WOBC Fall Preview

If you are like one of the 125 lucky recipients of a radio show on 91.5 FM WOBC, Oberlin Community and College Radio, congratulations! You can now put your hundreds upon hundreds of gigabytes of virtually unknown music to use, serenading friends, families, professors, stalkers, and mysterious international listeners 24 hours a day, seven days a week!

As the second largest student organization on campus, WOBC is a medium through which Oberlin students and community members can express themselves through whatever brand of strange music they’re into. Shows on WOBC really do run the full musical gamut. Everything from rock/pop to classical, from electronic to jazz, from metal to freeform…it’s all on the air, helping to make WOBC Princeton Review’s #6 college radio station.

This year in particular marks a few milestones for WOBC. Two of our staffers have started working with a newly added genre – R&B and soul, which has inspired a certain degree of divergence from old trends in programming, adding more from this genre to the mix. Programming Director Matt Friberg also commented that he has been surprised by the amount of shows focusing on blues this year in particular.

Fluctuations in programming like this could be due, in part, to the many eager first-year DJs. Although much of the selection process for shows is based on seniority within WOBC and past commitment to the station, the first-years play an important role, helping to make the station one of the few smaller college radio stations able to broadcast at all hours. So when you hear your roommate’s alarm going off for their show at 4 AM, roll over and go back to sleep, thinking of how noble they are in their efforts to play music for anyone who happens to want a radio fix in the middle of the night. Yes, children, there are people listening. In fact, I once got a call-in request for Depeche Mode at 5 AM.

This year, a main goal for the station is to “broaden exposure,” Friberg informed me, “so it’s not just DJs in a booth anymore. We want to interact and engage with the college and community.” One of the different ways WOBC plans on branching out is through WOBC nights at the ‘Sco. These will feature station DJs playing some of their favorite music on Friday nights once or twice a month, the first of these being Friday, October 3rd with R&B and soul night. Another exciting development is Studio B, which is a fully functioning space for bands to record reel-to-reels, perform live on air, and for WOBC DJs to interview speakers or bands that are stopping through.

Some of the most innovative and unique shows come from Oberlin community members. This year, on a show called “Heist School Musical” (Saturdays, 10 AM – noon), an Oberlin High School class plays some of their favorites, the tag line being, “We're gonna take WOBC back from all you college punks, and bring it to some high school-aged lovers of radio. We've listened to your shows for a long time now, so hear what we've got to say.” The Oberlin Unitarian Universalist Fellowship also has a show. This talk show, entitled “Connections” (Thursdays, 10-11 AM) brings in members of the fellowship as well as professors and other community members to “explore issues of local and global consequence in our post-modern world.” Another interesting addition this year is “Spirals of Everlasting Change” (Thursdays, 2-4 AM), which is a freeform show focusing on the roots of experimental and industrial music brought to us by Chang, who was involved with seminal 70s noise music, having been in an important noise group called Non. And these are just three of the approximately 125 shows you could tune into.

In order to get shows, students and community members have to propose a cohesive idea. This could be something enthralling that could bridge the gap between genres and make something avant garde or under-the-radar a little more accessible, something that throws you back in time, something thought-provoking, or maybe even something a little silly. Despite some common stigmas about the station, WOBC is not necessary a pretentious institution. As Friberg put it, “To be pretentious is not the goal of the WOBC DJ. To have the attitude that ‘Oh, I win. I’ve heard this song before and you haven’t’ is not the intent. You’ll hear a lot of pop shows that aren’t what you’re going to hear on top 40 radio. It’s a learning experience.”

So listen to your friends’ shows, wake up to some new music, or turn on the radio while you’re trying to finish up that essay late at night. Who knows, if you listen enough, you could maybe even start figuring out your friends’ Shakespeer nicknames. You can listen at 91.5 FM, or from the webcast at www.wobc.org.