35000 Watts: The Podcast

In this episode, we continue our exploration of the first decade of MTV's 120 Minutes. This week, we are exploring the music of February 1987, featuring a couple of college radio classics and a "mystery" song that was brand-new to everyone.

In this episode, we begin our journey through the first decade of MTV's 120 Minutes, one of the only national television showcases for your favorite college radio artists. We start with January 1987, where we find a couple of all-time great artists in The The and O.M.D., along with a delightfully unknown-to-us band called Dumptruck.

We are wrapping up season 2 of the podcast with a more personal episode, where we have a chance to talk about our experiences in college radio. If we learned one thing in making the film, it is that everyone who worked in college radio has a similar, but yet also unique, story about how they came to be involved. Keith, Scott and Michael are no exception, so this week we'll explore the brief versio...

We know that many, many artists began their careers on college radio, but some artists made a bigger splash than others when they were first starting out. In this episode, we look at three of our favorite debut albums from artists who went on to become fixtures on college radio.

We had so many great cover tunes we wanted to talk about that we decided to do two episodes back-to-back just to try to squeeze in as many as we could. In this episode, we're digging a little deeper into the college radio catalog to highlight a couple of lesser-known artists, along with one of the mainstays of the format.

Some of the best cover tunes of all time were performed by college radio icons, and in this week's episode, we talk about three more of our favorites. The originals run the gamut from  obscure indie bands to titans of the music industry. 

We're back again with some of our favorite college radio one-hit wonders, and this time we're looking at two incredibly catchy pop gems along with one of the weirdest, funniest songs to ever hit the radio airwaves. Mild language warning for this one!

Was there ever an album that everyone around you seemed to adore but you just didn't quite get? Did you start to wonder if you were the only one who didn't love it? In this episode, Michael, Keith and Scott each choose an album to discuss that blew up on college radio but that they never fell in love with the way everyone else did. Feel free to roast us in the comments, we're ready for it. :) 

We finish off our series on our favorite rock documentaries with look back at a legendary band during the peak of their popularity, 1993's New Order Story. If you don't know the whole story the band or have never really known much about the individual band members (due to their reluctance to grant interviews), this is a great starting point to learn more about one of the most influential bands of...

We are continuing our discussion from last week about our favorite rock documentaries, and this week we are talking about Dig! from 2003. This is a story of two bands, The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre who are both dealing with the struggles of authenticity, "selling-out" and trying to be successful in the world of late 1990s indie rock. Let's just say they tend to go about it in...

We've been talking a lot about the music of college radio on the podcast, but given that 35000 Watts is a documentary, it seemed appropriate (and maybe overdue) to talk about our own personal favorite music documentaries. First up, we discuss the 1984 documentary Another State of Mind, which follows Youth Brigade and Social Distortion as they head out onto the road for their first tour. Along the...

In this episode, we revisit another early '90s album that made a big impact during our time in college radio: Smashing Pumpkins' breakthrough album, Siamese Dream. This album received heavy rotation on the college radio airwaves before breaking big into the mainstream. Does it still hold up over 30 years later? 

Have you ever loved an album but wondered if maybe you were the only one? In this episode, we take a look at three albums that blew us away but didn't seem to make a huge impact on anyone else. 

Many of us had our musical tastes and preferences shaped heavily by our time in college radio. But a lot of us continued to work as DJs in clubs, commercial radio or online streaming, which led to discovering a lot more new music after leaving the college radio booth. In this episode, Michael, Scott and Keith each choose a band they would have played in heavy rotation had they been around during t...

Have you ever heard a fantastic album from a band you had written off because of their previous work? Michael, Keith and Scott have, and in this episode, they do a deeper dive on three albums that took them completely by surprise.

We are back again with one our favorite topics, college radio one-hit wonders! In this episode, Michael, Keith and Scott choose a few of their favorites from their time in college radio, including a few classics and a smash hit at KTXT and beyond from our friends, Hagfish (our panel's unanimous vote for "band who should have been much bigger"). Available now on our website or your favorite podcast...

How do you start up a college radio station from scratch? That is one of the big questions Lisa has for our guest for this episode, Michael Sanderfer of WLJS.

Easily one of the most-played "modern rock" albums of the 1990s, Live's Throwing Copper isn't often spoken of in the same reverent tones as other classic albums from the same decade like Nevermind or Ten. In this episode, Michael, Keith and Scott revisit the album thirty years after the peak of its popularity to find out if it deserves a spot in the pantheon of great 90s albums.

If you've seen our film, 35000 Watts, you've been briefly introduced to our guest when our friend Arvell Poe talks about being paired with "a white guy named Spenser". It was only a matter of time before we had to meet Spenser ourselves, and we're glad we did. Dr. Spenser Simrill Jr. is an award-winning writer, producer, educator, and TEDx speaker with amazing stories to tell. In this episode, we...

While college radio is filled with new and innovative music, it has also featured some fantastic covers of both classic tunes and lesser-known gems. In this episode, we kick off season 2 with Michael, Keith and Scott talking about some of their favorite cover tunes from their time in college radio. 

You can't really have a college radio-focused podcast and not have an entire episode devoted to R.E.M., can you? We think not. In the final episode of Season 1, Michael, Keith and Scott discuss the three eras of the quintessential college radio band.

You've heard of "Desert Island Discs" right? It's the game/thought experiment where you have to pick five (or ten) albums you'd take with you if you knew you were going to be stranded on a desert island. Well, we've come up with "Alien Abduction Albums". It's the same idea but the twist is that the aliens are abducting you at a particular place and time, and you can only choose albums you can grab...

If you want a shorthand way to explain the death of hair metal and the rise of grunge (and "alternative") music in the early '90s, you simply have to say "Nirvana" and even casual music fans know what you mean. But is that really an accurate description of the massive changes that took place in the music world at that time? In this episode,  Michael, Keith and Scott debate whether Nirvana gets too...

In this episode, we take another look at artists who had one big song take the world of college radio by storm, only to drop off the radar afterwards. 

In this episode, we reconnect with Arvell Poe, an alumni of WUOG and currently the host of The INDIE Show. Arvell is featured in 35000 Watts: The Story of College Radio, and there were so many interesting stories that didn't make it into the film, we knew we had to sit down with him again for the podcast. Tune in and listen as we dive deeper into Arvell's personal history with college radio and br...