As I was driving home from my Thanksgiving vacation, nearing New York City and its inevitable traffic, already tired from six hours in the car, relief came to me in the form of a local radio station: New Jersey's WFDU.
As I'm sure many of you did, I listened to a lot of radio when I was younger. I recorded Rick Dees' and Case Kasem's shows onto a cassette player, trying to cut off the garrulous DJ intros, so that I'd have nothing but music. I'd listen back to the songs during the week and then tape over them the following weekend. I wasn't very selective in what I recorded; these weren't mixes with an intended sequence or overarching theme. Instead, the tapes were documents of pop culture, of fads, and of my own childhood whims and wishes.
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