Caroline Klibanoff

This is what you do in sixth grade with your friends at the mall on a Friday night in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

You go to Spencer’s Gifts and look but never buy and wonder if you’re allowed to be there, among the grotesque and fantastic. You buy a ticket for the PG movie, Ice Age, and sneak into the theater for The Panic Room since you’re still twelve and wholesome and even-keeled at heart, but starting to nurse a healthy budding discontent. You take your sweater off in the murky fluorescent light of the empty food court because NO RULES and NO PARENTS and spaghetti strap tank tops are in. You slink into F.Y.E, the record store that no longer exists and which stood for For Your Entertainment, and flip through the CD racks, the muted smack of plastic on plastic, while someone tries to buy The Eminem Show but is thwarted by a Parental Adivsory sticker and a bored, dreadlocked cashier looking to enforce the law. Read More »

The lack of attention on this blog to Lana Del Rey‘s music is not an oversight as much as it is an overwhelming inability to put into words what stirs so strongly everything that I love, have loved, and will always love about art.[1] But with yesterday’s release of her latest video, “Born to Die,”one of the smartest and most emotive works I have witnessed this year, her value as an art-ist, that rare operator able to move between mediums and messages to edge closer and closer to the god-honest truth – and to the edge itself – becomes crystal clear.

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After the Homecoming tailgate on Saturday, a very special event took place in Bulldog Alley– AlumLive, the first reunion of WGTB DJs from throughout the station’s history. DJs from the 1960s to the present took the stage to share powerful stories of their time at WGTB and what it meant to them. Along the back wall, an exhibit displayed our huge collection of archives, including original FCC licenses, internal memos regarding the station shut-down, and playlists from different decades. I think I speak for everyone that attended when I say it was a very meaningful and moving atmosphere, bringing our WGTB community closer even across generations, celebrating our common experience. In case you missed it, here is a video recap of the stories they shared and a slideshow of pictures to catch you up.

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Dear WGTB fans, friends, staff, neighbors, innocent bystanders:

This summer I’ve been cleaning out the station’s upstairs office in the Leavey center, and in between throwing out old pieces of chicken nuggets and obscure 90′s pop singles, I have stumbled across a small gold mine of WGTB archives, which I intend to bring to life (bring to the Internet) in the hopes of exploring WGTB’s luminous past. This station has had an exciting, cutting-edge, and oft-contested existence, and there are some great stories within these papers. To catch up on the basic back-story, read our history. In the meantime, you can see the first installment of From The Vaults below. If you are a former WGTBer or neighbor with anecdotes to share, or are interested in contributing or have any information that might be of interest, please email me at gm@georgetownradio.com — I’d love to hear from you.

Caroline Klibanoff
General Manager

Now, let’s begin at the beginning, with the story of WGTB’s launch by Fr. Francis J. Heyden in 1946.

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Raise a toast to saint Joe Strummer
I think he might have been our only decent teacher
getting older only makes it harder to remember
we are our only saviors
The Hold Steady, “Constructive Summer”

Another summer day, another birthday of note. So far we’ve seen the voice of a generation, the bluesman that started it all, and even the roots of lyrical poetry. But today we celebrate the would-be 59th birthday of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most influential badasses, an A-list rebel, and a link to almost every other modern rocker: Joe Strummer, frontman for The Clash. Read More »

More like exercist stairs, am I right?

We proposed another Music From Big Chair session to the Portland-based punky-folk rockers The Ascetic Junkies, but the band had another locale in mind: Georgetown’s famed exorcist stairs, so-called because of the scene in the 1973 horror flick The Exorcist. If you’re from the area, you’ve definitely seen it, 70′s film effects and all; Georgetown hosts a showing every Halloween in Gaston Hall. But in recent years the stairs have been better known for the quad-burning workout they offer (we caught some of these dedicated athletes in the video – thanks folks!) Read More »

You may remember our dear friend and DC local musician Long Walks on the Beach, who has played our stage and who has played on our station many many times and who has no doubt played on repeat in your head, in your heart, in the deep recesses of your mind as you’re falling asleep, all thumping bass drums and jingle-jangling guitars, filling the empty dark room, building slowly from a beat, with smooth, even-keeled vocals: slow jam on a Saturday night.

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The Georgetown music scene may be small, but it is intricately linked (partly due to the Guild of Bands), allowing for a lot of malleable band lineups and creative collaborations and all-around good times, good times which in turn lead to beautiful, inspired music that thrives on its extremely varied sources. The Shaking Hand is one of these groups, made up of two Georgetown alums and friends of WGTB, Matt Strom and Ezra Finney.

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