On April 18-19, 230 stations will take part in the annual Vinylthon fundraiser for radio-student scholarships. This year, there’s one more, WVYL (Vinyl Radio), the official station of Vinylthon, launching at Midnight, April 13 on Live 365.
WVYL was inspired by WSQK (The Squawk), the radio station from Stranger Things that became a real-life pop-up channel of its own last fall. WVYL will feature 60 original shows, each airing twice over the course of the week.
WVYL kicks off with Chicago radio legend John Landecker, followed by Vinylthon’s Dr. Rob Quicke, and KRQV (The River) Tulsa, Okla., PD Tab Grammer. It speaks to the eclecticism of the week that the fourth show will be Turkish Classics with Radio Tedu. (There are also shows from Ireland, Greece and three from BBC Introducing.
WAPS (The Summit) Akron, Ohio PD Brad Savage will host a show initially airing April 13 at 10 p.m. Midwest radio veteran Rob Creighton is on April 14 at 10 a.m. Brandon Charles’ Alternate Universe airs April 13 at 9 p.m. Quicke also recommends West Virginia’s Black Dog Blues w/Karen Combs & Jason Riffle, heard April 14 at 7 p.m.
The station voice of WVYL is Dan Hurst, whom College Radio Day founder Dr. Rob Quicke interned for at KUDL Kansas City nearly 30 years ago. Listeners who donate to Vinylthon’s Next Step Radio scholarship are eligible for station prize packs of records and station swag.
ROR took a “First Listen” to the first three hours of WVYL. There are music monitors and partial descriptions of what was between the records here, so if you’re looking to come to these three shows fresh, consider this your spoiler alert. Fortunately, these are three hours out of a total of 60 original shows, so there’s still plenty to listen to either way.
12 Midnight – John Landecker w/Len O’Kelly
N/T WGN Chicago night host Landecker is a radio legend dating back to nights at that market’s WLS more than 50 years ago. In between, he worked at Oldies WJMK with O’Kelly, now director of Michigan’s Grand Valley State University’s school of communications.
Besides hosting the first show, Landecker, whose college radio was at Michigan State’s WMSN, becomes the recipient of the first Vinylthon Legend Award.
Here’s Landecker’s hand-picked hour of music:
- Olivia Dean, “Man I Need” — prompted by her Saturday Night Live appearance – the first recent musical guest he could relate to
- Bruce Springsteen, “Jungleland” — O’Kelly asked if Landecker had any radio memories of the song at the time, but WLS didn’t even play “Born to Run,” much less album cuts
- Beatles, Abbey Road Medley
- Contours, “First I Look at the Purse” — an unusual choice to represent Motown but less so if you grew up in the shadow of Detroit radio, as Landecker did in Ann Arbor
- Love Affair, “Everlasting Love” — For years, the hit UK version of the Robert Knight/Carl Carlton hit was a trivia question here. Both Landecker and O’Kelly knew it because of the movie Belfast
- Shangri-Las, “Leader of the Pack”
- Kinks, “You Really Got Me” — Landecker described Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s frontsell of this in Pirate Radio as one of the few great DJ breaks in movies
- Rocky Horror Picture Show, “Time Warp” — Radio stations play it once a year. Landecker was part of a local band in the ’90s that played it all year because it rocks
- Ray Charles, “What’d I Say”
1 a.m. – The Vinyl Resting Place w/Rob Quicke
Quicke helped found Oxford’s Oxygen 107.9, the UK’s first college-radio station. He is now director of the journalism and mass communications school at West Virginia’s Marshall University, home of WMUL. Quicke dedicated his hour to “things you’ve never heard” and positioned it as the “antidote to AI,” promising to play bands with 40 subscribers.
Quicke’s hour was more indie/ethereal/prog, beginning with …
- Rageflower, “Sign of Life”
- Tom Chaplin, “Quicksand”
- Daniel Lanois, “Still Water”
- Pink Floyd, “Pigs on the Wing” — an 8-Track only version featuring Snowy White
- Martyn Joseph, “Strange Kind of Friend”
- London Grammar, “LA”
- Kate Rusby, “Friday I’m in Love” — also with interview audio in which the UK folk artist talked about how discovering the song as a kid, before she could parse all the lyrics, freed her to reinvent it as a ballad now
- John Farnham, “You’re the Voice” — the biggest hit here, at least outside the US; Quicke positioned it as a guilty pleasure
- Silencers, “About the Sea”
2 a.m. – Tab Grammer’s Radio Journey
Grammer recently segued from PD of Top 40 KHTT Tulsa, Okla., to PD/middays at Classic Hits sister KRQV (The River). Her 30-year radio career began at Lewis & Clark’s WLCA Godfrey, Ill., which led to an internship and then working in St. Louis radio. Her radio journey was told through her history of artist interviews, which accompany every song here except the first.
- Eazy-E, “Radio” (thus giving L.A. radio legend Greg Mack and Seattle’s Nasty Nes cameo appearances as well)
- Everclear, “Heroin Girl” — she interviewed Art Alexakis both in college and recently
- America, “Sister Golden Hair” — Dewey Bunnell remembers his “first time hearing our song on radio” experience as even harder-fought than most, being in the UK where there were only a few station options in 1972
- Better Than Ezra, “King of New Orleans” — Interviewing them led to an invite to introduce them on stage; also in this clip, Kevin Griffin talks about trying to be a good sport every time somebody tells him the Norm Macdonald SNL joke about the band’s name
- Barry Manilow, “Mandy”
- Michelle Branch, “Everywhere”
- Howard Jones, “No One Is to Blame”
- Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Walk on the Ocean”
- Robert Randolph, “Big Woman”
- Gin Blossoms, “Found Out About You” — Robin Wilson talks about trying to stay current, unlike many of his peers on the legacy-act circuit. He wants to cover White Reaper; he just bought the Wet Leg album “to play on the boat.”
- Shinedown, “Second Chance” — The band continues to prioritize radio in its plans. Lead singer Brent Smith is particularly proud that “Second Chance” was the last No. 1 song on the Hot AC version of Casey Kasem’s final American Top 40 show before retirement. Grammer played a clip of that as well.
