Three minutes later he is still going. He has told me he’s a numerologist, and as such he sees significance in the fact that the numerals in 2016 add to 9. Nine is important, and if your birthday is on the 9th, 18th, or 27th, blah, blah, blah. There was also something in there about Mars and Aries. But what grabbed me was when the good reverend brought up the old adage about “impossible” only needing an apostrophe to become “I’m possible.” He also pointed out the Scripture passage in which “I AM” is the name of God. I. Am. Possible. A good way to start the day.
This is the beauty of (some) college radio stations. While corporate stations have become aggressively regimented in their formats, many college stations still follow an anything-goes, free-form approach. The numerologist preacher follows Mavis Staples follows election talk. Such is the case with WUSB, Stony Brook.
Such was the case with WGSU, Geneseo, for my freshmen year of college. At any time of day, one might tune in and hear something completely different. Fugazi would flow into John Lee Hooker. Someone would play the latest from Pearl Jam and then something from Joni Mitchell. If I tuned in to my friends Teresa and Tania’s show (the “T&T Connection”), I’d likely hear them talking for half an hour in between songs. They found themselves hilarious.
People would be late to class because they set their alarm-clock radios to the school station (the only station we could find on the dial in rural Livingston County), and the alarm would be nothing but dead air because the DJ had overslept herself. Saturday mornings were my lot as a brand-new freshman DJ. I had to pick up the key at the Public Safety Office. 8 a.m. was often too early, and I’d start the show late on five hours of sleep and a hangover. Once, the officer at the desk requested The Clash, so I played him “I Fought the Law.”
Sophomore year everything changed. The station got a new faculty advisor, and he decided we needed to be more professional. For the first time, the station had a format (alternative rock; this was 1993). We had a wheel of different categories of songs, and all of the songs in our library had been categorized, so we had to play a song for each specific category, in order, every hour. It was miserable. The station did fine, despite some minor grumbling, but it was never as much fun.
Fortunately, on the seventh day, the radio gods rested, and I still got to do my own classic rock show. Still, by what motive I can’t say, I created my own format wheel, with categories like “blues rock,” “folk rock,” and “British Invasion.” I guess I thought it was the right thing to do, or it would make my show “legitimate,” but I don’t see why I would’ve cared. I wasn’t planning on a career in radio, and my wheel didn’t work out too well, anyway.
The station manager was named Kelso. I don’t know if that was a first name or last name; she was just Kelso. Leather jacket, ripped stockings, piercings and tattoos before they were ubiquitous. Her head was shaved close except for a tuft of hair in the front, which she died neon green. Her skin was white and her lipstick was black. This sounds insulting to say now, but I was scared of her.
One day Kelso happened to be hanging around the station when I got off my shift. I strolled into the office to drop off my playlist in the bin, but she asked to see it first. “You played the Talking Heads twice in one hour?! God, this place is so unprofessional!” She threw the paper down on the desk and stormed out. So much for my format wheel, and you can understand my fear.
WUSB, Stony Brook maintains the chaos of college radio that only existed for me during my freshmen year at Geneseo. This Friday, you can start your day with the Trim Mix Party, follow that up with Hiphop Overdose, and then move on to WUSB Alternatives. After a brief Election Connection 2016 program, it’s back to the music with something called Hypnosmoothie Radio, leading (obviously) into Blues Warehouse. Pandemonium.
But I’ll take the chaos over corporate any day of the week. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to Face the Music (alternating Wednesdays at 9 p.m.).