1988 was the year I first remember choosing to listen to the radio.
Before that, it was whatever Mom or Dad had playing in the car, or in the living room. Sometimes it was tapes, sometimes it was whatever MOR nonsense that was playing in the mid 90s on the FM dial.
But I got a boombox and a half dozen blank tapes on my 10th birthday, and by the following year, I had locked in on 96 Rock and 99.1 in Atlanta. I was too young to know about WREK, still in its heyday down at Tech; I'm not sure now that it would have had the signal to make it out to north Cobb County. So it was Todd Rundgren and Skid Row and LL Cool J and Public Enemy coursing through my ears into my brain. Not a bad time to start hearing music.
I did not get exposed to anything like this CD. Compiled by a trade magazine called The Hard Report, this "sampler" was a custom job on behalf of short-lived Seattle alternative radio station KJET 1590 AM. And compared to the rest of the Hard Report's samplers, this one's pretty good. The highlights for me are appearances from Wire (from their second post-reunion album), the Sugarcubes ("Deus" off their debut "Life's Too Good") and Dag Nasty, the pride of WDC. It's up there in quality alongside the couple of Borders CD samplers I got in the mid-90s; an interesting snapshot of what qualified as noteworthy back before I was old enough to use deodorant.
Postscript: reader Todd pointed out that this is a labeled as "KROQ - 106.7 FM Alternative CD Sampler #3 Summer '88" on the download. "What's the big idea?" I can hear him screaming (I project sometimes). Well, when I originally ripped my copy and uploaded it to Kraken, it was before I had snapped photos of the cover or added it to Discogs. I thought I was going to write about it sooner. I was incorrect. I should have re-tagged and added new pics, etc., etc.
Todd, your No-Prize is in the mail.
3 comments:
HI!
This is listed as a KROQ sampler on the download. Is it a misprint or is it actually something other than you wrote about?
You lived in North Cobb? I lived in North Gwinnett. On the left of the dial, we could get WREK and WRAS ("Album 88" from Georgia State), but sadly the signal wasn't strong enough to get WRFG or WUOG.
WREK's "eclectic" format was always interesting. Sometimes my mom would tune in to hear a classical piece, and a few minutes later the Dead Kennedys would come on.
I love radio station comps like this! Thanks. - Stinky
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