The Bazooka Joe Show

Samizdat radio for the postmodern ear

A little history about The Bazooka Joe Show.

I've been doing radio for nearly 15 years and got my start at WMFO 91.5 FM. At the time I was working as a telemarketer and one day I announced to my co-workers that I had some Big Black albums that I wanted to record. I didn't have a turntable and I was hoping one of them would let me come over to their house so I could record the vinyl to cassette. One guy by the name of Mikey Dee said he didn't have a turntable but I was welcome to join him at a radio station he worked at and record the albums there.

I met Mikey at WMFO and while I was recording to cassette I sat in and listened to his show. He was doing a freeform show and playing a mix of some of the most eclectic music I've ever heard. The way radio should be, really. I was so impressed by the amount of freedom he had that I decided that I, too, had to be a DJ.

I submitted my demo and got a show but after a month of doing freeform I decided I wanted to do what I called an "agro/assault" radio show. I wanted to play the most aggressive music I could get my hands on, whether it was punk, hardcore, metal, industrial, rap, etc. While I was doing this Mikey Dee decided that he would play local music as well as featuring live music from local bands from Boston. Following in his footsteps I also featured live music. The fucking obnoxious stuff, mind you.

This went on for a few years but after a while I grew tired of the music I was playing. Don't get me wrong, I loved the music but like anyone else I'm a complex person with many moods. The agro/assault stuff just wasn't satisfying so I started doing freeform again.

One night I was watching the movie Bladerunner and wondered what would the radio sound like in the Los Angeles of the future with its myriad inhabitants. I decided I would explore this idea in my show.

That was all the impetus I needed and from there I explored all sorts of themes and genres. I went through a dub phase, a techno phase, a lounge phase, etc. I continued to have live bands on my show but again, it was a diverse mix.

My last three years at WMFO I was burned out. I had been doing radio for over 10 years and being a DJ had lost it's impact on me. I remember being in the Boston Museum of Art and watching the security guards. They were surrounded by all this fantastic art but they seemed utterly bored with it. Of course they were. They saw the stuff everyday to the point where it must have seemed like furniture or wallpaper to them. That's how I felt about being a DJ.

In 2000 I packed up my stuff, quit WMFO and moved to San Diego. I didn't miss doing radio at first but I noticed that every once in a while if I heard a song on the radio or listened to one of my new CDs I would think "hey, that song would segue nicely with such and such a song." This started happening to me more frequently and I decided to see if there was a community or pirate station I could join. Nada.

After living in San Diego for three years I decided to go visit my family and friends back in Boston. While I was there I got to sit in and do some shows at WMFO. When I got back to San Diego I realized that if I didn't do radio soon I was going to be miserable. I Googled "San Diego pirate radio" and up came Free Radio San Diego and I knew I had found a new home. I put together a demo CD, sent it in and some months later I was back on air! A few months later I also joined RadioActive San Diego, an internet based radio station.

Well, that pretty much brings us up to date and not a moment too soon. I've got to figure out what song would segue well with Diamanda Galas' "Devil's Rodeo".