mrasg1 wrote:
The water mains are being cleaned by this huge truck. The LOUD DRONING sound is driving me crazy! Not sure if they are doing it city wide, but they will be here m-f for the next two weeks.

jrnotjunior wrote: Does WFMU ever do anything in Jersey City? It seems to me that although they're located in Jersey City, they don't do a lot to promote the city. But I could be wrong - I only listen to certain programs (mostly on the weekends)

jrnotjunior wrote: Does WFMU ever do anything in Jersey City? It seems to me that although they're located in Jersey City, they don't do a lot to promote the city. But I could be wrong - I only listen to certain programs (mostly on the weekends)

mrasg1 wrote:
Oh yea, WFMU not WFUV. Thanks for catching that. I like WFUV.
MY opinion.

Ms_Taggart wrote:
Quote:

BrightMoment wrote:
Quote:

mrasg1 wrote:
The water mains are being cleaned by this huge truck. The LOUD DRONING sound is driving me crazy! Not sure if they are doing it city wide, but they will be here m-f for the next two weeks.

why would you disparage wfmu? they are one of the finest independent radio stations on earth!

Second to Album 88 of course...

BrightMoment wrote:
Quote:

mrasg1 wrote:
The water mains are being cleaned by this huge truck. The LOUD DRONING sound is driving me crazy! Not sure if they are doing it city wide, but they will be here m-f for the next two weeks.

why would you disparage wfmu? they are one of the finest independent radio stations on earth!

mrasg1 wrote:
The water mains are being cleaned by this huge truck. The LOUD DRONING sound is driving me crazy! Not sure if they are doing it city wide, but they will be here m-f for the next two weeks.

JTCdwntwn wrote:
Quote:

corybraiterman wrote:
68-08


40???

yes cory it's 40.

mrasg1 wrote:
If I donate, will they stop playing that droning on crap and the other stuff that gives me a headache?!?

corybraiterman wrote:
68-08


40???

BrightMoment wrote:
Howdy Neighbors,

This is Jersey City's own (since they moved here from East Orange in '98) and this is the last week to make a donation to WFMU during their marathon fundraiser AND 50th Anniversary. Go to this link NOW and show you've got some ears!

http://www.wfmu.org/

If you are among the poor, ill-informed who have never listened to WFMU.org, do yourself a favor and tune in first to the website to pick a program you might like among the many great programs, or even better just tune in anytime to surprise yourself with what radio stations used to sound like in the beginning of free-form fm radio before Clear Channel's robots and "Jack" took over:

http://www.wfmu.org/

BrightMoment wrote:
Howdy Neighbors,

This is Jersey City's own (since they moved here from East Orange in '98) and this is the last week to make a donation to WFMU during their marathon fundraiser AND 50th Anniversary. Go to this link NOW and show you've got some ears!

http://www.wfmu.org/

If you are among the poor, ill-informed who have never listened to WFMU.org, do yourself a favor and tune in first to the website to pick a program you might like among the many great programs, or even better just tune in anytime to surprise yourself with what radio stations used to sound like in the beginning of free-form fm radio before Clear Channel's robots and "Jack" took over:

http://www.wfmu.org/

BrightMoment wrote:
Howdy Neighbors,

This is Jersey City's own (since '98 when they moved here)and this is the last week to make a donation to WFMU during their marathon fundraiser AND 50th Anniversary. Go to this link NOW and show you've got some ears! If you are among the poor ill-informed who have never listened to WFMU.org, do yourself a favor and tune in first to the website to pick a program you might like among the many great programs, or even better just tune in anytime to surprise yourself with what radio stations used to sound like in the beginning of free-form fm radio before Clear Channel's robots and "Jack" took over:

http://www.wfmu.org/


February 24, 2008

Our Towns

Looking for Music, but Not ?Celebration,? to Remember Castro? Put the Radio On



By PETER APPLEBOME
JERSEY CITY

Somewhere between Bobby Lee Trammell?s ?Arkansas Twist? and Lula Reed and Freddie King?s ?Do the President Twist?; between the Elite?s ?One Potato? and its flip side, ?Two Potato?; between Slim Gaillard?s ?Atomic Cocktail? and spoken clips from ?Dragnet,? ?The Nutty Professor? and Phyllis Diller, Dave the Spazz really pulled one out of his hat on Thursday night.

?I?ve been waiting 50 years to play that one,? Dave, known outside the studio as Dave Abramson, told his listeners on WFMU radio. That one was Jay Chevalier?s ?Castro Rock? from 1960:

Down in Cuba where they raise sugar cane

Got a brand new dance, it?s a crazy thing

Named after a man by the name of Fidel

Just stand in one spot and shake like ... wellll

It?s the Castro Rock, it?s the Castro Rock

If you ever go to Cuba better learn to do the Castro Rock.

If any place was going to mark Fidel Castro?s role in history by unearthing Jay Chevalier, it figured to be WFMU-FM (91.1), which went on the air the year before he came to power in 1959. The station, which is independent and noncommercial, is celebrating its 50th birthday this week during its annual as-brief-as-possible beg-athon, but if Mr. Castro has his spot in history, remarkably, WFMU does too.

Since its beginning as the radio station at a now-defunct Lutheran college in New Jersey, WFMU-FM has managed to carve out a niche for itself as perhaps the longest-lived and most admired practitioner of free-form radio programming. That now careers from Mr. Abramson?s ?Music to Spazz By? to ?Put the Needle on the Record? by Billy Jam (mostly rap and hip-hop), to Phuj Phactory with Ergo Phizmiz, described as ?bricolage, ballet, sound tracks, antiquarian humor and vintage curios.?

Maybe the film director Jim Jarmusch is being hyperbolic when he proclaims, in the introduction to a book of WFMU art, writing and ephemera, ?Hands down, WFMU is the greatest radio station on the planet.?

But there?s something of a history of modern communications in the survival of a place that managed to mix yin and yang ? controlled chaos and business acumen ? to thrive long after its original home, Upsala College, had gone bankrupt.

?It?s the little engine that could,? said Vin Scelsa, the longtime New York radio figure now at WFUV-FM, who was there for the creation of WFMU?s current form as a student at Upsala in 1968. ?They?ve always remained true to their vision of letting the person on the air be the creator, weaving whatever elements he or she wants to put together.?

For its first decade, WFMU operated much like the French club ? as a student activity broadcasting lectures, Lutheran services and classical music or jazz. Then, amid the ferment of the 1960s, Mr. Scelsa and his pals cooked up a seamless mix of music, noise, talk and satire that lives to this day, after an interregnum in 1969 when the staff walked out and Upsala shut the place down for 10 months.

But it returned, and has since morphed into a world as varied as the one in ?The Lord of the Rings.? True fans, for instance, can endlessly ponder the 72-card set of WFMU Airwave Idols, in which they can find out each D.J.?s most embarrassing record owned, favorite movie and record playing when virginity was lost (those last include Miles Davis?s ?Kind of Blue,? something by Lionel Richie, and ?If I Die, I Die,? by the Virgin Prunes).

WFMU is probably around for two reasons, both linked to Ken Freedman, its general manager since 1985. First, when Upsala went bankrupt, the staff members were prepared to buy the license, make the station independent and later find a new permanent home in a building they bought in Jersey City. The station has a $1.2 million budget, six full-time workers and about 200 volunteers, including almost all the D.J.?s.

Second, and most important, WFMU, to use this year?s political coinage, embraced change in a big way. It put up its Web site (wfmu.org) in 1993, before most of us knew what a Web site was. It began streaming its shows full time in 1997. Instead of being a dinosaur medium eaten up by new technology, it managed to create an international niche brand. So Mr. Abramson occasionally works as a D.J. at weddings in places like Japan and Tucson for people who listen to him on WFMU.

?They know I?m not going to do ?Celebration,? ? he said on Thursday at the station.

Some of the sound snippets in Mr. Abramson?s aural soup came from the 1959 science fiction movie ?Plan 9 From Outer Space.?

?Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth??

?Because all you of Earth are idiots!?

Well, maybe not all earthlings, but it seems to some WFMUers that 50 years of this is way too much fun to ask for.

?This is the kind of place that shouldn?t exist but somehow does,? said Tom Scharpling, whose show is modestly titled ?The Best Show on WFMU.?

?I keep thinking the bad guys will win in the end and take it all away, but somehow it all seems to keep working.?

E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company