Girl on the Radio

I did my first WARC show last Thursday. I don't think it was very good, but I want to do more. The WARC Office is a wonderful, wonderful place. I didn't have a key but a friendly staffer walked by and let me in with his key, rescuing me from my frettage around the campus center.

(Not to be confused with "frottage," which Colin just told me means "sexual touching.")

I did not know what to do. I sat on the WARC couch for 10 minutes, waiting for my partner, not wanting to touch anything, break anything, destroy the beauty around me. And it is beauty, such beauty in that office. All the color, the band stickers, old photographs, stolen McKinley's pepper shakers, etc, in a chaotic, lovely mess. It was everything the Overkill music issue should have been, right there on the WARC walls.

I had never been in there before.

After 15 minutes, I could no longer refrain from touching the candy-colored packages inside the CD bins. There was a boombox on the desk. It wouldn't hurt to play one disk. I judged CDs by their covers.

THE Brett Bacon was kind enough to eventually come by and show me how to start my show. I did a pretty piss poor job, considering I wasn't ready for the end of any song, and let a few seconds of dead air seep in between selections as I scrambled to play something new.

I don't know shit about music. I listened to and loved my parents' old stuff until 8th grade (Nat King Cole, The Platters, Roy Orbison...) when it became apparent that it wasn't cool to listen to such things in 2003. A rather nasty experience cut me off altogether when I tried playing Sinatra at my birthday party and the pretty girls went, ewww, wtf is that?, and immediately put on Green Day. I stopped liking music and just listened to whatever my friends did. Sad, dark years.

My own two hours on air and a collection of college student-approved music to play with is like cocaine and freedom.

I played She & Him, Radiohead, The Brunettes, The Mountain Goats, Overkill, and several other bands I had never heard before, but only because their album covers were groovy. A ridiculous medley of indie folk, metal, and doo wop.

More to come with WARC adventures, now that I have an idea of what I've gotten myself into [which is rare]. In the meantime, here is Guitar Update #2.