19 Degrees of Separation

Today I was looking through my college computer files and came across this treasure from spring semester of freshman year. John and I were DJs at 88.7 WXJM Harrisonburg in a Thursday morning 8am-10am timeslot that semester. It was one of the more fun things I think I’ve ever done. Each week we mostly played my favorite songs and his favorite songs. We begged our friends to listen. Mostly I think just my dad tuned in each week. We got one call in over the course of the entire semester.

On one Thursday, we decided to try to link each song with the previous one, either through artists, producers, sound engineers, etc. Today I re-discovered the set list from that morning. It doesn’t have the songs listed unfortunately, but I wanted to commit this to the collective memory of the interwebs for posterity. What follows is the actual artist set list I typed up about five years ago for that radio program.

The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened to Radio

February 24, 2005

1. Whiskeytown (Steven Rhodes asst. on STD, mixed Pneumonia and asst. eng.)
2. S.T.D. (Producer Rob Schnapf also mixed Static Prevails by Jimmy Eat World)
3. Jimmy Eat World (Futures eng/mix Rich Costey also mixed Audioslave)
4. Audioslave (Rick Rubin)
5. Mars Volta (Rick Rubin)
6. RHCP (Flea & Frusciante)
7. John Frusciante
8. Johnny Cash (Frusciante plays on American IV: The Man Comes Around)
9. Elliott Smith (Drummer Joey Waronker also played with Johnny Cash)
10. The Decembrists (Decembrists Engineer Larry Crane also Prod/Eng/Mix for Elliott Smith)
11. Death Cab (Benjamin Gibbard)
12. Postal Service (Jimmy Tamborello)
13. Bright Eyes (J.T. did programming on Digital Ash in a Digital Urn)
14. Little Brazil (Deparacidos bass player Landon Hedges plays guitar for LB)
15. Cursive (Hedges played guitar for Tim Kasher’s project The Good Life)
16. Rilo Kiley (JL sings for Postal Service)
17. Iron and Wine (Sam Beam was producer/engineer for Such Great Heights)
18. The Shins (James Mercer was producer/engineer for Such Great Heights)
19. Treasure State (Singer Joel Mercer bro of James Mercer)