Earlier this week Steve Nelson posted 90-minutes of radio from REV-105 on Soundcloud. First of all, I’ve listened to this about three times through now and I smile the entire 90 minutes — like a full-on, teeth showing, eyes crinkling smile.

Today is, apparently, the 20th anniversary of the station going off the air. In my head, the death of REV-105 happened in the summer on a sultry day in August or something like that. In my memory I walked over to the gas station I worked at in short-sleeves and no jacket, escaping into cool air-conditioning, settled into the office with a Camel Light and the radio set to REV-105 like I always did. REV-105 was my only friend in that time between college and real life, when I felt like I was wasting away at a job that allowed me to smoke cigarettes and read books while occasionally taking money from people for gas and OK Sodas (just kidding, I think Sister #4 was the only person who consistently consumed OK Soda, she loved that shit).

It took me awhile to figure out something was up. I mean it was REV and they played whatever they wanted, but an hour of shitty heavy metal? When I realized something was wrong, I busted out the yellow pages and tried to find someone to call for some answers.

The yellow pages.

Someone I could call.

God, 1997 was like the Stone Ages.

Anyway, listening to the music and the DJs is like a happy field trip to nostalgialand, but it was a spoken word poem called “Indictment” by Nicole Blackman (it starts at about 56 minutes into the Soundcloud thing) that zoomed me back into my 20something GenX slacker days. I’m a forty-four-year-old spinster sitting here on a couch growing out my grey hair and nearly every line of this poem made me think, Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yep. Mmmhmmm.

Here, let me post a bit of it that I transcribed and see if it doesn’t stir up a few things for my fellow GenX slackers:

We don’t live, we just scratch on day to day with nothing but matchbooks and sarcasm in our pockets. And all we’re waiting for is for something somewhere worth waiting for.

We shrug off labels and dismiss all the consultants who sell our rap sheets and buying patterns to Madison avenue all the better to sell us another chair at IKEA.

And we need something to kill the pain of all that nothing inside so we take an Advil because it goes down like an M&M and we understand that.

We asked for a real future and what did we get? Clear beer. But we fear that no one will ever understand us. We fear that all we are right now is all we’ll ever be. We fear that we don’t know who the middle class is anymore. We fear that pop culture is the only kind of culture we’re gonna have. We open a Victoria’s Secret catalog and think oh yeah, I’m always lounging around on the porch wearing a garter belt.

We fear hope because hope means doing something new. Our lifestyles have no life and no style. We want to stop reading magazines. Stop watching TV. Stop caring about Winona Ryder movies. But we’re addicted to the things we hate. We can’t stop going to brunch, start a band, defending Hillary. We never finish reading books.

That part about defending Hillary . . . really slayed me in light of the recent fascist takeover. And the whole thing makes me feel like a disaffected 20something all over again. I’m glad I’m not, that’s for damn sure, but it’s been really fun visiting again.

The post Step into My Time Machine: Can You Smell the Fruitopia? appeared first on I Will Dare.

It was the summer of 1996. Six months out of college, I was living with my parents and working at a gas station across the street from their house. I drove a beat-up 1979 Chrysler Newport which was nearing the 300,000 mile mark. All my college friends were somewhere else, I was lonely and adrift, getting all my cultural input from City Pages, Rev-105, Spin, and late-night, long-distance phone calls from my friends.

This was pre-Internet and cellphone ubiquity. It was lonely as fuck.

Since I was raking in a cool $5.55 an hour at the gas station, I thought I was loaded and proceeded to spend all my money on books and CDs. Musically, I was on a good path. Rev-105 was probably the most influential entity in the development of my musical taste, with Jim Walsh coming in a close second.

But literarily? I was on my own and it was a scary time. My early reading years were mostly self-directed and consisted for trashy grocery-store lit and Sweet Valley High. College reading was mostly dictated by professors, and the few books I read for pleasure were either recommendations gleaned from music magazines or books I’d heard of.

So there I was in 1996 with ample free time (working third shift in a small, not particularly busy gas station left a lot of time for sitting behind the counter and reading), lots of expendable income, and only my instinct to guide me. It was during this time I set out to read all the novels that had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. About twelve or thirteen novels into that daunting task I ran into A Summons to Memphis and abandoned the project. I think ‘Summons’ has the distinct honor of being the very first book I ever quit, oh wait, no, that distinction goes to Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire.

Directionless once again, I’d haunt the stacks of the Barnes & Noble in Burnsville, back when it was across the street from where it is now in a strip mall sandwiched between Office Max and Toys R Us. I confess I spent a lot of money on really crappy chicklit before it was called chicklit and Oprah’s Bookclub Books. But I also read everything Jeanette Winterson had published up to that point, all of John Irving’s catalog, and even some John Updike (because I thought he was John Irving).

I’d go to Barnes & Noble every week after I got paid and load up on books — three, four, sometimes five at a time. It really were halcyon days. It was during one of these weekly trips that I stumbled upon Elizabeth McCracken’s The Giant’s House.

The bright red cover with the library pocket caught my eye, so did the word giant. Having finally reached my full height of 6’5″ at 23 I was pretty sure I qualified as a giant. But that’s not what even sealed the deal for me on this book. No, what sealed the deal, which I will reveal in the next sentence, is the most ridiculous and shallow reason to probably ever read a book.

I plucked The Giant’s House off that Barnes & Noble shelf because Elizabeth McCracken’s author photo reminded me of Janeane Garofalo. Yes, that’s the embarrassing and true story of how this book, the one I recommend to every single person who asks me for a good book to read, the book that is easily one of my top-five favorite books of all time, came into my life. Janeane Garofalo.

This should tell you two things about me. I really was utterly directionless in 1996 and I loved the shit out of Janeane.

Later I will tell you why The Giant’s House is such an important book and how it holds up to the Re-evaluation of Personal Artifacts.

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They had this great little feature they called “Evolution of the Revolution.” It was just short 15 to 30 second snippets of songs and it was all if you like X then you should check out Y.

I distinctly remember bombing around in my 1979 Chrysler Newport, Sugar, on a bright sunny afternoon bouncing from bookstore to record store with Rev105 cranked high. They did an Evolution of the Revolution spot. If you like Matthew Sweet then you should check out Big Star.

Because I was 23 and lived at home and worked at a gas station and had more discretionary income than ever, I said, “I love Matthew Sweet I am going to check out Big Star!” And the very next CD I purchased that day was “#1 Record/Radio City.” After I slid the CD into my discman (which was connected to Sugar’s stereo via one of those tape dealies), I popped open the liner notes.

Holy shit, I thought. Alex Chilton is a real person.

Having the Matthew Sweet comparison along with The Replacements’ golden seal of approval was all I needed to make Big Star my new favorite band. Everyone always assumed I discovered Big Star through The ‘Mats, but now, it was Matthew Sweet.

Since that day the band and I have had a long storied relationship a lot of which I don’t feel like rehashing. Suffice it to say one of my most vile ExBFs was nicknamed after a Big Star song.

Alex Chilton died tonight at the age of 59. You can never predict how the death of a celebrity is going to hit you. If you had asked me yesterday about how I’d take the death of Alex Chilton, I’d have told you that I would be saddened but not shaken.

I would have been wrong. Chilton’s death smacked me upside the head. Tears sprang to my eyes the moment the words Alex Chilton R.I.P. flitted across my screen. Reading the Westernerds’ reactions on Facebook (right now there are 16 different mini-tributes to Chilton on my homepage) makes the tears roll down my cheeks, and makes me want to hug every single one of them.

Thank you, Alex Chilton.

The post It gets so hard in times like now to hold on, R.I.P. Alex Chilton appeared first on I Will Dare.

and lucky for you people not so fortunate to live in the twin cities area, they have a live streaming version of the station on their web site. it’s been so long since i’ve been in love with radio, probably since the demise of Rev-105, it’s nice to be back. i’ve missed it.

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the pretenders
weezer
soul coughing
bob marley
coldplay

yes, all right in a row. is this not a beautiful and glorious thing?

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