Playing five favorites on WYEP
WYEP has kindly invited me to show up at the South Side studios Friday morning around 9 a.m. with my top five favorite songs I associate with the station.
This is not an easy task given WYEP's 35-year history.
I'm busy working on this list, which I quickly decided will not include any Indigo Girls songs.
It will include one homage to the late Harry "The Wire" Wagner, who started playing records on 'YEP in 1978 when he was only 18.
Harry is partly to blame for my career choice. We grew up in Stanton Heights and I was friends with his younger sister. He was an full-blown geek who would try to lure her friends down to the basement to play them records. I couldn't help but oblige, over the protests of his sister.
In the early to mid '70s, he turned me on to bands like Kiss, Blue Oyster Cult ("Secret Treaties") and Mott the Hoople, who all seemed dark and mysterious to me when I was 14, and it really opened up a new world of underground music.
By the time he got to YEP and into the clubs, Wagner made his legend for having his finger on the pulse of post-punk and New Wave.
So, gotta have a track from that era.
I'll add a rarity from Mr. Zimmerman, a vintage alt-country track and at least one song from a band in this century.