana, The Castawaves, The Vice Transmission and Full Fledged Fist Fight
...I really have so much more to write. Good times, WGSU! Good times!
Oh, and I wonder if the "Top 22" show is still kicking? I'll never forget the time Mahoney and I crashed Drew, Mike D and Blair's version of the show. Man, am I still that obnoxious???
Also, I'll never forget hearing about how Blair and Drew would go in the studio, on the opposite side of Dave Weiss reporting the news, and rip their fly zippers up and down to distract Dave. According to their reports, there was nothing that made him more furious...it resulted in several on-air mess ups causing him to swear in frustration on the air.
You should get Blair & Drew to talk a little bit about the best episodes of their show....the "Y2K show" was the best--it involved elaborate scripted calls from the studio to their roommates at home. The big punch line was the attack of the "lobster people." It's a classic. Plus, it resulted in a screaming match at 8 am in the residence hall between Mike Y and his large, boisterous neighbor. She actually told him, "You're over there screaming so loud about some f*cking invasion in the morning...It got me so mad I slammed my door so hard it shook the motherf*cking foundation!!"
At the end of the Spring 2001 semester, Lauren Hill threw a big party at her house on Court St. Drew and Margaret and Rebecca were there for sure, and some other radio station kids. Mike D maybe, Tracie maybe. It was the first time I really partied with the WGSU kids. It was fun.
We drank laughably cheap vodka and took one drink per song. This didn't last long though; someone had seen the game coming and made a mix CD of the first minute of about 50 songs.
There was a karaoke machine. I beatboxed along with "Summer of 69" (Drew had the other mic; he sang the words) and other warm weather classics. They didn't realize I would have beatboxed even if I hadn't been drinking.
Neko reappeared once (in my tenure). He was doing acoustic versions of NIN songs at open mic at the Statesman. Same straw hat, same uncomfortable mystique. He told me and my roommate at the time that he lived on a $39 million dollar horse farm and that we should come by to ride some time. There was also a running undercurrent about a marred relationship with his father, as he told us that his dad named him Neko after a horse and also sold one of Neko's favorite horses (not the horse named Neko) which allowed him to buy a new Benz.
I don’t remember what on-air shifts I had after my first year, but I was assured that I wouldn’t need to worry about getting a bad time slot again. Ah, the good life.
In Fall 2001, the board and staff was like this (please correct me if I am wrong):
Station Manager: Mike DiCaprio
Program Director: Tracie Klusek
Business Director: Rebecca Fenner
Promotion Director: Lauren Keltz
Music Director: Drew Metzar
News Director: Dave Weiss
Sports Director: Shane Lou
Asst Music Director: Meghan McKenna
Asst Music Director: Mike Mahoney
Production Director: Tracy Sokolski
Traffic Director: Dhaval Mehta
Public Service Director: Margaret Zambon
Webmaster: Ralph Suarez
I remember interviewing Mike Morrissey, Colleen Butler and Sarah Schmuel for DJ shifts in the on-air studio with Drew. Morrissey kept getting distracted and letting his eyes drift over to the CDs in rotation. Colleen wore a visor and admitted a fondness for Stephen Malkmus. Sarah made us swear that we wouldn’t make her go on the air by herself, and after the interview was over she came back and made us promise again. Of course, Sarah wound up being a central figure at WGSU for several years (all three of these folks did) and obviously wound up being self-sufficient x 10. This success story (along with a million-billion terrible DJs with tremendous interview skills) contributed to our ditching the DJ interview process altogether three semesters later.
During one staff meeting that year, some student protesters marched by the Blake building. Dave Weiss turned into a little puff of smoke and a moment later we saw him sprinting past the window, chasing the group of marchers with his Marantz recorder and microphone in his hands. And when terrorists drove planes into NYC, Dave totally rose to the occasion and covered the story all day long, even getting SUNY Geneseo’s President Dahl into the studio for an on-air interview.
Drew Metzar and Blair Schmelzer were running the Top 22 show that year. Meghan and I were invited to sit in on one episode in the fall, and the whole thing disintegrated so, so fast. The last thing I remember was Meghan's announcing over the air in a put-on nerd voice that she was Connor Oberst and in a great deal of emotional pain. And then everything went black.
I sat in on the show for the Spring '02 semester. This included the final installment of the year where the guys (soon to graduate) and their pal Mike Yudichak played the 22 best tracks of their college career (“ever”). Some memorable songs were “You Were Wrong” (Built to Spill) “Our Way to Fall” (Yo La Tengo, the #1 song) and obviously, “Leave Bill Clinton Alone” (Larry Shannon Hargrove). Each of us made a somber farewell to the WGSU listening audience before the last song. For being such an uproariously funny show, it was pretty heavy and sad there right at the end.
Mike D did sort of a legendarily good job as Station Manager. He claimed it was really easy, and that he just sat back and let us all do what we had to do. But everyone knew that wasn’t entirely accurate. Maybe I was just feeling psyched to be there, but I remember 2001-2002 as the smoothest-running staff of my four years at WGSU.
In the Spring of 2002, me and Lauren Keltz had a conversation about Lord of the Rings in the music office which we found to be completely hilarious. Within the hour we had recorded what we considered to be an epic WGSU spot. Our terrible New Zealand accents ("ELLO!! OY'M Frodo BAGGinnzz!") were put to one of the instrumental tracks from Mirah's "Cold Cold Water" single. I like to think maybe this is still being used. Unlike most, I'm sure, I actually never got sick of hearing it.
Some of the big WGSU hits during the 2001-2002 school year:
Built to Spill: Strange, The Weather, Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss (From: Ancient Melodies of the Future)
The Shins: Know Your Onion! (From: Oh, Inverted World)
Cursive: The Great Decay, Sink to the Beat (From: Burst and Bloom)
Fugazi: Cashout, Epic Problem, Full Disclosure, Ex-Spectator (From: The Argument)
The Dismemberment Plan: Following Through, Ellen and Ben, Time Bomb, Face of the Earth (From: Change)
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: Under the Hedge, Squeaky Fingers (From: The Tyrrany of Distance)
Les Savy Fav: Tragic Monsters, One to Three (From: Go Forth)
The Strokes: Last Nite, Someday (From: Is This It?)
Ryan Adams: New York, New York, Firecracker (From: Gold)
Sparklehorse: Little Fat Baby, Gold Day (From: It’s a Wonderful Life)
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead: Another Morning Stoner, How Near, How Far, Heart in the Hand of the Matter, It Was There That I Saw You (From: Source Tags and Codes)
Pinback: Concrete Seconds, Penelope (From: Blue Screen Life)
Wilco: Heavy Metal Drummer, Kamera, Jesus Etc (From Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
Pretty Girls Make Graves: The Getaway, Speakers Push the Air (From: Good Health)
The Walkmen: We’ve Been Had (From: Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone)
So I was bored at work today and decided to Google my name. Imagine my surprise when the first thing that came up was Meghan’s post from above, specifically the phrase, “Mike DiCaprio was famous for taking "diggers" all over Geneseo's icy hills...” WHAT!? I’m glad my propensity for diggers has been recorded for posterity on the Internet. In my defense, I didn’t take THAT many diggers (never more than 2 in one day), but the one referenced above was pretty epic. I muddied a perfectly good pair of pants and sent a couple of CDs rolling down the hill between The Hub and Sturges Hall. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the two anonymous passerbys who helped pick me up for not laughing.
Almost a decade later, I look back on my time with WGSU as some of the best years of my life. Not just because it was so much fun, but also because it’s the place where I met so many life-long friends. I started my WGSU career as a DJ my sophomore year in 99-00, served as Assistant Music Director in 00-01 and was Station Manager in 01-02. My first shift was Tuesday morning from 4-6am and was followed by Tom Feeley’s Interpersonal Communication class at 8:10am. It was rough, but I never missed a show (or a class). I was pretty sure no one was listening at that hour, and I remember being so excited to receive my first caller, James Not Jim. After that, my show times got a lot better and I’d usually have 2-3 slots per semester, including stints with the Top 22 show.
The posts above are fairly comprehensive, but here are a few of my memories:
- Getting creepy letters intended for the lady DJs from the residents of the Livingston County Jail down the street
- Sorting through bins and bins and bins of AWFUL CDs. And then finding that one really good album.
- The Instant Replay absolutely ruined songs for me, most notably Tom Waits’s “Picture in a Frame.” I still cringe every time I hear it.
- The sound of Julie Loce’s nose breaking during the 2001 GSTV/WGSU softball game. The stitches of the ball were embedded on her forehead for a few days after that.
- I took some amazing naps in that green chair in the music office
- The Space Humping 2000 party at Margaret Lum’s place.(Named after the Lifter/Puller song, “Space Humping $19.99”) The living room was covered in tin foil.
- I’m most proud of our efforts on 9/11/2001. Dave Weiss and Shane Lou did a tremendous job of gathering the facts as they came in, and would cut into the music every 30 minutes or so. Aside from that, we were the only station in the area not to break format that day. I got so many compliments in the days following from people looking for an escape from the 24/7 news coverage for being one of the only stations playing music.
- Traveling from Toronto to Boston and everywhere in-between in TERRIBLE weather to see some amazing shows. A few that come to mind include Sunny Day Real Estate, At The Drive In, The Weakerthans, Stephen Malkmus, REM, Swearing At Motorists, Bright Eyes, and all those CMJ shows (which at this point are a blur)
I don’t remember most of the tracks I played during my last show at WGSU, but I do remember the very last song was “The Days Were Golden” by Sunny Day Real Estate. I thought that pretty much summed up my time at the station. A couple of years ago I was going through some old papers in preparation for a move. Among receipts for a car I no longer owned and manuals for a computer that died long ago, I found the log for my last show. I hadn’t looked at it since I graduated. It had survived at least 5 different moves in those years, and here I was contemplating its fate. I lingered over it for a few minutes before I placed it in the shredder. I instantly regretted it.
I had so much fun in my tenure at WGSU, and for a few years nothing was more important than good friends and good music. Still, we took our positions at the station extremely seriously, and I hope we made some sort of lasting impact on WGSU and the Geneseo community.
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