February 15, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local DJ revives antiques of the airwaves
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

Chestnut Hill native and radio “historian,” Andrew Gilmore. (Photo by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

Walking past the student dining hall of Arcadia College, weaving my way among students high-fiving good-bye and greeting each other before settling down to the typical college buffet-style meal, this is the last place I would expect to hear the early jazz of Cab Calloway and Fats Waller.

Yet from 2 to 4 p.m. each Friday, sophomore Andrew Gilmore’s show, “Andrew’s Antiques,” showcases not only these otherwise forgotten tunes on the radio waves, but also comic monologues and songs from the 1890s to 1950s.

“This is stuff you wouldn’t hear on other stations, which is why I’m here,” said Gilmore’s soft-spoken voice into the college station’s microphone and over the dining hall’s speakers.

Gilmore, a theater major and Chestnut Hill native, started his show at the beginning of this school year on Arcadia’s recently revived student-run radio station, The ARC.

The university’s station began in 1988, when Arcadia was still Beaver College. The station aired on the AM dial with the call letters WBVR at 1640. Over the years, the once-hopping station began to peter out of existence as student interest waned, until 2004 when a student decided to reinvent the station, airing the radio shows on the university’s television channel, AUTV channel 2, because the radio broadcasting antenna used in the ‘80s and ‘90s was inoperable.

In 2005, students took the station a step further and changed the title to The ARC, since Beaver College was no longer the college’s name, and started broadcasting on the Internet in March.

Most of the music on the station is typical college tunes — rock, emo, punk, hip hop. Less typical formats are a showtunes show on Monday afternoon and an international musical display on Wednesday evenings, but with a completely free format, the students’ radio shows can really showcase whatever they want to play.

Last Friday, Gilmore was back for his first show since winter break. Though the hustle and bustle of students, just outside the small, modern-looking studio situated near the entrance of the dining call, was clearly audible through the non-soundproofed walls and distracted me as I took notes, Gilmore never faltered throughout his show, besides a few unrelated technical glitches due to new software, and said he doesn’t even hear the noise.

Arriving at the show expecting a record player and pile of records — after all, the music Gilmore plays was created before eight-tracks and cassette tapes — I found four microphones, a Mac computer and switchboard.

“I download it all,” said Gilmore with a grin after the show when I asked him where the records were. Ironically, the media outlet that is potentially negating the need for CDs and other music devices that long ago made the record obsolete, is helping Gilmore bring back the “antique” music on these records.

The sometimes more than 100-year-old music Gilmore plays is downloaded (legally, of course) from the Internet, although the genuine scratch of the record needle on vinyl is clear in most of what he plays.

But that’s not to say he does not have the song on a record. With a personal collection of 600 (550 actually, last time he counted which was early last year, but he’s bought more than 50 since then), he has bought his records mainly through eBay and similar Web sites, the songs he plays are bound to be on one of them.

His records, which he keeps at his home in Chestnut Hill, have been collected over a five-year span and range from S. H. Dudley “Parody on ‘Just One Girl’” recorded in 1900 to either his copy of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies by the First Piano Quartet or a set of Morse code lessons, which are from somewhere between 1954 and 1960, he said.

For most of his two-hour show, Gilmore whips out his favorite stuff — the music and monologues that started his collector’s hobby … comics. The show last week started off with Dan W. Quinn’s “Hello Boy’s I’m back again,” recorded in 1916. It is a funny song about a male hanging with the boys, now free from his marriage, a timeless topic likely to appear relatable to some of today’s audience.

Actually, many of the songs, despite their tidbits of time-specific details, could resonate with today’s audience, which is part of the attraction of Gilmore’s show. Despite the age of these artists and their music, the lyrics were humorous anecdotes about marriage, labor union strikes, college life and, well, the straightness of bananas.

As Kal Stewart ranted about a labor union strike that prevented him to work on his own farm, I laughed when he said his gun and ammunition wasn’t union owned (insinuating he wasn’t afraid to use it as a joke) because a threat like that today would be followed by FBI invasions and wire tappings or only contained in hip hop. Back in 1907, it was humor!

It was weird that the “College Life” Billy Murray described in 1906 was a lot like today’s college experience, except there are more students writing the checks themselves through student loans and selling of the soul then by sending the bill home to their parents, as he said.

The best part of listening to Gilmore’s show was not the realization that these songs, for a lack of a better word, were old, but that they illustrated a world a touch more innocent, without extreme political correctness and self-consciousness. It was great to sit back and think that a song about a banana was sung about and laughed over, a topic today that would give young boys and girls a giggle with its phallic suggestion and make teenagers and young adults roll their eyes with disinterest.

To check out Gilmore’s show, visit online at http://radio.arcadia.edu between 2 and 4 p.m. each Friday. Reminisce, get a history lesson, or just enjoy some good ole old-fashioned music you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

Contact staff writer Kristin Pazulski at 215-248-8819 or Kristin@chestnuthilllocal.com.