- CLASSIC ALBUM OF THE WEEK
- Led Zeppelin's untitled 4th album AKA "Led Zeppelin IV" 1971 (UK)
The Kosmik Radiation show debuted on the FM airwaves in April 2005, and WORT-FM and this website began hosting recent programs online for your listening enjoyment around the summer of 2006. The show was originally on from 2:00 to 5:00 every Wednesday morning (i.e., late nite Tuesday) until early 2009 when the show moved to the same timeslot on Friday mornings (i.e., Thursday late night.) At the end of summer 2014, Kosmik Radiation moved to 11:00 to 2:00 on Tuesday nights (not quite so late night!), where it remained until April 2018. At that time, host Dave 3000 moved from Madison to Chicago, and from then on the program was pre-recorded and submitted for airplay rather than "performed" live on the air from WORT's studio in the middle of the night. At this time, Kosmik Radiation also returned to the same timeslot the show originated with in 2005! Although the format evolved over the years, Kosmik Radiation always focused on "psychedelic, progressive, heavy and underground sounds from all around": groovy music (and sometimes other audio weirdness) from all over the world, since the years when music got "groovy" in the middle of the previous century (roughly around BeBop and Varese). Although the show certainly played a ton of records from the 1960's and 70's, nearly a third of the tracks played on Kosmik Radiation were new records released in the preceding 12 months - overwhelmingly on small indie labels or self-released music.
Originally the first show of every month was going to be a deep dive into a legendary (or obscure) artist of yesteryear, however the Digital Millenium Copyright Act rules for webcasting made that impossible once WORT programs went online. So instead there were monthly specials focusing on specific years, genres, musical instruments (including a sitar show and a cowbell show; I actually had a cowbell mic-ed up in the studio and played along to many of the songs to add EVEN MORE COWBELL!) There was a three-part series on psychedelic music in Japan I did back in 2007 (part one - two - three), and in the late 2010's that sort of came full circle when I started playing a lot of contemporary J-pop on the show. Sometimes I played records on top of each other, backwards, at the wrong speed, and created live "collage" mixes on the air. One time I brought a guitar to the studio and mic'ed it up so I could jam along to the Dead live on the air. Probably the most elaborate show was the 2008 Neil Young birthday episode: a six-hour program with a band performing nearly two hours of Neil songs live from WORT's studio! There was also an incredibly strange Beatles special that year with a different bunch of musicians live in the studio. I did some pretty creative thematic shows, like making up "imaginary albums" from legendary groups that broke up, hosting a goofy novelty music show "in character" (all of my air breaks were completely scripted for that one), and an electronic music special where all the air breaks were performed by synthsized "robot" voices.
Basically, I got to try out just about every wacky idea I had for interesting things to do on the radio! Whatever part of this 6,888 day (nearly 19 year) journey into weird late night radio that you were a part of, THANKS FOR LISTENING!
-- "stay groovy!" - your now-former host, Dave 3000