Saturday, May 08, 2004
WFMU 3 to 6 am monday morning (Sunday overnight). I never enjoyed this time until WFMU began archiving programs. It was like broadcasting into a void, although I knew there was always a small audience of artists, insomniacs & graveyard shift workers. Even when we started an internet stream & hypothetically the station could be heard anywhere in the world, it was still too late/early, a discombulating experience. I have a lot of respect & affection for overnight DJs. I stopped doing a weekly program in 1999 when I turned down the overnight slot the program director offered me. The overnight shows - most of them are 4 hours long - are good places to stretch out with classical music. That's not easy for an old free form setmeister like meeself, accustomed to moving a program along in 30-40 minute sets of music, most tracks not lasting longer than 6 minutes, rarely ever anything more than 10. But I know that on the other end, as a listener, those whole pieces or long excerpts are fine in the wee hours.
The 11 pm to 2 am weekday slot has always been a favorite, each of those hours has a particular quality as the audience thins (& I never have a large audience to begin with), & when the program "progresses" well, the final hour reaches a musical intimacy that ends a journey & sums up what preceded it, & maybe achieves an emotional resolution. Few listeners follow this process, one doesn't expect them to - I associate the style with FM radio of 30 years ago; but some of my fellow WFMU DJs know what it's about. Unfortunately, I don't accept fill-ins for this air time without having a car - the last NJ Transit train leaves Newark around 2 am; if one is going to stay up all night, one may as well take a nap, do the later time, & go home immediately.
The WFMU building is alway quiet after midnight. Sometimes one is alone for a few hours, sometimes there's another DJ lurking around, doing production work. There's nothing glamorous or exciting about it, unless the machine in the studio, sounding & acting like an old ticker tape, clicks out a weather alert that big thunderstorms are on the way.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The 11 pm to 2 am weekday slot has always been a favorite, each of those hours has a particular quality as the audience thins (& I never have a large audience to begin with), & when the program "progresses" well, the final hour reaches a musical intimacy that ends a journey & sums up what preceded it, & maybe achieves an emotional resolution. Few listeners follow this process, one doesn't expect them to - I associate the style with FM radio of 30 years ago; but some of my fellow WFMU DJs know what it's about. Unfortunately, I don't accept fill-ins for this air time without having a car - the last NJ Transit train leaves Newark around 2 am; if one is going to stay up all night, one may as well take a nap, do the later time, & go home immediately.
The WFMU building is alway quiet after midnight. Sometimes one is alone for a few hours, sometimes there's another DJ lurking around, doing production work. There's nothing glamorous or exciting about it, unless the machine in the studio, sounding & acting like an old ticker tape, clicks out a weather alert that big thunderstorms are on the way.
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