WMUC DC Set 1986 by Danjoseph on Mixcloud
During the summer of 1986 I hosted a weekly radio show on WMUC, the radio station of the University of Maryland, College Park. I wasn't a student there, but my friend Dave McDuff was the station manager and during the summer there was a chronic shortage of DJs. At the time I was living at 14th and Church Streets in NW Washington, DC and working at the nightclub/bar/restaurant/art gallery DC Space. Having spent the early 80s playing in a string of local bands including 9353, Crippled Pilgrims and Troubled Gardens, I was very much still in the thick of the DC music scene.
I recorded most of my radio programs on an in-studio cassette deck and I recently discovered several of these cassettes. This set of DC-area bands was somewhat of an anomaly, as most of my sets were dominated by the British and European post-punk, goth and industrial groups (4AD, Laylah, Les Disques du Crepescule etc.) I was then obsessed with. But all of these tracks are by bands I had a personal connection to (with the exception of Jad Fair), and all were active at that time. I played with some of these musicians in other projects, and all of them I heard live many times. Some are barely known today and I assume most of the tracks are out of print, but these were all great bands and offer a more or less representative slice of the DC scene at that time. Many of these records I no longer own (whoops!), so I'm completely thrilled to have this time capsule!
A shout out to Sharon, Colin, Alex, Roger and Charles of Bloody Mannequin Orchestra, to Joey and Malcolm of Grand Mal, to Monica, Eugene, Danny and Norman of Madhouse, my then bandmates Jason, Bruce and Vance (RIP) of 9353 and Jay, Scott and Mtich of Crippled Pilgrims, to Jeff, Dante, Steve and Mark of Grey Matter, to Alec, Chris and Mike of Faith, and lastly to the recently departed Dave Brockie whose early comedic-punk trio Death Piggy still stands as one of my all-time favorite bands of the region and period.
More about the DC days here: http://danjoseph.org/dc