New Wave On My Radio in 1982 (Q-Wave pt 2)

Dig if you will a picture:  It’s a Sunday evening in suburban southern 'Scansin.  A pimply, bespectacled teenager peels the shrinkwrap from a C-90 and puts it in the tape deck.  He spins the FM dial from left to center, from WMSE to WQFM.  They’re probably playing REO Dragwagon. 

But soon it will be time for “Q-Wave”, hosted by “Downstairs Dan” Hansen.  Hit the record button!  The week ahead will be spent listening to that tape over and over, noting the song titles and artists.  Next, poring over mail order catalogs from Rough Trade, Rather Ripped Records, and Enigma in search of these punk and new wave records.  Or maybe a trip to Milwaukee, to comb the racks at Ludwig Van Ear with an alphabetized wantlist in hand, and cash in pocket from my after school job delivering newspapers by bicycle.

Here’s a sequel to my previous post of songs played on “Q-Wave”.  This music was hard to find back then in the ‘burbs.  I knew one kid whose family had cable TV, so I only saw MTV during sleepovers.  Once in awhile SNL would have a musical guest like Devo, Elvis Costello, or (gasp) Fear.  A rival late night show called Fridays hosted the Clash and the Jam.  But these were rare sightings, and we didn’t have a VCR.

I didn’t have older siblings or uncles to borrow records from, and the kids at school were mystified by my Circle Jerks and Bad Brains t-shirts. I was 16, and all-ages shows were rare. “Q-Wave” and WMSE (the college station at the Milwaukee School of Engineering) were my lifeline to the world that I read about in Creem and Trouser Press.  

I wrote letters to Downstairs Dan, and he read one of them on the air!  After I started a fanzine, he interviewed me on another WQFM show, “Talking To Q”.  Had I stayed in Wisconsin, I might have become a student DJ on WMSE.  But dad’s career uprooted our family again, this time to Georgia.

There were great college stations in Georgia (WREK, WRAS, and WUOG). And I kept my “Q-Wave” tapes. When I got into hip hop some years later, I found another weekly radio show (“The Beatbox” on WRAS, with DJ JD) and followed the same process: tape the show, learn the songs, find the records.