High Masculine Tones

About ten years ago I remember reading Neil Strauss's awe-inspiring anthology Radiotext(e) with a palpable sense of longing... somewhere, beyond the reach of my radio antenna in Saskatoon there were unimaginably cool aural epics being transmitted into the ether. It seemed unimaginably remote and exotic to a culturally-deprived prairie boy. Winding my way up and down the dial with increasing frustration, I fantasized about some sort of magical delivery mechanism that could connect me to these broadcasts, which were not only impossible to pick up, but often in the distant past as well.

Of course, the Internet has more or less developed into that mechanism. References to the freeform station WFMU were sprinkled throughout the book, and I hoped I might hear the station myself someday. Now I listen to it at home and at work, and though I have never been to East Orange, New Jersey, I feel somehow part of a listener community that extends far beyond radio range.

One piece in the anthology I recall laughing at was a transcript of WFMU DJ the Vanilla Bean engaged in phone sex while posing as an Elvis Presley freak. I marvelled that such a thing could ever happen on the radio. Today, Matthew Perpetua's Fluxblog posts an MP3 of the original exchange. Talk about hitting close to home. It'd be a lie to say that I laughed as hard listening to the clip as I did reading (and dreaming) about it a decade ago, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

BTW, I don't know where my copy of Radiotext(e) has gotten to. Did I lend it to you?