WDRE DJ Mel Toxic works the crowd at a weekly Saturday night dance party at the Chestnut Cabaret. (Photo by Bill Schmid)

By GREGG KIRK
Big Shout Magazine, February 1993

The scene is a familiar one… in a cramped dorm room on the campus of the University of Delaware, a group of about 40 undergrads cluster around a keg of beer propped in a garbage can full of ice. The air is thick with smoke of all kinds, drunken party chatter, and the blaring music from the stereo system n the room. The reverberations of several other stereos down the hall can be felt through the walls.

It’s the early ’80s and the Rolling Stones have just released their Tattoo You album, therefore, the turntable in this particular room is midway through the throes of “Start Me Up.” A stereo next door can be heard blasting a Hendrix tune, and a few doors down, the faint strains of “Stairway to Heaven” are almost imperceptible over the din of yet another stereo grinding through a song by the Kinks.

Suddenly, a young undergrad in ridiculous looking wrap-around shades stands on top of a chair and begins ranting at the other idiots in the packed room. He’s just moved from the Midwest and is unaccustomed to this kind of music. In the nation’s heartland, he was used to hearing more of a musical variety on the local radio airwaves and his friends’ stereos, and in his new surroundings, the seeming infatuation with music that’s old and dated has perplexed him.

“Why are you all listening to music that’s dead?” he screams at anyone who will listen. “Jim Morrison, he’s dead! John Lennon, he’s dead! John Bonham, he’s dead! The Grateful Dead, they’re all… dead! Bruce Springsteen, he should be dead!”

He leans forward to emphasize his point and falls into the crowd of people — half of whom had actually heard what he was raving about. They all laugh, stop to consider what he was saying for a split second, and then continue drinking.

It’s sad to see that the music we are subjected to in the Delaware Valley has changed precious little since that little incident 10 years ago. Yes, I was the drooling college freshman, and from the moment I set foot in this area, I was stunned by the narrow scope of music offered by the local commercial radio stations. I think in the first few months of my arrival, I had gotten my fill of the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Kinks, Billy Joel, and all the other bands that would later be labelled as “classic rock..”

To avoid it, I invested in a cassette player for my car, and when that broke down, I started listening to college radio stations and non-commercial stations left of the dial.

Occasionally I would flip on the radio, out of curiosity, to help remind myself why I never listened to it. During a coincidental moment one afternoon, I turned it on to find that three major commercial stations in our area were playing “Sweet Home Alabama” at the same time. I frantically turned the knobs on my radio to see if it was broken. As it turned out, it wasn’t my radio that was the problem.

When traveling outside of our area, I’d be exposed to other forms of radio and find, that in some cases, commercial radio could actually be stimulating. Sometimes I would run across a station that played music I’d never heard before, and I would listen intently to find out who the song and artists were. In some cases, I actually felt like I was learning something.

Recently there’s been some excitement about a new station in Philadelphia that has people talking about these same ideas. WDRE 103.9 FM, who has dubbed itself “the station that dares to be different,” is being heralded as an antidote to the above issues. The station officially went on the air in mid November, and it has been broadcasting its brand of “modern rock” with a signal that reaches from Princeton, NJ to Wilmington, DE ever since.

According to the station, their format “meshes the alternative, progressive, cutting-edge formats into a unique blend of modern rock,” and it has proven its staying power at WDRE’s sister station on Long Island for the past 11 years. What this translates to as far as artists being played is you can expect to hear plenty of R.E.M., Jesus Jones, Talking Heads, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam.

And actually, the station in New York is more than just a sister — in a way it’s a Siamese twin. More than half of all of the programming that is heard during the broadcast day is simulcast from Long Island. Currently, it’s only the specialty shows like DJ Mel “Toxic” Taylor broadcasting live from a dance party at the Chestnut Cabaret every Saturday night that originate in Philly.

Before you get all weepy thinking about how great it is to finally have a station catering to something other than the “corporate rock” mentality, consider the shrewd marketing sense behind such a move to Philadelphia. The city already had its share of easy-listening, news radio, dance & urban contemporary, and Top 40 stations. It even had a country station. It also had not one, but two classic rock stations that had all but beaten and bloodied each other in an all-out battle over morning-drive slot supremacy. Nowhere was there a modern rock format, which made it very easy for WDRE to slip in between the cracks while the other stations were worrying about each other’s sagging ratings.

Secondly, have you ever stopped to wonder why there is such a thing as a classic rock format? It’s because the baby boomers who were in high school and college and listening to music in the late ’60s and early ’70s are the ones with the hefty bank accounts today. They’re the ones buying advertising time and making corporate decisions. The modern rock format no doubt is built upon this same idea — that the young, well-scrubbed students of the early ’80s are the ones who will be moving into the money next. And you can bet they all weren’t listening to old Van Morrison records.

All of this talk about modern rock and the cutting-edge format made us curious so we decided to give WDRE Program Director Tom Calderone a call. Here’s what he had to say about the new station.

Big Shout: How did the idea of WDRE broadcasting in Philly come about?

Tom Calderone: The owner of the radio station was looking at markets where he felt this format was needed. One of the first ones we looked at was Philadelphia, due to the fact that it’s so close to New York for one, and there were so many comments made to us when we were at promotions in New York — at concerts and what have you. We’d hear, “Geez, we wish ‘DRE was in Philly. There’s nothing in Philly to listen to.” And there happened to be an opportunity where there was a property for sale that made the most sense for us on a bunch of different levels, most importantly, for the great signal we have. So he decided to purchase it and to do the format here.

BS: What’s the philosophy behind the format?

TC: That we are a progressive or modern rock music station that is really playing a wide variety of music that is cutting edge for this year as well as playing some of the music people grew up with listening to in college — Talking Heads, U2, R.E.M. INXS, the B-52s — bands that everyone listened to on the “college radio” and then eventually moved on and decided, “Wow, I still like this music, and I want to hold onto it.” And also it’s for people who are very open minded about music that if a band like Pearl Jam can be played, they will definitely accept it as much as they did when they heard the first Depeche Mode record.

BS: Do you have any local music shows planned — as in airing music from homegrown talent?

TC: It’s something that we’re talking about. There’s so many other things going on right now that it’s not been addressed as quickly as I would have liked it to be. This thing has grown so fast, it’s tough to do everything at once. That is definitely in the works in ’93, to do a local music show.

BS: I had heard that you were considering interspersing local music in with national acts on some nights…

TC: Yeah, actually we’re thinking of doing it on Sunday nights — feature an artist in between the specialty shows that we run, which I think would be more of an attribute to the bands than if we were just airing it at midnight…

BS: Right… where they’re being treated more like national acts…

TC: Yeah, exactly. So that’s what we’re looking at as well. I’m hoping by the spring we’ll get that all together.

BS: What other kinds of things are you doing to dig into the local scene?

TC: We co-promote all the concerts. We’re trying to be as street level as possible. Really, there’s a full staff here. We’re at all the nightclubs, all the concerts, the art museums. We’re trying to get everywhere we possibly can to spread the word about the radio station.

Editor’s update: In December of 1996, Radio One bought WDRE and announced that WDRE would be replaced by a new radio station with a Hip Hop format. In protest, the staff at WDRE organized a concert called “Bitterfest“, featuring G Love & Special Sauce and the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, which was held on February 7, 1997 at the Electric Factory. The concert was a combination of a protest of the new format and a memorial for the exiting WDRE modern rock format. There were a reported 3,000 people in attendance, including the entire WDRE staff.

At midnight on February 8, 1997, a listener was selected to “pull the plug” on WDRE, and this signaled the end of the station.