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Every Thursday, from 10 am to 12 pm, I've got a little block of air time that I use to inflate my ego and spout off erratically. It's called The Square Dance, and it's an ever-mutating radio show that's probably of little interest to anyone really because, as we all know, radio is dead. The Internets and the airwaves got in a fight behind the cafeteria not too long ago and when the elementary school brawl concluded, radio took enough shots on the nose to realize that it's no longer the top dog. Bully be black-eyed.

That's fine, though. The elements of radio, as proved by this site and others like it, will live on, transistors and receptors be damned. And fortunate for me, my little chunk of airwaves has not only found itself imported into the Internet atmosphere, here on this net be about the only place you'll be able to hear it [check it out at www.kssu.com]. We've got three watts of power here at our little station; here’s looking at you, 'netkids.

The Square Dance is justly named, even if the phrase did gush to my brain on no purely premeditated whim. Quite honestly, I'm a bit of square. You know, unhip, a flake, Charlie's sucka boy, a Grade-A doofus with a gerky* stare. Even to make some conceit that I'm hip to music, that I "know" music, that's a stretch; what I know is pretty relative. That's at least readily apparent from this web site itself. We've all probably felt, after scanning our neighbor with 100,000 plays or reading the journal of some 16-year-old ethnomusicologist, a little inadequate. Of course, it's partly a bit of modesty, too. After all, we probably wouldn't be here if we didn't have some extended knowledge on the subject, or at least a deep passion for music in general. Let's just say when it comes to music, I've been around the block a couple times, liked the neighborhood, rented a flat. And now I've set up shop.

My point is that I've still a lot to learn, but I've also got a bit to share. And so here we are. The Square Dance.

Being the borderline obsessive that I am, I've decided to journalize each show starting with today's episode. I tried this last semester and ultimately failed; for those keeping score at home: laziness 1, Sleepy Paul 0. This time, I'm feeling slightly more dedicated, or perhaps somewhat less stressed over the multitude of events that make up that pesky abstract we call life.

The order of the day this Thursday morning was electronic pop stuffs, an urge brought on by experiencing Junior Boys live, throng-pressed in the sardine can that was The Bottom of the Hill just two nights ago in San Francisco. In all honesty, my knowledge of electronic music in general is pretty abysmal; only within the last year have I taken to it broadly, experiencing the favorable surge it's received over the course of the year via critical and hipster banner-waving, not to mention personal exploration of the body as a whole. Gotta love them digitized curves though, right?

So I approached today's show with a little reserve and caution, slopping out some somewhat obvious cuts including a pair of JB cuts, not to mention tunes from Herbert's Scale and The Knife's Silent Shout. But I also found time to jerk out some more recent stuff, like "Tough Kid" from Honeycut's The Day I Turned to Glass, a juicy little piece of electro-drizzled funk released through moleman hip-hop collective extension, Quannum Projects. The tune just has that perfect touch of Shuggie Otis influence, right. And then there was "Arp She Said," a beautifully infectious Lindstrom tune from his forthcoming It's a Feedelity Affair. Lindstrom's amiable disco-retro production style seems like just a vocalist from top-40 stardom, but in any situation, the polyrhythmic groove would stand just as strong.

I even found some time to revisit a good'un from last year (albeit remixed for this year), Thievery Corporation's collaboration with David Byrne, "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter," one of a bunch of remixes from the record label ESL. They must have found some room in the mix for a couple Talking Heads samples, because I don't recall those bits of Remain in Light in the original... maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention the first time around.

After winding down the first hour with "Velvet," a tune from International Pony's Mit Dir Sind Wir Vier, which was released earlier this month I think, I took the goat by the balls and went off course. Given that this year I have 2 hours to spend on air (an undue privilege, really) the prospect of planning a show has become much more difficult especially, once again, considering my obsessive nature. I hate to come in too planned, because if I do that, then I get all antsy when, inevitably, I screw up. And I hate to go completely unplanned because, well, yeah. Would you punch a president without a route to escape the secret service?

I thought not.

Anyway, I decided my escape route was to play Pharoah Sanders' epic "Creator Has a Master Plan" in entirety. For those unfamiliar with the tune, it’s a half hour of rapturous sound, hard as hell to simply consume, let alone understand, in a single sitting, but as fine a piece of jazz as I can think of, though I'm no jazz historian; it's another genre that I'd hardly claim any expertise in. Mostly, I fell in love with composition as a temporally-synched soundtrack to my commute. The beauty of our station is that everything is free-form, so I tried to play off the decision to throw it on as improvisation on my part. Truthfully, I had it with me for this express purpose. Baby, it's been a long week. I'm tired. We can fuck if you like and I'll be into it, but you're on top.

So after a shortened 2 hours, sleeplessly and sheepishly, I stumbled out of the station ahead of schedule, the good Pharoah's rich tones still rattling in my attic. I found a nice pad of grass to rest me weary head and thought of Ice Cube. Indeed, "Today was a good day."

-Sleepy Paul

*Gerky [Ger-kee]
-adj.
1. Characterized geeky tendencies, accentuated by a jerky, nervous tic.
"Todd's movements had a gerky quality to them; one couldn't help but notice the way he peeled through the pages of Craig Thompson's Blankets with jumpy energy."