Tune your car dials to 91.1 fm and your interweb to http://boombox.middlebury.edu:8000/WRMC192.m3u for some supreme beats hosted by your favourite deejays. Note that summer time at Middlebury also means language school (!!!), so be sure to expand your musical palette with some world music and/or improve your listening proficiencies with Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Russian school throughout the week.
WRVU out of Vanderbilt University in Nashville (which also broadcasted on 91.1) played its final tune last Tuesday--the station's license was sold by the Vanderbilt Student Communications organization to the local public radio station. Freddie O'Connel offers some good commentary on the station's end and the value of college radio in today's NYT.
There’s a false but widespread image of college radio as a pointless, narcissistic exercise — that it’s nothing more than a crew of campus oddballs who like playing D.J., even though no one is listening.
WRVU demonstrated how wrong that image is. Not only did it command respect and interest on campus, but, thanks to a longstanding and farsighted policy, it allowed and encouraged members of the off-campus community to volunteer as D.J.’s — and so drew on the rich cultural heritage of Music City U.S.A. as well.
My co-host and I shared the airwaves with Ken Berryhill, who calls himself the world’s oldest D.J. and played country classics; the encyclopedic Pete Wilson, who spun a mind-bending mix of old R&B, rock ’n’ roll and blues on his show “Nashville Jumps” (and had the sad honor of playing the last song on WRVU, Johnny Thunders’s “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory”); and countless college students, balancing their awkward moments of dead air with delightfully original musical sensibilities.
The result was a cornerstone of the local community. Students learned from veterans, townies got to know Vanderbilt and Nashvillians got access to a chunk of the public commons otherwise dominated by big business: the airwaves.
It's sad to see the plug pulled at another college (and community) radio station, but discussions on the issue like this piece help reiterate their special value. For what it brings to a campus, town, its broadcasters, and its listeners, I see the unique college radio format as explicitly irreplaceable.
Slow, hazy, and somewhat unremarkable, the first minute of "July" recalls the torpor of summer. Don't be put off, as the song rewards patience. With the gradual addition of a triangle, keyboard, guitar, and tambourine, the layers coalesce until the sharp crack of a drum at 2:50 brings the glory of summer suddenly into focus.
So I set out to see what Diego Russell, who was just awarded the title of WRMC's Best Solo DJ of the Year, could tell me about his show—the process behind creating it and its history—and that took us a few places, from his childhood sorting through his dad's CD collection to science fiction to his favorite trumpet players. When I walked into the studio Diego was advertising a fake lima bean festival going on in Middlebury on air, so I pretty much immediately counted on our half hour together being interesting, and it was. This is Jammin' High:
Discussed: Space Jazz, mail order pop compilations, the vitality of jazz in the modern age, BIO 145, and New Orleans jazz radio, among other things...
Me: Can you tell me a little bit about how you conceptualize or structure the show weekly?
Diego: Every week I'm just constantly gathering music. I'll be looking around and I'll find something that is new to me and I'll just start playing it. I'm a big fan of jazz and blues and funk and hip-hop and I'll pursue those genres.
One time I had this theme space jazz. There's a really good artist, Ornette Coleman, who does free jazz and he's really into space-themed songs. Sun Ra is another great and he has this album called The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra. So those two guys got into space jazz. Also Herbie Hancock and his use of electronic music, that type of shit in the 80s, all that compiled into one show to become space-themed.
But I don't know, last week I was reading science fiction and I came across this opera that was based on a science fiction book by one of my favorite authors, Phillip K. Dick, and so I just started playing opera music, even traditional opera music, on my show. It's kind of spontaneous what my show's about for the most part, but I like it to have some kind of theme.
M: So do you see this as a jazz show or more just as your thing?
D: I predominately play jazz. But I don't think I can call it a jazz show anymore, but I wouldn't call it any other specific type of music either.
M: It's pretty rare to hear Jazz on college radio shows. (There's only one other Jazz show on WRMC). How did you get into the genre?
D: Mostly through my father's taste in music. A lot of the music I listen to comes from him. He's a fan of a lot of different kinds of music, but jazz kind of just took me. I've been listening to it since early high school and trying to kind of just accumulate as much jazz music as I can. What it means historically to musical development in this country I think is beautiful.
M: Did you start listening to a couple guys and kind of branch out from there? Or did you start listening mostly to the guys your dad listened to? I guess, where did your relationship with jazz start and how did it evolve?
D: I remember listening to Stanley Clark's album School Days really early on. I remember listening to Billie Cobham's Spectrum. I'll play a song from there called "Snoopy's Search." That's one of my earliest memories of weird music. I remember dancing to this when I was maybe eight or six. It has a really funny beginning that I would just freak out at and then it got into this really sick rhythm. The guy who wrote it is a drummer, it's just awesome. Hearing that on my dad's stereo system turned up really loud was really cool. [In the studio: fiddling with the aux cable, changing computers, some static, and then...]
M: When did you start discovering music on your own? And how?
D: Being at home alone, I had an older brother. My dad had a really large collection so we would just rove through that and play stuff. But also, I don't know if you remember this, but there used to be those ads in magazines like '21 CDs for 1 cent.' We would get CDs that were poppy and stuff, I remember Alanis Morrisette and Green Day and stuff, but that was more for my brother and that kind of wore off. Really where my music developed was from my dad's collection.
M: Do you play jazz yourself?
D: I play a little trumpet. I'd love to play a lot, but it's hard to find time. And I play a little trombone, which I just picked up this year. I love horns and brass music. Recently, as in this semester, I've really been listening a lot to this radio station streaming out of New Orleans called WWOZ. Check that out.
M: Has playing horns influenced what music you've looked for?
Yeah, I tried to pay attention to more trumpeters, like Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, those kind of bop, post-bop guys. Who else is good in that sense? Donald Byrd, Miles Davis, but he's not just a trumpeter you know. But yeah, listening to trumpet and kind of knowing how it works more so than another instrument that I've never touched before definitely makes me want to pursue that sound and understand the goodness of it.
Also, there's a jazz festival in my town. I live in Cape May, New Jersey, and there's a jazz festival there every spring and fall. I haven't been since I left high school, but that was also really, really awesome as a kid, seeing some awesome groups. Like I saw McCoy Tyner and Bobby Hutcherson play there.
M: Has the show always been Jammin' High?
D: No, it's evolved. I forget what they used to be, man. I had so many.
M: So has the idea for the show changed over the semesters?
D: It's just what I've been listening to. That's changed a lot or gotten enriched you know. It's always been around jazz, but I've gone off in different areas of it. Latin jazz; to some New Orleans jazz; to jazz from California— cool jazz kind of stuff; jazz that's influenced by samba— Brazilian stuff. There are so many different types of jazz.
M: What's your interaction with the Middlebury community like in terms of the show? Do you get calls or people talking to you about the show?
D: I get calls every once in a while from people. The time I got the most calls was when I had a slot like 6-8 and all these people would call and be like, 'we were listening during dinner and it was awesome.' There's this one guy, who I know other DJs have gotten calls from—his name is Peaches, and he suggested some cool music that I listened to. He called every week for seven weeks one semester.
Right now BIO 145 listens to my show. I think they decided to put on the radio one time and I was playing some real funky stuff and the professor liked it a lot and was like we should listen to this all the time.
M: Anything else you want to say?
D: I'd say listen to jazz. It's still alive. There's plenty of young artists. To give out one name, one trumpeter who's awesome: Jeremy Pelt. I saw him in Philly a month or so ago. It's not dead.
So since it seems like people flock to NYC over the summer for internships and jobs and such things, I thought I'd share links to the few websites that will direct you to most of the good live music in the city over the summer. The idea was born out of a conversation I had in the library that literally went something like "Oh you're going to be in NY this summer for the first time? You're going to hear SO much good music. Here are the websites that can tell you where and when:"
(The feature where you can choose what bands you like and get e-mails when they announce new shows is great, but a lot of the summer shows have already been announced so I'd recommend looking through the listings for the time you'll be there. There's a nifty 'save this show' feature so you don't forget which ones you want to see).
For many of the same things indie, from a different source:
(A lot of the big indie venues of the city— all the ones owned by Bowery Ballroom group— are listed on this website. Sometimes I end up coming across stuff here that I don't see on Ohmyrockness, but if you don't feel like spending the time, Ohmyrockness should have most of it).
(There are a zillion shows listed, so you definitely have to pick and choose the ones that you think sound best. To pare it down a little, it might be worth checking individual venue websites if you find/hear about venues that sound good.)
Have awesome, music-filled summers all of you who are there! I'm jealous!
My hall-mate, Martin Sweeney, has a talent that he kept hidden from me until the final week of school. A talented producer and standout WRMC DJ, Martin has made several solid mash-ups and remixes. Standouts include a mash-up of Crazy Town's "Butterfly" with The xx's "Intro" and an original remix of Phoenix's "1901." They're both embedded below.
It's hard to be disappointed about Wolf Parade's hiatus with imminent releases by both Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. While Krug will be releasing Organ Music under the moniker Moonface on 2 August, the third album from Boeckner's Handsome Furs, Sound Kapital, drops on 28 June (zomg so soon). Below is "Repatriated", the second single from Sound Kapital, a track that embodies the one thousand and ten reasons why I heart a synthesizer.
To commemorate the beginning of summer, I mixed a tape of songs. RIYL: sand in the bottom of your backpack, air conditioned libraries, swimming to the buoy, and multiple tan lines.
Although Broken Social Scene ranks amongst my favourite bands, a BSS cover of “The World at Large” had me dubious. Given that Issac Brock’s lisping vocals are what define the sound of Modest Mouse, any attempt to emulate the whistling, bah-bah-bahpping glory of “The World at Large” seemed risky. Yet pared down to a snare, saxophone, and guitar, “The World at Large” becomes Broken Social Scene’s own. Slightly longer than the original song, the sparseness and sprawl of BSS’ rendition imparts a hazy yearning absent in the Modest Mouse version.
If you enjoy listening to WRMC's online broadcast, pelase consider making a donation to help us continue this service. To make a donation, go to Middlebury's online donation page and be sure to specifiy your gift is for WRMC by writing "WRMC" in the "other" field of the form.
WRMC 91.1 is...
2011-2012 Executive Board Dylan Redford (General Manager) Alan Sanders (Programming Director) Della Cummings (Business Director) Jack Tipper (Technical Director) Stephanie Roush (Music Director) Carly Shumaker (Music Director) Moss Turpan (Creative Director) Diane Martin (Concerts) Halley Lamberson (Concerts) Anjali Merchant (Emeritus)
All songs posted on this blog are meant for evaluation purposes only. We, the contributors and the WRMC general board, love and support well-made music and make every effort to support the artists we love by purchasing their work. We encourage everyone to purchase music and concert tickets for the artists you feel merit your hard earned dollars. If you own a copyright to any of the images or songs featured on this blog and would like them removed please contact us at wrmc911@gmail.com.
Also, feel free to contact us if you are an artist, band, label or distributor and think we'd be interested in your music. Same goes if you're playing a gig in either NYC, Boston, Montreal or Vermont and want us to come;)
