WFMU

I "discovered" (like Columbus "discovered" America) sometime around 6th or 7th grade.

No playlists, no top 40, no commercials. What's not to love?

Plus, they played, thanks to the free-form format, some pretty weird shit. I loved that.

They turned me on to electronic music. They turned me on to process music.

WFMU was the soundtrack in my basement bedroom.

Make no mistake, some of it was total crap. Unlistenable. But that was fine. Because the other stuff was awesome.

That the price you (expect to) pay when you spin the wheel, sometimes you lose, but sometimes you win. Wasn't much "winning" on WPLJ with their canned, payola-driven pablum.

It's funny because even as I got deep into the Dead, which they never played, I still loved them.

Those were "the old days." Tuners, and big heavy speakers, wire antennas and even...(gasp) AM!

But after I left NJ, I was out of range for many many years.

Decades later, driving to NH, I would tune in as we passed through the Oranges.
Only a small window, and always a crap-shoot.

Then I discovered it on the internet, wfmu.org. Live streaming. Still original. Still great and creative stuff. (Still some crap.) But I'm not a computer listener and I don't use my phone for audio.

But tonight, I figured out how to play it, for free as always, on the Sonos. Wireless, cell phones, the internet, so much has changed and yet it is still, as ever, wfmu. And amazing mix of new and old and avante garde. Oh yea, even vinyl is back in vogue. C90 cassette tapes were big back then, but CDs hadn't even been invented. Full circle.

So thank you for being part of my childhood and part of my education.

Give them a spin here.