Airwaves

by Brian Goslow

John McKeag has comfortably settled into the Wednesday night/Thursday morning 10:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift at WCUW (91.3 FM), where he landed after 13 years at WICN. "I've been playing more alternatively obscure, progressive psychedelic stuff," says McKeag, who was the last holdover from WICN's late-night rock staff before his show was canceled. "It's pretty much the same open format, except it's even more open without fear of the boss saying I shouldn't play that type of music."

McKeag hopes fans of jam rock will check out his program, Glimpses, which gets its name from a Yardbirds instrumental track. "I've been going out of my way to find weird, obscure experimental music. Any album with songs 14 minutes or longer I'm curious to hear."

"I'll pay $30 for a CD from Germany or Turkey." Recent finds include Zen, a group from Istanbul who played experimental improvisational stuff like the outfit Can. "I've been picking up lots and lots of the early progressive, German rock stuff. Golem (Eternity the Weeping Hori) feature a guitar, Hammond organ, bass, and drums, but it's very spacy. Temple is in the same vein from the early- to mid-'70s. Agitation Free has a lot of spacy keyboards, sound effects, natural sounds like water and guitar doodling, which I like sometimes." As in Eddie Van Halen? "As played in a different dimension -- kind of jamming with more imagination than the heavy-metal type stuff, more creativity."

He also picks up anything he can find on the ESP label. "It started in 1964 with an album by Albert Ayler." Along with the Seeds of "Pushin' Too Hard" fame, "there was a lot of weird, noisy jazz stuff like Noah Howard, Sun Ra, and Ornette Coleman. Bud Powell was on the label for a while, as were Pearls Before Swine, the Fugs, Holy Modal Rounders, and a God-awful band called the Godz." The latter outfit has been called the worst band of all time. "They're right up there with the Vanilla Fudge."

He's also been playing Robert Wyatt's new album, Shleep (Thirsty Ear). "He has insomnia, so the whole album's related to that. It's probably the best stuff since he did Rock Bottom [in 1974] and before that with the Soft Machine. Paul Weller had a lot to do with it. He wrote a song ["The Whole Point of No Return"] and played on it [along with Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Evan Parker, among others]. I'm always looking for stuff by Kevin Ayres and the other original Soft Machine members. I haven't found a new album by Ayres for years. His older stuff is some of the most twisted pop stuff ever."

A certified Beatlemaniac (he has more than 500 albums), McKeag is playing rare Rubber Soul, Revolver, and John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band out-takes. "I paid $75 for an album from Japan via a guy on the coast of Mexico. They're extremely famous for a reason. Any true musician should recognize them as the top of the mountain." McKeag's own band, Harrison Ford, hope to release a CD of their own in the not-too-distant future.

Local radio's best-known space traveler began doing radio as a hardcore fanatic. "I used to love Slayer, the Circle Jerks, and Gang Green." A few weeks back, filling in for Laura Kiritsy on the Adult Children's Dysfunction Room, he played a recording of the Ramones at the Club in Cambridge in 1976. "I also went back to my roots and played G.B.H. I play some old hardcore once in a while, but I don't get the same feeling as when I was 17 going to shows. But I understand why I used to like it and kids like it today." Oi!