This is a bit of a departure, but I figured I’d let you all know about a piece I wrote that was just published in our local paper. It covers a quirky underground radio station I stumbled across some years back. You can find the online piece here, and below is an excerpt:
Every Islander knows the drill: stuck in a line of traffic, slowly navigating one of the inescapable left-turn-fueled bottlenecks that bedevil our Island. Bored and possibly annoyed, we turn to our radios, hoping for a distraction to help pass the time.
This was my plight a few years back, crawling toward Cronig’s Market in Vineyard Haven in my old Jeep. Summer congestion at least affords an opportunity to explore the dial.
I gambled with the scan button, prepared to be disappointed. There must be something worth listening to. That exhausting clutch of NPR stations clinging to the bottom frequencies, rich in catastrophe and impotent complaint? Skip. The predictable treacle of corporate rock stations, the incidental banter of sports talk radio — skip and skip.
Then … magic. The scan function settled on a tune that caught my ear.
“I am waaaiting,” an unmistakable voice pleaded. “I am waaaaiting.” I couldn’t quite place it, but the song had all the trappings of a Stones deep cut, replete with dulcimer, harpsichord, and Charlie Watts’ signature backbeat.
“Damn right I’m waiting,” I chuckled to myself, pausing the scan to hear the rest of the tune. We’re all waiting at this particular corner of State Road. Curious, I grabbed my phone and launched the music-finding app Shazam, all the while edging my Jeep past Look Street and toward Cronig’s.
I was right — it was the Stones, and it was a very deep cut: “I Am Waiting,” the tenth tune on “Aftermath,” the 11-track album that the band recorded in 1965.
I eyed my radio’s dial. For the very first time, it rested on an unfamiliar frequency: 96.7 FM. No call letters, just “96.7” — prime radio real estate. Who plays deep Stones cuts in the middle of the day — on this Island?
The next tune came on, a jarring, post-punk tangle that felt vaguely familiar. Shazam told me it was “Rat Trap” by the Boston Spaceships. Not exactly a hit. Who’d ever play this song?
I decided to wait in my car, figuring a DJ would offer me some much-needed context. But the next song was a blues cut so obscure that even Shazam couldn’t find it. On and on it went — a B-side from the Beach Boys, an old Michael Hurley folk track.
For 15 minutes, no DJ came on, and no ads played, either. This station simply made no sense. It was as if some grinning trickster had hijacked the airwaves with a giant jukebox containing thousands of completely unrelated tunes.
Was there an underground radio station in the heart of our little Island?