Thanks WTJU.net

 

Jumpin' on the Bed

When:	Saturday 16:00
Hosted by:	The Monster of Happiness & David Soyka (WTJU.net)
Categories:	Folk
	Playlist Archive

Tune in for two hours of musical mayhem as the Monster and David provide you with high-energy Americana to end your Saturday afternoon and start the evening off right. New releases, timely artist appearances and interviews are a staple. You'll hear a blend of rock, folk, country, blues and rockabilly to liven up your Saturday PM. Tune in and start jumpin'!



Casino Road, Kevin Gordon

(maybe play these while we catch up?)

 

So, it is Saturday late afternoon, and I am driving back to the Montpelier Races, to pick up staff members and gear after we catered a party for a large national bank that caters to *high net worth individuals*. Logistically, I had another job 40 miles away earlier, so I have about an hour on beautiful Virginia scenic by-way Route 20 North and I am tuned into WTJU.net, and hit this song...talking about swamp rocking down the road! 

 

Walking Shoes, Leftover Salmon

 

Followed by this....the stars came together gentle readers, outside of Ruckersville, Virginia...scenic by-way, rolling in a 2004 Chevy box truck, diggin 'Jumping on the Bed' on WTJU and an hour's drive of uninterrupted free time to rock out to it. Que bueno!

We never gonna break loose of these rock and roll ways

Ray Wylie Hubbard

 

 

I really became a radio guy when I was about 14 or 15. The radio station WGOE was an alternative to the top 40 stations of the early 1970's. It was my first introduction to blues, jazz, folk, hippie country and beyond. I remember being holed up in my basement room, when I should have been studying geometry, infatuated with the likes of John Lee Hooker, Merle Haggard, Vasser Clements and the later musicians they influenced.

 

I later went to a boarding school in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC where I could tune into the equally as educational and zany WHFS. The station made a policy of never playing a "hit" and broke with precedent by leaving the play lists strictly up to the DJs. Once in a while the DJs would, as a joke, throw in a Top 40 hit just to throw the listeners off. Sometimes, late at night, the DJ might announce "and now we'll repeat that for those of you on drugs" and immediately replay the last song. Of course, these stations were too original and too cool to last as a viable business; too cool to be forgotten as well.

 

Joel, *pop director* at WTJU, early 1970's

At nineteen, I moved to Charlottesville, and found WTJU.net, coolly and unprofessionally broadcasting out of some small dorm rooms within walking distance of my own dorm room. Sometimes we would take cases of beer and more down there late into the evening/early morning and the DJ would let *US* be the DJ. I often wondered, as we spun everything from Muddy Waters to Root Boy Slim, if anybody was listening. Years later, my roommate Jim 'the Earl' Dudley Go see Jim here, who in high school and college turned me onto all things swing/big band: Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and of course his idol Frank Sinatra, had his own show, The Earl's Wax. What was cool about WTJU was they let him play what he damn well wanted as long as it was good and he kept it real.

Unfortunately, decades later, critics would suggest that there were so few listeners that they could play a vacuum cleaner for 24 hours and no one would notice. But I noticed and I was either the only listener or part of a very discriminating club. Whether they made money or not, it meant a lot to me.

 

I have stayed with them up until, well today. The odd hours of food service has put me in vans at say 3:00 am on my way to a 8:00 am breakfast before a UVa. football game, having *The Crank of Dawn* keep me company. He would be talking the wildest naturalist stuff, almost utter stone communist stuff...the politics of seeds I distinctly remember. I later met the likeable Crank and queried whether he thought some mornings it was just me and him?

 During snowy Christmas Eve/Day deliveries, who else but WTJU would play William Burroughs' A Junkie's Christmas, with John Coltrane as back ground music?

Thank you WTJU for 36 years of great radio experiences! And I bid you adieu tonight, with my man, Lowell George, who is played and covered on WTJU extensively.





Lowell doing "Fat Man in the Bathtub', the Netherlands 1976
(Dave Matthews covered this song later in the Jumpin' on the Bed' show last Saturday...check out the playlist!)