Note: I drafted this post in 2006 but I guess I never finished it and I definitely never published it. In 2025, when Typepad shut down and I moved this entire blog to a new domain, I discovered this old post sitting here drafted. I am publishing it now as-is (backdated to 2006) to capture my thoughts, but please be aware that it is unpolished, both in the writing itself (e.g. grammar) and in the tone (e.g. maybe I said something offensive that I would have edited out later). That said, here I go, pushing the publish button …
WREK is in the news lately, so I guess it’s about time I dump the WREK treatise out of my head.
I started at WREK in the fall of 1988, having been at Georgia Tech for a couple years by then. I was in the middle of a rapid evolution of my musical tastes, which had started with the typical pop radio / classic rock corporate crap in high school and the first year or two of college, winding through the corporate “new music” (e.g. Smithereens, Living Color), spending about 6 months blowing through standard college radio WRAS-style pop rotation at the time (Mission UK, Robyn Hitchcock, etc.), and ending up with an enormous appetite for MORE. WREK happened to be the station at my college so I dove in and discovered a world of music … beyond rock. Sufi chant, free jazz, ambient noise, 20th century composition, all in addition to the more approachable fare of old school HC, electronic, bebop, and so forth.
And as I’ve heard others say so many times over the years, WREK changed my life. It inducted me into a music and culture underground that you would have no idea existed … I ended up spending the next 8 years deeply involved with the operation of the station, but by 1996, graduating with my second degree, I decided to quite cold turkey and just be a regular listener, a consumer. Well, 3 years later I could stand it anymore, it was obvious the station was falling apart (more on why later). So in 1999 I dove back in, this time more as a professional engineer and project manager who was determine to Make Shit Happen, and for the next 3 years I busted ass and practically rebuilt the whole station. I took a station that was heading towards the dumpster and, with the help of 3 other guys, converted it back into the functional juggernaut that I remembered. We fixed equipment, built new systems, set up operational processes, and basically made the place work again.
In 2002 I started a new job and again I said goobye to WREK. This time I was more deeply entangled, so I couldn’t just quit, I had to slowly shed all of my roles, and after about 2 years that was done. I still do a handful of things for WREK, but generally they are a few low-maintenance technical tasks that I hold onto only because it would be far more work for me to explain them than to just keep doing them. Generally these are tasks that will be retired over time anyway so it’s not like it’s an open-ended commitment. And the one bit of “fun” work that I do at WREK is the monthly Eyedrum radio show, which makes for a neat tie-in between my old hobby (WREK) and my new hobby (Eyedrum).
WREK is definitely dying. The staff of WREK (of my halcyon days of 1988-1994) was far more engaged in the music scene, far more active in Getting Shit Done, far more engaged in life. These days everybody seems to be sleepwalking through their lives, and I’ve attributed to the following things.
1. College radio doesn’t attract motivated people to work there anymore. Up until the mid 90’s, the only way to be exposed to independent/alternative music was to be involved in the local scene — listen to the local noncommercial radio, go out to shows at clubs, read zines, and so forth. People that really wanted to express themselves had to do it by publishing zines, working in college radio, promoting shows, playing in bands. But with the advent of the web in the mid-90’s, most of that energy coming from the urge to express oneself flowed into the internet — home pages, internet discussion forums, even net radio. Obviously blogs and Myspace were still to come. So the people who were really driven to get involved in the scene had an outlet for expression, and they are no longer driven to college radio (and the other outlets I mentioned). So what’s left? The average losers who walk in the door to get on the radio ’cause they think hearing their voice on the radio sounds cool. That quality person does not make for a well-run radio station, it makes for one that slouches its way through life.
2. We now have the Playstation Generation in schools. Now, this is definitely going to make me sound like a cranky old geezer, but kids really are getting dumber and less capable of independent thought. They’ve had their entertainment spoon fed to them through their vibrating video game controllers and Sidekicks, and that creates a person who can’t take an empty canvas and create something new with it. It’s all one collosal shrug now.
3. The drinking age went up to 21. This happened back in the mid-80s, so it obviously isn’t anything new like the internet, but it created a definite braking effect on the scene. The average college student is under 21 and can’t get into the clubs where most of the music scene is being played out. Yes, there are alternative venues and all-ages shows, but the bread and butter of the scene is happening night after night in the over-21 clubs.
I don’t think any of these things are reversible. College radio, even radio itself, had its day in the sun and the sun is setting; real creative expression has moved on to other outlets. We’ve got a great infrastructure in place so certainly we can milk if for all its worth, and try to keep the remaining faded gems of radio (including WREK) going as long as possible, but it’s just postponing the inevitable. WREK, if it continues to exist at all, will eventually revert to the echo chamber of frat boys playing “new music” for their buddies, or just get taken over completely by the fine folks in “public” radio. Perhaps not this year but soon enough.
Some people currently (or recently) at WREK will read this and complain that things are fine, but I don’t think they have the hindsight to see what’s missing: – there’s no effort to feature recordings of local music; there are some great ways to implement this but nobody cares anymore – no real effort – no more promos for weekly shows like Earwhacks – oh wait, they cancelled Earwhacks (an album in its entirety) altogther, golf clap – hardly any Sunday Specials, virtually none outside of my own monthly show
Some folks recently asked me about my opinion of the WREK events, and I’ve basically told people that my opinions are too dark and I’d rather not say.
But it’s not dead yet! So tune in while you still can and soak it all in. It’ll be replaced with morning shows and Nickelback and marketing-driven fare soon enough.
To get you started, I’ll post some highlights of WREK’s programming soon. Shows that I listen to religiously every week.