I had a late night radio show for the few short months that I was a student at Albion College, in the fall of 1992. Looking back, it was a really humble affair (a tiny AM signal in the middle of farm country) but they had a surprisingly massive and varied CD library, so I took advantage of the opportunity and made mix tapes while doing the show.
At that point in history, the ‘Singles‘ soundtrack was huge, and the on-campus rock band (Pangea) would play Stone Temple Pilots and Alice in Chains covers at the frat house parties. Even though I was listening to Alice in Chains ‘Dirt‘ a LOT during those days, I recall being mostly into a cassette of Non-Fiction ‘In The Know‘, which was constantly playing on my Walkman. This was also my first exposure (believe it or not) to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, as it was one of the two tapes my roommate owned (the other being the self-titled Vixen album).
There’s one surviving recorded Head of Ear show that I’ve revisited a few times. It’s a raucous affair that begins with Godflesh and ends with Sonic Youth, involving much in-studio mayhem, some Love and Rockets…some Faith No More, and assorted Rock the Vote sound bytes from the Beastie Boys, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iggy Pop.
One final note about Albion: they had some great vinyl at the thrift stores in town, but I didn’t discover that until ’95, when I returned to campus for a party at the Goodrich House, at the invite of Adam Rogers, whose beer smiled (the foam parted into a smiley face) that night. Also, the college library had a phenomenal vinyl collection, and a top notch phonograph-equipped media lab. I really should investigate the current state of that school: It was their VHS collection that made me a fan of the Lindsay Anderson film ‘If….‘.
It also appears that WLBN has now made some steps into digital/web territory; who knows what sort of outlandish sounds they are radiating these days?
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