May 1, 1995

28: Revisited!

Another milestone in my personal history: about a year after graduating from Emerson, I ran into Alex de Suze, an old classmate of mine on the Red Line. Her sister was working at a radio station and had a lead on a DJ job for me. I think that's the story?
I was hired for overnight shifts at a Top 40 radio station in North Conway, NH. That's a nearly three-hour drive from my home in Somerville. I was miserable doing the three-hour trip every weekend until September 1995, when my girlfriend and I moved to Portland, Maine. That's still a 90 minute drive, but I was told the radio station -- whose signal from atop Mt Washington blanketed NH, VT, and southern Maine -- would be moving there. From September 1995 to July 1996, I did the 90-minute commute 5 days a week. This was an overnight shift, so I was driving a 10:30pm-midnight to work, and 6-8:30am home. 
Neither my radio career nor my relationship with Amy would survive the decade. I sometimes think about the path I was on, and what I might have done differently. Plan B: double down on the radio work. Take jobs wherever I could. I could have moved to North Conway and enjoyed the outdoor lifestyle while working as a DJ. Of course, radio DJ-ing was already dying as an occupation, as more and more stations were automated. I guess it's good I gave up that track later in the 1990s, but at the time, it felt like I no longer had any direction. I was pretty miserable in my customer service job, my wife Amy was working as an admin at a TV station. I think our unhappiness in our place in life helped lead to our divorce. I guess the upside is that neither of these problems lasted too long: by 2001, my career and marriage were over and I could restart.
Anyway, back to the music! My notes on the cassette insert say "Side 2 originally recorded May 1995, both sides re-recorded March 23, 1996." The collection is chock-full of contemporary music, including plenty of alt-rock, and music I was then playing on the Top 40 radio station 103.7 "Peak" FM. 90 minute Maxell cassette

Side A

  1. Sexual Healing; Soul Asylum
  2. I'm Gonna Get You (Boyd's Theme) Bizarre, Inc.
  3. Mr. Wendal; Arrested Development
  4. Everything Falls Apart; Dog's Eye View
  5. In The Blood; Better Than Ezra
  6. We Don't Exist; Meat Puppets
  7. Good Intentions; Toad The Wet Sprocket
  8. Could I Be Your Girl? and
  9. Insensitive; Jann Arden
  10. The Right Time; The Corrs
  11. Missing; Everything But The Girl
  12. Who Will Save Your Soul; Jewel
Side B
  1. Summertime; Peter Gabriel & Larry Adler
  2. You Gotta Be; Des'ree
  3. I Know; Dionne Farris
  4. Take Me To The River; The Commitments
  5. Down By The Water; PJ Harvey
  6. Ridiculous Thoughts; Cranberries
  7. Cornflake Girl; Tori Amos
  8. Cinco De Mayo; Liz Phair
  9. Now They'll Sleep; Belly
  10. I Don't Sleep I Dream; R.E.M.
  11. Your Favorite Thing; Sugar
  12. Against The Seventies; Mike Watt & Eddie Vedder
  13. The Great Big No; The Lemonheads
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