Airwaves, brah

The first broadcast went smoothly. I had a steady number of 8-10 listeners the whole time, which is pretty good for AM college radio. I read some of the segments about depression from Infinite Jest and played music that aimed to fit in with the reading thematically, i.e., sad without being sappy or overbearing. Here's the full depression playlist:

Roads – Portishead
El Manana – Gorillaz
(These two compliment each other well, since they're in the same key and have pretty like chord structures. They made for a good introduction to the mood of the show.)
The Stranger Song – Leonard Cohen
(Hot damn, nobody writes lyrics like this anymore. All that irreverent Judeo-Christian wordplay. I think the old recording quality adds to the song's impact also. It's dark, but not pitch black.)
Drom Hardt (Requiem Pt. 1) – Kaizers Orchestra
(This could very well be pitch black, if not for the fact that the lyrics are in Norwegian and thus harder to understand. If this had been sung in English, I wouldn't have played it, as the translation shows some seriously heavy misery. It has a really nice string arrangement at the end that worked well as background music.)
Dirt in the Ground – Tom Waits
(Appropriately somber Waits, full of his trademark vocal howlin' without being too cooky about it.)
Volcano – Beck
Mad World – Michael Andrews
(These two paired nicely together, and although that version of 'Mad World' has been severely overplayed, it's still a damn good cover. Much preferred to the original.)
28 Ghosts IV – Nine Inch Nails
(The list needed something ambiguous and instrumental in order to make the transition to the more hopeful songs at the end. This is probably my favorite track off of the Ghosts album. Brooding.)
Little Person – Jon Brion & Deanna Story
(From the Synecdoche, NY soundtrack. Gorgeous, and it still hits sadness-ground-zero for me just as hard as it did the first time I heard it. This song is a great example of the way a melody can really bring out the power of really simple, straightforward lyrics.)
Tables and Chairs – Andrew Bird
(I had to close with something that was happy without being stupid about it, i.e., positive, but not Walkin' On Sunshine positive. I think this fit the ticket alright, Bird is a solid songwriter, with an ear for clever lyrics without being too self-consciously “clever” about them.)

Next week's show will be about bigotry. I'll be doing a dramatic reading of an incredibly tasteless column that was published in the student newspaper last year, amongst other goods.

Eh. February is a real Satan-month.