Freak Out back for spring semester

It's time again for Freak Out with DJ Jobo. Listen at 10:00AM-12:00PM EST on Tuesdays. [wpts.pitt.edu]. Below is her last playlist of the fall semester. She focused on artists she had seen over 2024.


Priests - Control Freak
My Bloody Valentine - Off Your Face
Slowdive -40 Days
Jay Som - Tenderness

The Drums - Abysmal Thoughts
Black Midi - Talking Heads
The English Beat - I Confess
PM Dawn - Set Adrift on Memory Bliss
Yo La Tengo - Stockholm Syndrome
Deke Dickerson - Early For the Bell
The Beths - Out of Sight
Redd Kross - Jimmy’s Fantasy

Talking Heads - Love —> Building on Fire
Lunar Vacation - Peddler
Nation of Language - The Grey Commute
Upchuck - Freaky
The Velvet Underground - Some Kinda Love

The Aquabats - Super Rad
12 Rods - The Beating
Super Furry Animals - God! Show Me Magic
The Suburbs - Love is the Law

Thee Sacred Souls - Lucid Girl
Koo Koo - All I Eat is Pizza
My Dad is Dead - Carolina Blue
Fieval is Glaque - I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See
Stereolab - Neon Beanbag

Electronic - Get the Message
The Barracudas - Summer Fun!
Thundercat - Lava Lamp

Very cool! Welcome back, Jobo!

My Dad Is Dead - love it!

rhettlawrence Wrote:
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> My Dad Is Dead - love it!

Yeah, that was because my birthday was a few days before. I wonder where she gets that sense of humor?

Today, she got dinged for playing 'Surrender' by Cheap Trick - too popular. She got away with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Depeche Mode though.

"Today, she got dinged for playing 'Surrender' by Cheap Trick - too popular. She got away with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Depeche Mode though."

What about Talking Heads or PM Dawn's "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss," which was a frickin' #1 hit?

I guess unless the song is in some tik tok feed or on a popular TV show, then it's fair game. It is funny how much she's changed in a year. Last year, she was terrified of crossing the line. Now she complains how 'some punk kid' told her she couldn't play the song.

I guess that brings up the question of her listening demographic. With my own show -- and with my efforts to "promote" it -- I've learned that if a person didn't really grow up with radio, they aren't likely to tune in, no matter how cool its content is likely to be. When I tell a person who's under 30 about my radio show, they usually show interest, but their first question is, "Is it a podcast?" As soon as they learn that, no, it's on a set radio frequency at a set time, I can see the light of interest fade and die in their eyes. If it's tied to a specific time -- one that they can't control or select for themselves -- then it's too much trouble. Even telling them about the replayer page doesn't rekindle any interest ... I suppose because they'd have to take the trouble to seek it out each week, rather than having it pop up in a feed when it's ready.

As for a song being "too popular" for her show, well, perhaps it depends on how much visibility a song has continued to enjoy since its release. "Surrender" has been a classic rock mainstay, but "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" had its moment in the sun and then experienced its sunset. (Which isn't to say it's bad.) "Love —> Building on Fire" is familiar only to the most ardent Talking Heads fans, not really to the band's casual listeners.

A few years ago, a friend of mine who's a college instructor used the then-current slate of RRHoF nominees as a basis for an essay assignment. I don't remember what exactly the essay was supposed to be ... but as it turned out, it was a bit moot. Out of 16 nominees, only two of them were recognized by a majority of her students, and only two others were the least bit familiar to anyone in the class. The remaining twelve were names (and legacies) that meant nothing to any of them.

But I thought you can't play music in podcasts anymore? Unless you pay the whopping fees to the music biz the way radio does.

That's correct. The cost of making a music podcast is prohibitive. But the average podcast listener would not be likely to know that.

Does the station still have a rule that artists above a certain number of monthly Spotify listeners are forbidden?

According to a history of college radio I read last year, most stations weren't especially enthusiastic about punk or post-punk in the '70s and early '80s, and their rock programming was relatively mainstream. If there was something genuinely alternative about them at the time, it lay in giving so much time to genres like folk, jazz, blues and reggae.

Listening to KRCC-FM in Colorado Springs in the early '80s, I can vouch that the punk. new wave and post-punk artists were consigned to the late-night ghetto. But hey, at least it was out there somewhere!

I recall reading about KJHK, the campus radio station at Kansas University in Lawrence. In the early '80s, the station decided to dive into the new wave depths fully. The station director said his most frequently heard complaint was that "our school's station isn't playing the Grateful Dead anymore." He responded by asking those callers how they would've felt had they been students in 1967 (when the Dead was just starting to break nationally) and their college station had refused to play their music.

steevee Wrote:
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> Does the station still have a rule that artists
> above a certain number of monthly Spotify
> listeners are forbidden?

Yes, the spotify rule is still there but that is mainly to prevent radio shows from playing Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, etc.... And that keeps changing. Last year, my daughter could play Alex G but now he's too popular. The theme of the show is to showcase under represented artists but she is pretty much left alone to play whatever she wants. And there are ways to circumvent the rule. For example, she loves Steely Dan but that wouldn't fly but she can play Donald Fagen. In the case of Cheap Trick, someone in the station just happened to catch the end of the show and said that song shouldn't be played. It isn't like there are people monitoring the playlist and telling one what to play and not to play. She's got plenty of other Cheap Trick songs to play.

Father John Misty has this week's #1 album on college radio. I'd think he's at least as popular as Alex G.

> Today, she got dinged for playing 'Surrender' by Cheap Trick - too popular.

Maybe so, but it's a deathless classic. I'm glad she follows her instinct.