We all wax poetic about our old days as radio hosts for our college FM station. If you were never a DJ with college/community radio, then you wax poetic — or bitter — about how inspiring, gratifying, groundbreaking the experience might’ve been, if only you were given the chance, dammit. Well, the University of Minnesota has a pretty good radio station — so good that they’ve established an impressive tradition of in-studio performances from amazing artists big and small, and as proof they make tape compilations of these to share outside of Radio K’s broadcast area.
The newest comp in the series is Stuck on AM 7: Stuck on Tape (naturally following 2008’s Stuck on AM 6), and as its name indicates, it comes on an inherently hip formation of plastic, weighing a few ounces and fitting snugly into the Walkman you wish you never threw away. Of course, for 2011’s modern listener with a MacBook Pro, iPod, and smart phone, the cassette comes with a digital download. The cassette release (and Part One of said download) features “Off the Record” performances from local artists like Dark Dark Dark, STNNG, and Retribution Gospel Choir. However, Radio K’s gotten some pretty formidable faces to come through the studio over the last two years, and for the download this year, they’ve added 24 tracks from some “national” musicians you just may want to hear — from The Vaselines to Kurt Vile to M83. Think Peel Sessions! Think Daytrotter! On tape! (Ahem… the “local” half, anyway). There are also a few tracks thrown in from the arts & culture program “Culture Queue,” to remind you that it’s still college radio (and thus, like, we’ve got to reflect and think about the state of media and society as we do these things).
If you’re in Minneapolis, you can pick up a copy of Stuck on AM 7 for free at the Electric Fetus on Record Store Day — but then, you can probably also listen to Radio K on your car stereo, so you’re pretty lucky all around.
Part 1: Local (cassette and download):
01. Leisure Birds, “Say So!”
02. Buffalo Moon, “Jamba Samba”
03. Dark Dark Dark, “The Hand”
04. Zoo Animal, “Worker Bee”
05. Doomtree, “Accident”
06. The Cloak Ox, “Artist at the Door”
07. Gospel Gossip, “Ponds”
08. The Blink Shake, “Wire Mr. Owl/Soft Zodiac”
09. Grant Cutler & The Gorgeous Lords, “Orphan”
10. Roma Di Luna, “Before I Die”
11. Dante & The Lobster, “Wake Up”
12. Wizards Are Real, “Stay Golden”
13. Private Dancer, “Diane”
14. Pink Mink, “Black Door”
15. Eyedea & Abilities, “Sky Diver”
16. Retribution Gospel Choir, “Workin’ Hard”
17. STNNNG, “The Long Middle”
Part 2: National (download only):
01. Lower Dens, “Rosie”
02. Disappears, “Lux”
03. The Besnard Lakes, “And This Is What We Call Progress”
04. The Black Angels, “Haunting at 1300 McKinley”
05. The Mynabirds, “Let the Record Go”
06. M83, “Graveyard Girl”
07. A Sunny Day in Glasgow, “Shy”
08. Lightning Dust, “I Knew”
09. Here We Go Magic, “Fangela”
10. The Antlers, “Thirteen”
11. Kurt Vile, “Hunchback”
12. Foreign Born, “Vacationing People”
13. Holy Fuck, “Stilettos”
14. Woven Bones, “Your Sorcery”
15. Dom, “Bochica”
16. The Vaselines, “Sex with an X”
17. Serena-Maneesh, “Reprobate!”
18. Surfer Blood, “Take It Easy”
19. The Soft Pack, “Answer to Yourself”
20. The Octopus Project, “Fuguefat”
21. The Concretes, “My Ways”
22. Sharon Van Etten, “Peace Sign”
23. Foals, “Spanish Sahara”
24. Twin Sister, “Other Side of Your Face”
Culture Queue:
01. Tess Weinberg, “The Art of Last Rite, Obituary Building”
02. Zach McCormick, “Lee Dorsey, New Orleans Funk”
03. Sarah Boden, “All About Zombies”
• Radio K: http://www.radiok.org
