About Music My Mother Would Not Like

A Note from Bruce Swan

A devotee of radio for as long as I can remember, I received my first AM clock radio for my seventh birthday. It was a gift that my parents thought would enable me to be awakened on my own with the assistance of the built-in alarm clock and that I would be able to listen to morning news on my own without disturbing my father while he was shaving. His goal was to be able to hear the news without distraction and be able to shave without interruptions. 

Neither of their goals were achieved, but I did discover 1960’s AM rock, Cousin Brucie, Don Imus, and sports with Howard Cosell.  

The radio jocks were heroes. Their personalities were legendary and the subject of much school bus ride conversation.  

It would be another forty plus years before I got my break in college and community radio landing a semester slot on WHCS at Hunter College and then about a twelve year slot at WPKN in Bridgeport, CT while simultaneously moonlighting at WRFR in Rockland, ME also for about eight years before securing a permanent slot at WSFM in Asheville, North Carolina.  

Covid disrupted everything. Radio stations were not allowing programmers / DJ’s into the station to broadcast - everything was done at home and sent to the stations via email, DropBox, etc. I was no exception. Naively, I thought this pandemic thing would only last a few days ok, weeks! Upon the conclusion, order would be restored and all would be returned to what it was prior to the breakout.  

Concerts, Music Festivals, and Music Conferences were optimistically postponed or wisely canceled. Interviewing musicians for the radio shows was the foundation of most of my radio programming. Necessity is the mother of invention, necessity to interact with an audience and the artists gave way to the creation of the generally weekly streamed showcase series called Music My Mother Would Not Like. It would be part radio, part concert, part interaction with and audience as well as musicians but full salvation.  

The series began at the end of June in 2020 as an experiment. It was not even called weekly at that point. That simple title was much more than we could have fathomed. We planned five shows. After the third show, we added four more to take us through August, by August we added shows to take us through the end of the year. To date, the venue has produced over 120 shows, presented over 400 artists, viewed by over 8,400 people, and raised well over $100K that has been distributed to the performers and crew. There is no end date in sight.  

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