History time: I’ve been on the air since 2002, when I joined forces with Ryan Weber for a show called Live From Studio A, where live bands would be invited into the studio, and we’d put ‘em on the air and on Tiger TV, Trinity’s on-canpus network. In fact, I think it all started when a band called Slowreader, featuring former members of my High School favorites The Impossibles was in the studio, and I came running up campus to catch them live, and was promptly invited to participate in the production of the show.

Within a year or so, I took the reins and became both production engineer and live host for Live from Studio A, a post I retained until 2005. In the summer of that year, Ryan Weber invited me to host a proper show on Wednesday (Or was it Monday? Maybe Thursday?) night, which I decided to call The Distance for reasons you can read all about here. In 2006, my girlfriend who was also a DJ at the station returned and got back on the air. Soon I moved to the coveted Friday Night slot, and she found herself on the same night, immediately before my show. For a glorious year, The Lineup/The Distance was an unbeatable combination of edgy jazz and the tunes you know and love from this show.

She has since moved on to study at Yale, where I will be joining her shortly (like, next week shortly). The Lineup lives on, with an excellent host and I urge you to listen if you never have (along with Sweet Beats before that and Music For Listeners after this show), but the future of The Distance is uncertain. Perhaps it will endure with another talented DJ, perhaps it will be replaced a completely new and wonderful concept. All I can tell you stay tuned to KRTU. You won’t be disappointed.

Thank you all for listening, calling in, and telling your friends. It’s been my heartfelt pleasure to serve San Antonio for these 8 years, and it’s incredibly difficult to let go. I wish you all the best. Stay cool, and keep the rock alive. Forever.

Here’s the last show:

Background Tunes: Medeski Martin & Wood – End Of The World Party (Just In Case)

Background Tunes: Four Across – Four Across

Simply put, the vocoder and its ilk all allow a musician to take a recording of the human voice, turn it into an electronic signal, and alter its pitch, multiply it into several different pitches, distort it, tweak its waveform, and altogether make it sound very little like the tone emanating from the original signer’s vocal chords.

Wendy Carlos used the vocoder to create the dystopian futurist neoclassical soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Electric Light Orchestra, Pink Floyd, The Alan Parsons Project, and Styx made famous use of vocoder technologies in the 70s and 80s, with tunes like Mr. Blue Sky and Mr. Roboto, (did they all start with mr? I wonder…). And of course, the grandaddy of electronic music Kraftwerk used the vocoder prolifically. Wikipedia’s page on the technology, in fact, features a photograph of Kraftwerk’s custom-made vocoder.

Then there’s Frampton and his talking guitar, but we won’t go there. Not tonight, at least.

Now we’re on the heels of the era of Auto-tune, a related technology originally used to find oil and natural gas deep in the earth, now used to disguise Kanye’s awful singing voice and transform it into something we all once reacted to with bobbing heads and the unison intonement: coooooooooooooool.

Then it became just too much and nobody wanted to tune into the Hip Hop or pop stations anymore on account of all the singing robots.

Neverthless, in the world of indie and electronic music, artists have historically and contemporarily used all of these technologies to stunning and transcendent effect. Tonight’s show features some of those tunes. Some are popular, some are quite obscure. All will make you bob your head and utter:

CoooooOOOOOoooooººººººooooOOOOOOL! *

*textual vocoding

Background Tunes: Charle Hunter Trio – Mistico

This show got its name four years ago when my girlfriend was studying abroad in France for a semester. We had been together for less than a year, but it was pretty clear at that point this she was for real, and we were for real and it was all for real. So the whole affair was pretty heartbreaking, hence the show bore the name “The Distance,” as it was pretty clearly my weekly escape into music… a little therapy from the loneliness. Since I couldn’t be with her, I’d shut myself alone into a dimly lit, softly humming radio booth and immerse myself in music. Just me and the sound waves filling the small space.

Now, four years later, I find myself in the very same position. Away from her once more while she’s off studying in New England. And away from my family up in the the great white northern midwest. And away from my friends spread across Texas, everywhere but this town. It’s just me and the dog, and the sounds coming out of my radio. And so this show serves its purpose once again – immersion therapy for physical distance. If you can’t be with those you love, I say take some time each week to find that space deep inside the part of yourself that contains that love. Behind the loneliness and the distance and the isolation lies that warm cavern inside all of us.

We all have someone or something we must hold at a distance, loving intensely from afar. If you dwell on the separation you will drive yourself into a very bleak corner indeed. But if you can focus that energy into the passion, the power, and (let’s just go full emo here) the love behind it all, you might find a fullness and a satisfaction knowing that 1,900 miles is but a fraction of an inch for a soul. That the people you love and who love you will always be connected to you, where it counts. That no amount of physical distance will separate you… not completely.

There’s deep solace there.

Thus, this show is dedicated not to the sorrow or the pain that comes with The Distance in our lives (as it once may have been), it is dedicated rather to the bonds that bridge that Distance so seamlessly and mysteriously. To the wordless connections in our lives.

To the love that transcends all.

Background Tunes: Stefon Harris and Blackout – “Urbanus”

Everyone on the road was driving like idiots, either too slow or way too fast, swerving in and out of lanes, driving into ditches, and naturally, all of this happening either in front of or behind me, endangering my effing life without a care…

And then the privileged children with their parents’ credit cards ignoring the fact that there are about 10 people in line waiting to order their sandwiches, charging right to the front of the line and spending five minutes ordering, texting, giggling, and bitching about how they got the hand-me-down BMW instead of a new one, while everyone yells at them for being rude and they just laugh harder…

Oh, and then the enormous truck complete with truck nutz and a cattle-catcher parked in a “compact only” spot, thus jutting out so far in the parking lot that nobody can get by, requiring everyone to go like half a mile around the building just to get out of the parking lot…

You honestly have to wonder how its possible for so many people to have absolutely no perception of how their behavior affects anyone else.

It’s at times like this I’m grateful for the calming powers of music.

Background Tunes: Q’d Up – “Quintessence”

They’re still fun.

There are so many things wrong with high school football, so many kids permanently injured, so many educational dollars misspent, so much emotional energy and time dedicated to what really amounts to just a bunch of boys running around on a field and bashing into each other… in pursuit of what? School spirit? Professional aspirations? Personal fitness? Entertainment?

But those happen to be actually really good reasons. School spirit keeps kids from doing stupid things with their free time. It makes them feel like part of something bigger, which encourages them to work harder, socialize better, and achieve more. High school athletics does indeed keep a large portion of our population out of the obesity that plagues so much of our under-18 population, making health care cost less for all of us. The dreams of college and professional glory do indeed get kids into great schools, where they often get great educations and become really well-educated, intelligent, productive contributors to our society.

But the entertainment factor is unignorably huge.

Tonight, I was at a high school football game. It was 60 degrees out, and I was with good friends, had a big thermos of hot coffee, and watched my team get beat. I mean, beat bad. Like, 37-0 at the half bad. Like, I think we got one or two first downs in the whole half. And the other team blocked a punt. A PUNT.. But nevertheless, I had a really, really good time. The bands were great, the faculty of the school got out onto the field and danced and made fools of themselves, to the delight of all the students in the stands… Even though our team was doing brutally poorly, there was real community.

And this goes on every friday night, all over the country.

So despite the bad that comes out of this sport, don’t discount the good. Get to a football game. Buy some hot chocolate and a brownie from the band booster club. Cheer the kids on. Make some new friends.

Or at the very least, rent Friday Night Lights. It’s a start.

By the way, here’s some music:

Background Tunes: Brad Mehldau – Largo

Ah, nevermind. I got nothin’ to say. Here’s music.

Background Tunes: Ben Allison – Peace Pipe

Yugh. Here’s music:

Background Tunes: Herbie Hancock – The Essential Herbie Hancock

Thanks. You guys are the best. And I mean that.

Background Tunes: Ben Allison – Cowboy Justice

A pledge of 25 bucks gets you a Nocturnal transmission T-shirt, and there’s pretty much nothing cooler, ever, than that.

And you can take that to the bank, broseph.

Background Tunes: Brad Mehldau – Anything Goes