"An ocean storm can be still risen by a woman's lips..."

WOXY
Back to the Future Playlist
Saturday, 4 October, 2003

8 a.m.
David Bowie – “DJ”
Fred Schneider – “Monster”
Guadalcanal Diary – “Always Saturday”
Kate Bush – “Babooshka”
Peter Murphy – “Line Between the Devil’s Teeth”
Camper Van Beethoven – “The History of Utah”
X-Ray Spex – “Oh Bondage Up Yours”
Was (Not Was) – “I Feel Better Than James Brown”
Urban Dance Squad – “Deeper Shade of Soul”
PiL – “The Body”
M – “Pop Muzik”
Depeche Mode – “Shake the Disease”
Jerry Harrison – “Rev It Up”
The Ramones – “We’re a Happy Family”
(left blank for request)

9 a.m.
Elvis Costello – “Everyday I Write the Book”
Laurie Anderson – “Language is a Virus”
Let’s Active – “Fell”
Talking Heads – “Television Man”
Young Fresh Fellows – “Amy Grant”
The Pretenders – “Precious”
Charlatans – “White Shirt”
Soul Asylum – “Cartoon”
Firehose – “Sometimes”
Wolfgang Press – “A Girl Like You”
Jesus Jones – “Move Mountains”
The Fall – “Cruiser’s Creek”
The Police – “Driven to Tears”
The Buzzcocks – “Ever Fallen In Love?”

10 a.m.
Sinead O’Connor – “Jerusalem”
Echo & the Bunnymen – “The Cutter”
The Cult – “Revolution”
Ministry – “Work for Love”
XTC – “No Thugs in Our House”
Winter Hours – “Roadside Flowers”
U2 – “Gloria”
Tom Tom Club – “The Man With the 4-way Hips”
Special AKA – “Free Nelson Mandela”
The Clash – “White Riot”
The Replacements – “Here Comes a Regular”

No other band deserved to make the “big time” more than Winter Hours, but like so many others during the heyday of college radio, they got gobbled up and spit out by one of the majors.

Winter Hours originally formed in the early 1980’s and paid their dues playing in clubs up and down the east coast while trying to scrape together the money for demos. They first came across my radar sometime around ’85-‘86 when I stumbled across the Churches EP while flipping through the racks at Renaissance Music. I knew nothing about the band but was willing to take a chance on them based on their song titles and album sleeve artwork. I was blown away from the first listen, and actively sought out everything that came out afterwards.

The band released a couple of EPs and one LP for Link Records – not the U.K. punk label but the American one, which also released albums by The Godfathers, Full Fathom Five and O Positive. When I began working at WWSU I remember how excited I was the day the Wait Til the Morning EP landed on our doorstep. With the sublime “Hyacinth Girl,” I just knew the band would be huge. How could they not, with a song like that?

Their first full-length LP (released on Link), Leaving Time, remains one of my all-time favorites, and that is really saying something – coming from someone who has quite an extensive collection. With each listen I fall in love all over again.

The band signed with Chrysalis and released the self-titled Winter Hours, an album I felt wasn’t a patch on Leaving Time but was still very good. The single “Roadside Flowers” carried the album and could have taken the band to the next level, but Chrysalis had recently been made a public company and was still trying to adjust to a new playing field – they just didn’t have a clue. The label had no idea of how to market the band, they didn’t they recognize the band’s potential, and they looked upon college radio as a “fad” rather than a viable way to get the band’s music heard. Link had done what they could and knew college radio, but they didn’t have the money to really push the band. Chrysalis had the money but disdained college radio and the entire “alternative/modern rock” phenomenon. They were too busy pushing the likes of Pat Benetar, Slaughter and Huey Lewis & the News. That same mindset hurt them when Geffen unleashed Nirvana on the unsuspecting public a few years later and Chrysalis, like most of the majors, scrambled to play catch-up.

If there is one event that I look back on with abject regret, it is that I had the chance to see Winter Hours live at Bogarts (playing with Christmas) and I didn’t go. I had tickets but the weather was really bad and I figured that the show would be cancelled so I didn’t attempt the long drive in the snow and ice. I cannot count the number of times I have looked back on that decision and kicked myself for not going. I thought there would be other chances. How wrong could I have been?

This video of Winter Hours performing "Wait til the Morning" isn't the best of quality, but the song is stellar. Check it out. Likewise for more information on the band visit their tribute page.



Lead singer Joseph Marques died 28 June, 2003 at the age of 40. The beauty of his voice and lyrics will never be forgotten by those of us who loved the band.

So it is written...

WWSU Playlist
1 March 1989
Wednesday, 9 p.m.-midnight

FIRST HOUR
K Bauhaus – “She’s in Parties”
H Fini Tribe – “Finis”
TOTW (blank)
H Elvis Hitler – “Green Haze”
DC Batz Without Flesh – “Retention”
H Ultra Vivid Scene – “You Didn’t Say Please”
H Dead Milkmen – “Punk Rock Girl”
PMLS Royal Court of China – “Half the Truth”
H Girl Trouble – “Hurt Yer Heart”

SECOND HOUR
K Hula “Voodoo Chile 1”
H Dharma Bums – “Dropping Out”
TOTW (blank)
H Too Much Joy – “Bad Dog”
DC Zoetrope – “Seeking Asylum”
H Soundgarden – “Circle of Power”
H NoMeansNo – “Theresa, Gimme That Knife”
PMLS Laibach – “Sympathy for the Devil”
H Pussy Galore – “Adolescents Wet Dream”
PMREC Alice Donut – “Lisa’s Father”
H UK Subs – “Sabre Dance”
H Birdhouse – “Devil Looks After His Own”
K Talking Heads – “Stay Up Late”
REQ TRC – “High Speed 1996”
H Red Temple Spirits – “Nile Song”

THIRD HOUR
K Pete Shelley – “Homosapien”
H The Brood – “Cry”
TOTW Pond – “Bullets”
H Ungh – “Boop Boop Bwahh” ??
DC Minimal Compact – “Next to Real”
H My Dad is Dead – “Cut Out”
H Victim’s Family – “Crap”
PMLS Laibach – “Sympathy for the Devil”
H Murphy’s Law – “??”
PMREC Metal First Aid – “Poolside”
H Blacklight 13 – “Graveyard Signal”
H Spongehead – “I am…”
DC Savage Republic – “So It Is Written”

My third hour is written by someone else, so I am assuming that I once again had a trainee sitting in with me. The playsheet doesn’t say who it was, but they had god awful handwriting. They also didn’t look over what I had played previously, because they played Laibach, which I had played during the previous hour.

There are two bands on this playsheet that I couldn’t get enough of back in the day: Red Temple Spirits and Savage Republic. Both band’s albums came through Fundamental Recording Co.’s distribution – RTS on Nate Starkman & Son Records and Savage Republic on IPR (Independent Project Records).

I won’t delve too deeply into Red Temple Spirits because although I loved the music on their luxurious, gatefold debut Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon, which had a post-punk tribal feel similar to Savage Republic, I never really warmed to singer William Faircloth’s nasally voice, which I felt was affected and fake. The band made interesting use of native instruments like flutes and bells, and incorporated natural sounds like birds and water into their music, but they simply haven’t stood the test of time for me.

Savage Republic, on the other hand, were so far ahead of their time that their music still sounds as fresh today as it did twenty five years ago.
The band first popped up on my radar via Camper Van Beethoven. Camper’s first album, the superb Telephone Free Landslide Victory, was released with a gorgeous hand-screened sleeve designed by Bruce Licher of Independent Project Press. When I bought the album (in 1985) I wasn’t familiar with Licher or IPP, but the letterpress graphics drew me in and spoke to me on an organic, primitive level, and while thumbing through some vinyl at Renaissance Music one day I stumbled across a staggeringly beautiful and moving sleeve reminiscent of TFLV. I didn’t know what the album was called because the name was screened in Arabic, and had no idea what the music sounded like, but I bought it nonetheless because I recognized the IPP style.

The sleeve featured a hand silk-screened version of a famous photo by Jahangir Razmi of several Iranian professors being executed by firing squad at the time the fundamentalists took over the country.
It’s a grisly photo, certainly, and recognizable to most who remember the Iranian hostage crisis. That Savage Republic was able to turn this horrific photo into an even more profoundly moving art statement is impressive and very brave. Aptly, the album is titled Tragic Figures.

Even if I hadn’t liked the music Savage Republic released I would have continued to collect their albums because of their uniquely striking sleeves, so it was a real bonus to find that the music was every bit as good as the wrapping. Tribal and evocative, their music seemed to exist outside the space-time continuum, far beyond the normal realm. Their use of metal percussion and Licher’s monotone-tuned guitars created a powerful onslaught with a decidedly eastern flavor. I fell hard for them, and set about collecting everything they released. That I never got a chance to see them live is tragic – for their live performances infused a raw energy unmatched by anything before or since. They were doing shows and blowing up stuff with Mark Pauline out in the desert years before the Burning Man phenomenon, and the full-length concert footage I have on video can only hint at the harnessed chaos they created.

The band never released a bad album and it’s difficult to play favorites, but as far as I am concerned they reached their zenith with 1988’s Jamahiriya Democratique et Populaire de Sauvage. From beginning to end this is the one Savage Republic album that latches on and doesn’t let go. Tightly wound, ethnically flavored sonic expanses ripple and shimmer under a crashing industrial veneer. Surprisingly for the motherlode of power contained within its grooves, the gatefold sleeve for Jamahiriya is something of a letdown in comparison, although Licher’s redesigned CD sleeve packs the punch lacking in the album version.

Savage Republic went on hiatus in early 1989 and briefly came out of "retirement" in 2002 for a whirlwind tour. In 2006 they reformed - minus founder Bruce Licher.

Licher has received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Recording Package: once in 1988 for Echelons by For Against, and in 1989 for Camper's Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart.

He continues to design gorgeous, original art from his studio in Sedona, Arizona.

"Rode seven million miles in the trunk of a car - don't know where I'm goin', but I'm goin' far..."

WWSU Playlist
1 February 1989
Wednesday 9 p.m.-midnight

FIRST HOUR
K The Stooges – “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
H Eclipse – “Slam Dancing Dog”
TOTW Tooba Blooze – “Seven Million Miles”
H Revolution 409 – “Crazy Horses”
DC Revolting Cocks – “You Often Forget”
H The Damned – “Looking At You”
H Sharkbait – “Big Rallies”
H Front 242 – “Headhunter” (CD!)
PMLS (crossed off)
H Pailhead – “Don’t Stand in Line”
PMREC Webb Wilder – “How Long Can She Last”
H Pussy Galore – “Yu Gung”
H NoMeansNo – “Dark Ages”
DC Public Image Limited – “Rise”

SECOND HOUR
K Nitzer Ebb – “Join in the Chant”
H Volcano Suns – “Nature & Me”
TOTW Elvis Costello – “Veronica”
H Half Japanese – “Said & Done”
DC Velvet Underground – “Foggy Notion”
H Skinny Puppy – “Testure”
H Mission of Burma – “Forget”
PMLS Young Gods – “Face a Face”
H Love & Rockets – “Motorcycle”
PMLS Violent Femmes – “Breaking Hearts”
H Broken Bones – “Seeds I’ve Sown”
H The Waterboys – “We Will Not Be Lovers”
K Robyn Hitchcock – “The Man With the Lightbulb Head”
REQ The Proclaimers – “Make My Heart Fly”
REQ The Pogues – “Sally MacLennane”

THIRD HOUR
Crossed off with note “Signed off at 11 p.m.”

I haven’t explained why I signed off an hour early on this playsheet, but I’m guessing that since it was February, maybe the weather had turned bad – or was slated to turn bad – and I decided to bunk off early for the long drive home, which, on a good day, took around 45 minutes.

Tooba Blooze was a local Dayton band that I really dug. As the name might suggest, they were an R&B inspired foursome with a twist: instead of a bass player, they had Hal Taylor blasting away on a tuba.
I know it sounds odd, but it really worked. I caught them live a number of times, usually at Canal Street Tavern but a few other places around town too, and they never disappointed. I remember hanging out at Renaissance Music one evening shooting the shit with owner Geoff when a customer came into the store. I was busy giving Miss Lucy (the sweet little shop cat) a good head scratching and had my back to the door, so I didn’t notice the guy come in, but when he passed by I think I got a contact high off his hair and clothes. It was, of course, TB lead singer Denny Wilson. We got to chatting and he ended up visiting the station a few days later as a “special guest.” Even though he was a major stoner at the time, I always thought that he was incredibly focused and talented. I know a lot of folks grumbled that he had a massive ego – and maybe he did, but so what? He had the talent to back it up.

When Tooba Blooze split up, Denny formed the short-lived Wizbangs (with Tim Taylor and Juan Monasterio, later of Brainiac) and released an E.P. of groove-funk-rock similar in sound to Columbus’s Royal Crescent Mob. He later moved to New York and is still active in the music business.

I really ought to take this time to mention the fabulous Dayton label I Wanna. Founded by WYSO DJ Jim Carter (aka Rev. Cool), I Wanna had an impressive run, releasing albums by Tooba Blooze, The Highwaymen (whose lead singer Troy Campbell would later move to Austin and form Loose Diamonds), The Obvious and an excellent Dayton compilation called Hard to Be Cool in an Uncool World, which featured The Highwaymen, The Reducers, Mecca Normal, Human Switchboard, and True Believers, among others. In a future post I'll expound further on The Highwaymen, who were by far my favorite local band at the time. Loved. Those. Guys.

Unbeknownst at the time, the label secured a footnote in history with the release of Forever Since Breakfast, the first Guided By Voices album. It would be several years before GbV’s career took off on it’s meteoric rise, and by that time I Wanna was defunct and the band had moved on to Cleveland’s Scat Records (run by Prisonshake guitarist Robert Griffin).

The only other thing that really stands out on this playlist is the notation that the Front 242 song was played on a CD, which at the time was still something of a novelty at the station. A harbinger of things to come...