An Orgin Story (of sorts...)
A music newsletter/blog? In 2025? How original. I know. Right?
Not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Not trying to reinvent anything.
This is total self-indulgence, nothing more, nothing less. An outlet for whatever creative juices I can muster at the end of the day, week, month, year. I make no promises as to frequency, or regularity. It’s just a thing. Something to occupy my mind, an escape in these incredibly fucked-up and trying times. A diversion from the chaos perhaps. Or who knows, maybe I’ll add to or reflect upon the chaos from time to time. Shouting into the void. I’m pretty adept at that these days!
But yeah, I suppose that this will mostly be a music themed endeavor…except for when it isn’t.
As few caveats to mention: I am not a critic (at least not professionally). I am not a musician (not even an amateur). I’m just a longtime fan of music (film, literature and/or art) that falls somewhere off the beaten path. Whatever you want to call it … indie, experimental, ambient, drone, noise, improvisation, free jazz, modern compositions, techno, IDM, punk, psych, folk … etc. etc. etc. I’ll settle comfortably into those nooks and crannies. My partner just thinks its all weird noise. She’s absolutely right.
There was once a time (around 12 years in total - and over 12 years ago) when I worked in the music industry. But I was squarely on the label side of things. My talents, such as they were, were in promoting the art of others (as opposed to creating art). And maybe that’s my goal here. To promote and share art that appeals to me. Nothing more, nothing less.
Music for Insomniacs was the name I came up with for a radio show that I did sometime back in the mid 90s at WXDU FM in Durham, NC. WXDU was/is the student/community radio station at Duke University. I was not a student at Duke University. Not even close. But I was definitely part of the diverse community of volunteers that helped keep the station going.
I had a show at WXDU for around 10 or 11 years overall, give or take. Memory is deceptively foggy at times. There were a few gaps in there as well. Music for Insomniacs started out as a 12pm-2am show, one summer, but seeing as how no one had a show after me until 7 am I could basically stay on the air for as long as I wanted. And I often did. It was always the goal of the station to be on the air 24/7/365. It was hit and miss but we managed to do a pretty solid job overall. It was a source of pride, for most of us at least. At some point I joined the music programming staff at the station, and as a result could have probably had any time slot I wanted. I saw a gaping hole in the on-air schedule from 2am-5am on Thursday mornings. I was working at a record store at the time, from 1pm-9pm five days a week. Most evenings you could find me out at a club or a house show seeing music until 1 in the morning (oh, sweet bird of youth!). A radio show starting at 2 am once a week seemed completely doable.
I took the slot. Everyone thought I was nuts. I probably was.
The great thing about doing a college/community radio show from 2am-5am is that you literally can play anything you want. Any genre, any style, tracks of any length. I had to play a certain number of “playlist tracks” per hour (usually 5 or 6), but the other 40-45 minutes were mine to do with whatever I wanted. The show was well outside the FCC window restricting “offensive” language. Anything goes, and anything went.
I remember one night I arrived for my show straight from seeing an amazing performance from John Zorn’s Painkiller at a local club. I was literally buzzing with energy and amazement. One of the most amazing performances I have ever seen, to this day. Through a bolt of hyped inspiration I decided that it would be creative and punk as hell to play all 5 of my playlist requirements at once. Why the hell not? I had 3 CD players and 2 working turntables. So I cued up 5 tracks at once and let it rip. Fading in and out of tracks and letting them roar together all at once. It was a chaotic noisy mess and it was beautiful!
You might think who’s to complain at that time of the evening? You’d be right. No one complained, but people actually called in to see what the hell was happening. All of them vibing and enjoying the hell out of it. These were my people. This was my “audience”. Truth be told, over the 2 years that I hosted “Music for Insomniacs”, I got more feedback and response via calls and emails than I ever did on a show at any other time of the day or night. Fellow travelers. (If anyone hated it, they didn't hate it enough to call and complain about it.)
Eventually I became the Music Director at the station, and with that came a 10 pm to 12am Monday night time slot. Choice, prime radio real estate. As part of that I was responsible for the weekly Top 10 at 10 Show recounting the previous weeks most played selections from the playlist of new releases. This easily took up 45 min to an hour of the show. Leaving me a little over an hour to actually do the show that I might want to do. I hated it. Eventually I convinced my assistant music director to take over the show. I happily returned to my 2am - 5am time slot. Back with my people, where I belonged, deep in the heart of the night.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah. So I guess I’m hoping that this newsletter/blog/whatever it is, can maybe serve the same purpose as that radio show did all those years ago. Mostly just for me, but for any readers that stumble across it as well. Just somewhere that I can share some of the music, art, books, film, whatever, that I enjoy in hopes that someone else out there might enjoy it as well. Who knows how many people will even find this desolate corner of the internet? But if I get only a handful of readers as excited as those listeners who called in to find out what it was that they were hearing on WXDU deep in the bowels of the night, or hell, any readers at all, well that will be success enough for me. Hell who am I kidding. Success will be if I get to the next post.
Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for listening.
Hope to have you around again soon.
-martin