I were on the radio

So there’s a “Trinity FM” society in college, which I joined, along with a friend of mine, let’s call him Joseph, for that is his name.

Four (I think) of the big colleges in Ireland share a radio frequency, so basically, every month, Trinity FM has a week slot on the radio. An email went around recently asking people to submit applications to do their own show.

Of course, Joseph and I procrastinated and ended up submitting our application two days later than the deadline. We also never attended the training things to show us how to use the equipment. And neither of us had done anything like this before.

We were given the opening hour slot, 9-10am on Tuesday morning (Monday being a bank holiday). Someone else had this originally, but had to cancel.

Naturally we did nothing until Monday night, when Joseph came around to my house to try prepare something for the show. We ate pizza, picked a few songs for the playlist, went to tesco, and had crisp sandwiches, and were left with a sheet of “planning” that was just a load of doodles. It was so pathetic looking that it was funny.

The following morning comes, and we’re on the bus trying to convince ourselves we’ll be fine.

“We’ll be grand, we’ll have plenty to talk about, sure it’ll just be like us hanging out normally, except broadcast over all of Dublin. Feck it, nobody’ll be listening anyway”

We got in early and were quickly taught how to use equipment, it wasn’t too complicated.

We decided to be open about how unprepared we were, and generally take the piss out of ourselves. It actually went really well! Conversation flowed very naturally, and we had a really good laugh. Also, the songs we played were damn good. I was really happy with the playlist.

The few reactions we got were all very positive, and I felt really pleased with how it went. After the show I was actually disappointed that I hadn’t told anyone about it beforehand (I figured that with no planning, we could end up failing miserably).

The radio frequency is 97.3, for anyone who wants to listen to other student radio shows.

Hopefully we’ll do another show next time that I’ll mention on here in advance. We wanted to get a recording of the show, but didn’t manage it, but if one turns up (from the station or whatever) I’ll upload it here.

Here’s the playlist of the show.

1. Be Prepared - Shellac
2. Good Woman - Cat Power
3. Waiting Room - Fugazi
4. Sexy Boy - Shawn Michaels (this was for the lulz)
5. I’m Housin’ - Rage Against The Machine
6. Flume (new version) - Bon Iver
7. Kids Will Be Skeletons - Mogwai

We had more songs on the playlist, but ended up talking more than we thought we’d be able to, so had to cut some off - a very good sign in my book.

I spoke to the guy who was following us with his own show.

“Done anything like this before mate?” (I was expecting him to say no)

“Yeah. I used to work for the BBC”

“Oh.”

Overall though, I’m really happy I did the show (we toyed with the idea of just not showing up - it was early and we were hideously unprepared), and I’m looking forward to doing something like that again.

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