#whrb

Top 35 for the week of February 6–12, 1994 on WHRB’s Record Hospital, as compiled, printed and annotated by me.

Why Top 35 and not Top 20? Damned if I know, even if I compiled this thing. Even though we only broadcast the Top 20 every Monday on our countdown show, I guess I wanted to capture part of the long tail?

I think this was the first and last time I decided to compile Record Hospital’s weekly top songs list using my computer, as it just added more labor to the process. The starting point was already analog, as every DJ wrote out what they played by hand in our log book. I’d begin by writing now every single band/song played until I thought I hit a dupe, at which point I scoured my list-in-progress for that song and put a tally mark next to it.

As for what got played, it’s interesting to compare this week’s list with the one just a week prior, as already documented here. There’s definitely more pop or melodic post-punk creeping in here, including three records in the top 5 that I absolutely played the hell out of: Eggs, This Kind of Punishment, LiLiPUT.

Highlighting the Hidden speaks with Magister Bill M.

Pages 1-4 of my hand-written, annotated playlist of songs played as part of The dB’s Orgy on Harvard radio station WHRB, spring 1989.

My archivist, completist tendencies are on full display here in this playlist I made of the dB’s and related songs played on-air during this multi-hour Orgy, and recorded by me onto a hodgepodge of cassette tapes. I feel like there there may be a couple more pages I’m missing (this program was loooong), but these were all I could find.

In high school I’d discovered WHRB—specifically its Record Hospital nighttime programming of indie, punk and other underground music—via the weekly playlists left by the doors of my record store haunts. On one such store visit, I grabbed a flyer advertising a “dB’s Orgy” to be broadcast on the station that month. I was already a fan of the dB’s, having bought their latest album, The Sound of Music, after hearing the song “Amplifier” on local alt-rock station WFNX. (And yes, that song isn’t on that album, but I couldn’t find a copy of Like This!)

So on the appointed date and time as per that flyer, I gathered a bunch of tapes that were either blank or partially-blank, tuned my dad’s good stereo in the living room to 95.3 FM, and hit “record” on the first of those tapes I’d popped in his cassette deck. Since it was a double-deck that automatically switched from one bay to the other at finish, I was able to record up to three whole hours at a time, which made the process a bit easier.

The entire program was a revelation: the length (at least 8 hours, IIRC), the breadth of music and artists part of the dB’s universe (Kimberly Rew of The Soft Boys!), and the depth of the DJ’s record collection. He had the obscure, 1972 LP by Rittenhouse Square, with Stamey, Holsapple and Mitch Easter playing kind of terrible rock music, but charmingly goofy at the same time. And I’m pretty sure this program was the first time I heard Pylon and Yo La Tengo, among others.

After many hours and cassettes of taping, I later took my scribbled notes and re-listened to the whole damn thing again—okay, with some fast-forwarding. I marked the songs that I wanted to include on my “compiled copy” of what I considered to be core material. I generally omitted songs that I either already had in some form or were from artists with a more tangential connection to the dB’s. (Sorry, Pylon.) The final product ended up on three, 90-minute Maxell XLII-S cassettes. So fancy.

Flyer promoting the series of spring 1996 Orgies from Record Hospital DJs at Harvard radio station WHRB.

I was reminded of these Orgies this past week via our cranky-old-former Record Hospital DJs forum, where someone posted a full-color poster featuring the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Red Krayola and Gravity Records Orgies.

Sticker promoting the Record Hospital, college radio station WHRB’s indie and punk rock programming, 1994-1995 school year.

Here’s another of our radio station’s DIY Record Hospital stickers. Similar to the one I posted yesterday, this one is black and white with the typewriter type. But it’s a more streamlined design, with some ironic 70s clip art. (It was the 90s; anything 70s was automatically ironic.)

T-shirt from The Record Hospital’s Rough Trade Orgy on WHRB, a week-long block of programming celebrating the famed British record label, taking place May 17–23, 1992.

While I was not yet a DJ at WHRB at the time of this Orgy, I had begun my association with the station via my friend Douglas, a recent graduate of both Harvard and the station. I’d met him at a rock show in New York City, where we were both living in late 1991.

Douglas learned early on what a huge Go-Betweens fan I was, and I think that was the original impetus in connecting me with some of the then-current DJs, as I had records that could help with that section of the Orgy. And of course I had some other Rough Trade releases as well. Plus, home base was still my parents’ house in the Boston suburbs, so I could head up there to assist, no problem.

Douglas connected me with Stephanie, who likewise put me in touch with Victor, who was doing the Go-Betweens segment. I did indeed head back up to Boston with some of my records, hanging out at the station, observing the action in the booth and meeting other DJs. Hey, this was really cool! So was the t-shirt that everyone participating received. Though it was (and still is) huuuuge. Those nineties XL men’s t-shirts, man.

Set of three Maxell XLII-S cassettes onto which I’d dubbed a condensed version of The dB’s Orgy, Record Hospital programming broadcast on radio station WHRB, spring 1989.

I wrote all about this Orgy in yesterday’s post—here are the tapes!

While I didn’t really expend too much effort designing these, I did use a blue highlighter marker to color the spines of each cassette insert. And what you see here is my neatest handwriting. I even colored in each dot on the sleeves and tape labels to note “no noise reduction” was used.

Flyer promoting the Top 20 playlist for Record Hospital, the Harvard University radio station’s indie and punk rock programming, for the week ending July 15, 1990.

Another Record Hospital flyer I picked up well before I became a DJ myself. As mentioned in my November 1990 playlist flyer post, I listened to WHRB in my later high school years. My interest in the station was piqued by these playlists, left near the front door of finer record stores in the Boston area.

Many favorites here, including Unrest (#1!), Pavement, Ride and World of Pooh (Barbara Manning!). And of course I love that Superchunk song, but it must have gotten a helluva lot of airplay from midnight to 6am, aka the FCC’s “Safe Harbor” hours. I played it myself once or twice on my show, but yeah, only during the second half of my 11pm to 1am slot.