by Michael LelloWeekender Editor
I unearthed a piece of rock history recently. It won’t end up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or on display at a Hard Rock Café, but it’s nonetheless intriguing.
Digging through some long-forgotten things, I noticed a homemade Memorex cassette marked “Metal Monday Cuts: 2” in blue pen.
I instantly remembered what this was.
When I was in an almost-obsessive metal phase during my high-school years, I found out about “Metal Monday,” a show on WCLH, 90.7 FM, Wilkes University’s radio station. I would always have some blank cassettes at the ready on Monday after school in case a DJ played something I wanted to keep. This is where I heard songs like Primus’ “Two Many Puppies” for the first time (which I believe was captured for posterity on “Metal Monday Cuts: 1,” which I can’t find at the moment.) Sometimes I would even call in a request and then record the song if the station played it.
Anyway, back to “Metal Monday Cuts: 2.”
I wish I labeled it with a date, but I did not, so we’ll have to do our own kind of carbon dating to trace the cassette’s era. There are some songs on it that won’t help us, because it’s clear that they were already somewhat old when I made the tape — Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock” (1984), for example. Testament’s “Souls In Black,” from a 1990 album, is on this tape, and so is “Lost And Found” by Prong, from the “Beg To Differ” album, which also came out in 1990. Same goes for Slayer’s “War Ensemble.” But I don’t think I was listening to music quite that heavy in 1990, when I was 13. So this tape has to be newer than 18 years old.
But the second song — “Got Me Wrong” by Alice In Chains — is a decent clue. “Got Me Wrong” was on “Sap,” the band’s 1992 EP. So that means it was at least 1992 when “Metal Monday Cuts: 2” was put together. There’s another track on the tape, “I’m Sorry,” by a band called My Sister’s Machine, a band I don’t remember ever hearing or even hearing of. But it turns out the song was on MSM’s 1992 release “Diva.”
So it’s fairly reasonable to conclude that I put together this little collection of songs in 1992. I was 15 years old.
Why is any of this important? Well, it may sound a bit odd that a 15-year-old kid was listening to a college radio station. But it’s not that out if the ordinary.
And not understanding (or understanding and not caring) that many listeners are adventurous and curious is one of the reasons commercial radio has become so out of touch. Some stations have abandoned newer rock entirely. Others haven’t changed their playlists in years, continuing to treat their listeners like mindless sheep, filling the troughs year after year and day after day (often many times a day) with repeat meals of “Feel Like Making Love” and “Foreplay/Longtime.”
But you don’t have to eat from the same trough. There have always been new and unique flavors out there, thanks to college radio, and more recent additions, namely satellite radio and online streaming.
Campus radio has long been one of the most innovative and refreshing outlets for new and overlooked music, and these stations are more important now than ever, as many commercial stations dig in, cut budgets and refuse to take risks. Years ago, the first place to hear bands like Sonic Youth, Pavement or R.E.M. was on college stations. Today, the only places you’ll hear Band Of Horses, Wolf Parade or Vampire Weekend in this market is on the radio stations run by the students at our local colleges and universities.
Our cover story this week takes a closer look at Northeastern Pennsylvania’s college radio stations — what they broadcast (it’s not just music, by the way), how playlists are put together and how you can tune in, either on the air or online.
In researching the story, I met some very enthusiastic, bright students, many of them too young to get into a bar but smart enough to know that listeners want to be surprised and challenged.
Their energy and insight — and the stations they program — should not be taken for granted.
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