The Hunt
At the turn of the 1990's, i.e. before the internet became ubiquitous, music discovery took many forms. Word of mouth was the most common. I'd also spend hours scanning album covers at record stores for interesting clues - like weird song timings, cryptic titles, or recognizable names in the liner notes. Going down rabbit holes meant heading to the library and looking up old rock magazine articles on microfiche.
So when I became a college radio nerd at WHRW in Binghamton their amazing record collection - occupying several rooms - was my world wide web. There were a couple turntables available right by the ceiling-high rows of shelves to check things out. At the time it seemed luxurious to be able to uncover an interesting looking album and listen to it immediately.
As part of the station ecosystem each album had a piece of paper attached for DJs to sign and date whenever they played a song on the air. This helped keep track of "the hits" or if a record was getting unjustly ignored. As I dug deeper into the library I noticed one signature popping up on all the "good" albums. Various obscure prog rock, avant jazz, and deep goth-y records were all visited by one DJ with a unique zig-zag signature of seven segments that looked like:
I had no idea what that symbol meant, or who that was. The dates next to the signature hinted that it was somebody currently at the station. But I didn't actively press others to identify this person - I enjoyed the air of mystery. This ended up being a huge key to finding more amazing music - any album marked by this tag had to be a winner.
Of course just hanging around the station also yielded great results. I distinctly remember sitting on the couch in the lobby and hearing something new and profound coming over the speakers. I sprinted into the control room immediately and found Slint's "Nosferatu Man" spinning on the turntable - an album I would have never given a second glance simply based on the cover. Watershed moment in my life, for sure.
Similarly, there were a couple times I tuned into WHRW while driving to campus and had my face melted. I'd park illegally by the student union, run up to the station, and panic-asked what was on air five minutes earlier. One case was Naked City's "Torture Garden" and another was Massacre's "Killing Time." This was funny because both feature Fred Frith, of whom I was already a fan of via his very different Henry Cow and solo material. Also I had no idea back then we'd both end up in Oakland, CA of all places and bump into each other on occasion.
Of course there'd be cross pollination with other college radio geeks on other campuses. I'd visit my high school friend Eric went to Columbia University and DJed at WKCR. He actually was the first person to clue me in on the whole Knitting Factory universe. Not really the same, but I clued him in on the whole Gentle Giant universe (much to his flatmate's chagrin).
Also worth mentioning was the time I had a show featuring a bit more modern, aggro stuff. Some anonymous dude called in and said, "hey man based on what you're playing you should check out this band Primus." I never heard of them as they were pretty much unknown on the east coast back in 1990. Keen to try new things, I went to the record library and saw we had in fact just acquired a new album of theirs called "Frizzle Fry." I picked a random song to sample: "Groundhog's Day." As a bassist my brain broke a little bit. I'll never know who that caller was, but in some way they were part of the picture that led me towards moving to California.
But yeah. This was how it used to be: more adventure, more organic flow, more random chance, and ultimately far more rewarding than just some youtube or spotify algorithm. It's all about the hunt, people!!
On what may have been my last radio show senior year Mike, one of the many colorful characters from the larger station family, popped into the control room to hang out. He saw the pile of recently played albums off to the side and said, "oh I played this one on my show last week," while pointing at his signature - which was that zig zag! "Holy shit, that's YOU!" I shouted. His last name started with an "N" and thus his signature was a stylized "MN." On hindsight: duh, I should've figured that out sooner. I hung out with Mike during all kinds of art-nerd college adventures over the years, while having no idea he led me to discovering dozens of amazing albums I still treasure today.