good riddance

yesterday's sudden demise of whfs has brought about some thoughts on the state of DC radio... when i found whfs i was in high school and it started to pull me out of my sad state of mainstream music consumption... i can't claim that i was all that Indie or punk in my taste in music in high school, i had my share of poison and def leppard CD's...

what whfs did was prime me for finding good music while i was away at college... while i was at virginia tech i worked with a student organization that booked small bands to play on campus... velocity girl was a highlight from freshman year, but we also booked ralph stanley & the clinch mountain boys, and rancid, so we ran the gamut... we were basically there as free labor, loading in and out, selling and taking tickets, and doing security when it was needed...

alt sounds led me to wuvt 90.7 (woovit), the student run radio station, by my sophomore year and i dj'ed on and off for rest of my time at tech... i started, as all new dj's did, on the AM station that i'm not sure could ever be heard, except as background music on one of the campus information tv channels... i got a slot on FM pretty quickly, starting with a "contemporary classical" show on sunday mornings, and then drifting around, playing jazz, new music, blues, wherever i got ... the highlight was a jazz/blues/contemporary classical mix show that i did for a semester and people really liked.

working at woovit exposed me to a huge range of music, jazz, indie, punk... you name it we played it, and when i'd come home for summer or winter break, i'd listen to whfs... it wasn't playing the same music we were playing at woovit, but it was still descent... by the time i moved back after graduation, there was really no difference between whfs and any other mainstream rock station... i held on to the memories of the old whfs for a while, but i haven't listened for a couple of years now... if i hadn't heard the news online, i probably wouldn't have known it had changed formats for months... whfs, goodbye and good riddance...

the upshot of this has been some recommendations for good music online...

KEXP - i've been listening to kexp at work for the last couple of years... check them out...
WOXY - recommendation from a comment on gary's blog... listening now, they're good...
WUVT - woovit has a stream, though i don't often listen to it and it's not always the most reliable...

one bit of knowledge from my time at woovit... if you ever find yourself working as a DJ and need a break for a couple of minutes for a trip to the vending machine and a bathroom stop, dig up a copy of sonic youth's washing machine and put on the diamond sea... it's long, and it's a good track in it's own right...

any more recommendations for good online radio?