First Moment of Home Sicked

I subscribe to the internet radio service "Live365." After arriving on these foreign shores my internet hours have exploded, and REPOSE has come from this musical smorgasboard. The revelation has been discovering a live feed from KSPC, the renowned broadcaster from the Inland Empire's very own Claremont Colleges. This is one of the very few stations that can claim the distinction of having broadcast Exit House, a lo-fi band of startling obscurity which counted me as a sort of singer.

With Halloween coming, I am especially keen to listen (and record, where possible, via CD Spin Doctor from Toast 7), as many Halloween-themed shows as possible. It is a very juvenile preoccupation, picked up as a kid listening to Dr. Demento. I still listen to tapes I made from the long defunct KMET when I was 12 or 13--over twenty years ago, my friends.

I am recording a KSPC show tonight, awake past bedtime with my hands on the controls, capturing the best bits from Randy Brian's great "Forward into the Past," a show I used to listen to (and record!) in 1987. The show is just what you'd expect, lots of songs from the 30's to early 50's, with a few half-hour old-time radio shows thrown in, too. There aren't really commercials, but every hour or so the DJ takes a minute to announce some community happening or other. This hour's bit was an announcement that next Saturday there was going to be a special W.W.II warplane lecture and demonstation at the Chino Airport (yes, we have one), and for a minute, not remembering where I was, I became flooded with enthusiasm, "Oh, man, we should go! It's not that far, it's just, it's just..18 hours or so, by jet."

Not really homesickness, but smacked by the realization, "I am far, far from what used to be home."