Catalina Gallagher '16 and Maya Reyes '16

DJ of the Week: Tom Roberts-McMichael ’14

Tell me a little bit about your involvement with WBOR.I’m a music director on management. I’ve been a DJ since the beggining of sophomore year and music director since the middle of sophomore year. I’ve had one show for a long time with a co-DJ, Jay Priyadarshan ’14, and I’ve had my own show for a couple years now.What does a music director do?I get new music from anyone who wants to be played on College radio, and I do little reviews for our DJs to show them what they might want to play on their show.What’s your show called?My solo show name is Thomder and Lightening. The show I have with Jay is “The Lazy Zoo with Tom and Jay.”How did you get involved with WBOR?I wanted to do a show all freshman year but I was a little indecisive about it, I didn’t feel like I had a lot to contribute. Sophomore year I was like, “Let’s do it,” and I got a show with Jay. Immediately after that, I started meeting management and they needed a music director, so I applied sophomore year.What kind of music do you play?So, genres are hard, as I’m sure you know. The college music journal is the way we chart a lot of our music. By their classifications I play rock, loud rock, RPM, world, and hip-hop. I’m definitely on the garage-y, soft-rock side.How do you come up with music to play on air? Is there an art to arranging songs?Often it’s what I want, although I’ve been getting better at starting with something softer and more widely known, and then I can move into a more specialized zone. My M.O. is to play stuff that’s just coming out or being charted—very new albums—because it’s good to showcase those artists and there’s some novelty there.What was appealing about getting a show?The classical appeal is you get to play your own music and people have to listen to it. You get to monologue and talk about what you care about. Like, sophomore year Occupy Wall Street was going on so I got to talk about that on my show. It’s a direct relationship with the community, more direct than I think a lot of the systems we have at Bowdoin are. How do you interact with the community?This is one of the bigger radio stations around that people listen to, so you have to cater to their tastes. People call in to my show. And we have a lot of community members who are DJs.What would you like to do with your platform on WBOR?When we talk, Jay tries to make jokes on the air. I try to mention things that are important to people. I prefer issues outside of the Bowdoin community because I think the majority—or at least our more permanent—listeners want to hear about that. I’ll let the other DJs cater to the Bowdoin issues.Now the fun questions: What’s your guilty pleasure song?“Gas Pedal”…I definitely like that song and I definitely feel guilty for that. Although maybe I shouldn’t feel guilty about my pleasures.Who sings that song?I don’t know. That’s part of why I’m guilty.What about a song you couldn’t live without?Tame Impala—“Half Full Glass of Wine.”What makes it so special?It’s so simple, but it’s everything I like. It’s drone-y, melodic. The song makes you familiar with itself.Does that song pretty well represent your taste in music?I think so, yeah.What’s the song that’s had the biggest impact on you and your taste in music?This takes me way back to high school, because that’s when I started getting in to stuff that I listen to now. I’ll go with “Street Spirit” by Radiohead.What is one thing about your taste in music that you don’t think people could guess based on what you play on WBOR?I feel like I do bare myself on my show. Maybe I don’t show enough about what I dislike. Maybe I could play a song and say, “I don’t like that because of x, y and z.” At the same time I’m sure people think I’m kind of pretentious based on what I’m playing, so maybe I should assert that I’m not.So, what are you working on at WBOR now?We want to do certain programming slots. We want no more dubstep on Sunday mornings, or talk shows in the afternoon when people will be driving around.Anything else you want people to know about WBOR?I want people to know that for campus clubs and organizations, if they want to do something on the air, we’re totally open to that.
Tell me a little bit about your involvement with WBOR.I’m a music director on management. I’ve been a DJ since the beggining of sophomore year and music director since the middle of sophomore year. I’ve had one show for a long time with a co-DJ, Jay Priyadarshan ’14, and I’ve had my own show for a couple years now.
What does a music director do?I get new music from anyone who wants to be played on College radio, and I do little reviews for our DJs to show them what they might want to play on their show.
What’s your show called?My solo show name is Thomder and Lightening. The show I have with Jay is “The Lazy Zoo with Tom and Jay.”

DJ of the Week: Haley Miller ’16

Tune in to “Haley’s Comment” with Miller every Sunday from noon to 1 p.m. on WBOR 91.1 FM or stream it online at wbor.org.

When did you decide you wanted to DJ?It was my first semester. There was a really great radio station back home that did classic rock, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find a radio station I liked here that played the music I was into. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to be on the other side of the mic! If I can’t find classic rock then I’ll bring classic rock to Maine!”
What’s your show called?Haley’s Comment. It’s a play on Halley’s Comet, but also a play on Bill Haley & His Comets, which was one of the first bands to make the transition between blues and rock as we know it today.
What kind of music do you play?Classic rock. So I do everything starting with The Beatles in the ’60s to U2 in the ’90s. A lot of Springsteen, a lot of Queen. I’m getting into Electric Light Orchestra because they have the same way of fusing genres that Queen has. A lot of Styx, a lot of The Eagles. Is the ’90s the cutoff point for you in defining classic rock?That’s actually something I explore in my show, “What actually is this genre?” Whenever you have periods, there’s no defined lines, because classic rock is very much influencing what we hear today. For example, Jimi Hendrix had this really interesting singing-speaking way of going about how he performed, and I think that really influenced the rap we have today. There’s also the technology developing during this time. What Jimi and Queen were doing—the layering—you hear that a lot now. And they were only using four tracks.
How do you come up with music to play on air? Is there an art to arranging songs?I try to have a theme for each show. Sometimes my theme is just “I’m going to play awesome music.” I try to balance out faster stuff with softer stuff, and I try to balance out more well-known tunes with more obscure stuff you don’t hear all the time.
What are examples of some themes you have done?This week, I’m doing Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because the induction ceremony is soon, so I’m going to be playing some of the music of the inductees this year. Some of my other favorite themes are Styx and Stones, Women in Rock, and Southern Rock. My first show of every semester is dedicated to exploring what classic rock is and how we categorize music.
How is your show structured?I get on, I introduce my theme, and then I play music and either before or after I’ll have comments.
How do you want people to feel after listening to your show?I’m really hoping to expose people to different ways of thinking about this music to give them bits of facts that they can hold on to and appreciate what was going on with the history and the performers and these songs.
I also want to bring up these forgotten treasures that are in these artists’ repertoires, artists who have been performing for decades. You always hear the same songs from Bruce Springsteen, but my favorite album of his is one that you never hear on the radio.
This semester especially I’ve also been trying to take advantage of the turntable that we have in the studio and play at least one song each show that is on a vinyl.
The digitization of music at times negatively affects how we experience songs. When sound files are compressed, the music loses a lot of depth; dynamics are lost, the low sounds don’t come through as well, it does not feel like the singers are in the room with you.
With this older medium of vinyl comes a much richer listening experience and it’s this sort of listening experience that I want to expose my audience to.
If you got to pick your own theme song, what would it be?“Rock and Roll is King” by Electric Light Orchestra: “She loves that rock ‘n roll and she plays it all night long/it’s all she ever tells me when I call her on the telephone.”
What’s the song that’s had the biggest impact on you and your taste in music?It was actually two albums: “The Rising” by Bruce Springsteen and “Looking Forward” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The person who really inspired me to get into this genre of music is my dad, and those are the two CDs that were playing in our car when I was seven.
What’s something you think most people don’t know about you?I have the most diverse taste in music. My favorite band is Queen, but my second favorite band is this German gothic rock band. I also really enjoy Tuvan throat singing and Mongolian overtone singing. And my favorite female singer is a 1920s pop-jazz singer named Annette Hanshaw. She was really popular in her day and she’s just another one of those gems that’s fallen through the cracks of time.

DJ of the Week

Catalina Gallagher '16 and Maya Reyes '16

February 21, 2014

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When did you first get involved with WBOR and why?
Gallagher: We got involved first semester freshman year and both got on a radio show together.
Reyes: It just seemed like a fun thing to do, and we both like music a lot. We kept doing it because it was fun, especially together, but we actually had separate shows last semester.
Gallagher: But the gang’s back together again!
Reyes: We needed a break from each other.
Gallagher: But we’ve learned to truly appreciate each other.

What type of music do you play?
Gallagher: I have a lot of friends from the Internet that make music, so with our last show we played a lot of independent stuff from, for example, Bandcamps.
Reyes: Besides that, we play a pretty mixed bag. It’ll be early 2000s hip-hop and then recent indie pop as well, just whatever we like and seems fun.

Who is your target audience?
Galllagher: In a certain sense, friends. Either friends that don’t go here or ones online. We play popular music as well as some obscure [music], so people who are open to that would be our target audience.
Reyes: Anyone with a good sense of humor and who likes music.

What is your favorite type of music?
Gallagher: The National, which is a mellow alternative rock group, but I also like hip-hop. I really go through phases.
Reyes: I would say ’80s synth pop.

How do you incorporate humor into your show?
Reyes: We have an intro theme.
Gallagher: Yeah we have an intro theme with clips from movies in it. I remember our first semester—we didn’t talk very much on our show and now we try to do some riffing. We interviewed someone last week about sports.
Reyes: Yeah, but we ended up just asking them about things like if Justin Bieber were a sport, what sport he would be.
Gallagher: Also, the name of our show [“Sport Center”] is our way of connecting to Bowdoin’s jock culture.

What is the best music to study to?
Reyes: I would say piano music.
Gallagher: I try to listen to music I like, but it gets me distracted. I like post-rock, like Explosions in The Sky, a band with ambient guitar sounds.

What is the goal of your show?
Gallagher: We want teams to reschedule their practices to 12:30 a.m. on Fridays just so they can listen to our music. We also want 300 Facebook likes…we’re at 54 now.

What is the most profound concert experience you have had?
Gallagher: I went to a concert last spring of my favorite band at the time called Why? It was really good. It’s really fun for me when I know the songs well and I can sing along. Also, I was right at the front and it was a small venue.
Reyes: I would say my first concert, which was Bright Eyes. I was 16 years old and it was at Radio City. They are still one of my favorite bands and I think their music is fun to dance to and deeply emotional at times.

If you two were in a band together, what would be the name of it?
Reyes: “The Young Hegelians”—credit to Professor Beckett.

What do you think people are doing when listening to your show?
Gallagher: Hopefully lifting weights.
Reyes: I hope people are doing anything sports related.

What song never gets old for you?
Gallagher: “Timber.” It hasn’t gotten old yet. Also, “Dip It Low” by Christina Milian because it brings back good memories.
Reyes: “Jessica” by Major Lazer.

Who is your biggest music inspiration and why?
Gallagher: I would say Beyoncé; she’s great. She puts out such good songs and she is getting political too.
Reyes: Joe Strummer from The Clash. I think punk music is inspirational because it is political in nature, and he is an amazing lyricist and musician.

Is there anything else you want people to know about your show?
Gallagher: If you listen, you’ll win the sports championship.
Reyes: If you’re not listening to “Sport Center,” you’re losing the game.

Tune in to “Sport Center” with Reyes and Gallagher every Friday from 12:30 to 1:30 a.m. on WBOR 91.1 FM or stream online at wbor.org.

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