Am listening right now to Vin Scelsa do his last radio show ever, on WFUV. In the summer of 1990 I was a college intern at Scholastic, living in the NYU dorm the Brittany at 10th and Broadway in Manhattan. It was a two-person room but I never did get assigned a roommate. At some point that summer, I discovered a Sunday night radio show on K-ROCK called Idiot’s Delight. I loved listening to it in the dark.
I’ve loved radio for as long as I can remember. I loved Dr. Don Rose on KFRC when I was a little kid in the Bay Area; I even got his autograph. Q-107 in Washington, DC; WMMR Philadelphia. (We moved around a bit.) Baseball on the radio, Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer, Bill White, how great was that? WPRB Princeton, the first college station I knew about. Listened in my teenage bedroom and jotted down band names, song titles on a slip of paper. (The dB’s — “Black and White”) Then, crazily, I was on the radio, at my high school: WWPH Princeton Junction 107.9 FM, a measly 10 watts but who cared, we were on the radio. Had my very own FCC license. Then college radio, sure, WRCT Pittsburgh, 88.3. (Vin got his start at my beloved WFMU, when he was a student at Upsala College.)
So between my junior and senior years, I heard Vin Scelsa, and Idiot’s Delight. When I moved back to the New York area after graduating, I was eager to tune in again. And I’ve listened ever since, through station and time-slot changes. Jotting down band names, song titles. (Bob Hillman — “Everyone’s an Actor in New York”; Richard Julian — “Sick Sick Love”; etc.) Went to see his “In Their Own Words” show at the Bottom Line—once? twice? (Joey Ramone and General Johnson performing “Rockaway Beach”)
In 2000, I’d started freelancing for the Jersey section of the New York Times, writing roadside restaurant reviews. My supportive editor (there is such a thing), Mitch, encouraged me to pitch feature-story ideas. So I pitched a few; rejected, rejected, rejected. And then finally, I got an assignment (I don’t even think it was my idea?): Vin Scelsa, who had started doing a show on the Internet from his home in, yes, New Jersey. Wow. My first feature article. And then I spoke on the phone with Vin Scelsa, as we tried to set up a time for an interview. So that was cool.
And then… something happened. I think an article on Vin appeared in a different section of the paper? So, before the interview even happened, Mitch pulled the plug on my story. That made me sad. (Don’t cry for me, Argentina: Soon enough, I got to write a profile of Uncle Floyd.)
I think my favorite times listening were in the car, driving back from wherever. There’s something special about the car radio at night. And it was always cool hearing Vin’s voice. (OK, every once in a great while, I thought maybe he talked a little too much, but that was the exception.)
Sometimes he’d be pre-empted by Fordham basketball games; that was a drag.
Over the years, the show started to get shorter, and then maybe it wasn’t on by the time I started driving home from wherever. So I didn’t hear Vin quite as much as I used to.
But tonight I tuned in. Wouldn’t miss it. And it was a real good show. A little Marshall Crenshaw, a little Bruce, and finally, a little Dorothy: “Oh Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.” And he was gone, into the night.
Maybe I should’ve been in the car.
Thank you for everything, Vin Scelsa, Enjoy your radio retirement.
I used to love to listen to his show in the 80’s on WNEW. I will always hold dear in my heart all the great, eclectic music and stories Vin shared over the years. He was a true original.
I also knew Vin Scelsa from WNEW-FM. I believe he was one of the mainstay jocks there, going back to the mid-70s at least.
A friend of mine said, vis a vis our common nocturnal explorations/discoveries of self courtesy the radio, that he wouldn’t want to be young now. Or that he was glad he was young when he was. I don’t know. Still, I can’t imagine myself without those long nights, the equivalent of an open road. WMMR for me too, then NEW in a nascent adulthood. Still in development. Well, there’s always more music ahead. Thanks, Vin and Jack.
For me Vin was a disruptive force of nature – life as planned wouldn’t happen when he was on, because you couldn’t leave the house/car/whatever until he finished weaving his mix of music and story. One Saturday morning, all pretense of mowing the lawn went out the window as Vin told his tale of of a flooded basement and his efforts to bail out the same – “sucking water” was the mantra – explaining to an exasperated yet amused John Zacherly why he was late. For years I had no idea what TV shows aired on Saturday night, and invested in longer and longer headphone cables so I could move about the house while immersively listening.
I admit I hadn’t been listening as much recently, mostly because the rest of FUV’s line up and their devolving sense of eclecticism finally forced me to tune elsewhere, and once gone I failed to come back as often for him. And now it’s much too late, to take a second look.
Rich, thanks for these memories! The age of the archive and the podcast is killing “appointment radio” but listening live is always the best, in my opinion.