JD Doyle, our favorite expert on GLBT tunes and performers, marks a milestone this month—his 100th Queer Music Heritage radio show. To honor this achievement, we asked him to provide some highlights and a list of favorite recordings and artists.
By JD Doyle
One hundred shows! Where to begin? The January edition of Queer Music Heritage on the 28th will mark not only my eighth anniversary show but also the 100th broadcast show. I make the distinction of “broadcast show” because there have been additional shows available only on my website. Also the total hours clock in at much more than 100, because many shows have longer versions and additional parts on the site, totaling around 150 hours online.
I might as well share my “how I got into radio” story. First, I had absolutely no radio experience, but a friend of mine, Jimmy Carper, had been hosting his KPFT show, After Hours, for many years. In late 1999, I started calling Jimmy during his show to request that he play a certain artist, or to just play more music, as his show is mostly talk format. My reasoning was that since gay and lesbian artists don’t get played anywhere else, he should play more of them. I kept this up for several weeks, until Jimmy finally said, “Why don’t you come on and play some?” So I did. I put together two half-hour segments, of old and new music, and included a little history behind the songs. Since I’m very comfortable with Jimmy, we had a good time. Jack Valinski heard us. He produces the show Queer Voices, which was then called Lesbian & Gay Voices, and invited me to do a monthly segment, which became Queer Music Heritage.
After I started my segment, my dream became having a site where the shows could be archived, so that anyone anywhere could hear them. Thus, Queer Music Heritage became a both a radio show and a massive website, which is now more than 800 pages, and growing. I view our music history as not only musical but also visual, so I wanted to share the album covers and artist pictures. Working on both the radio program and the website is a huge undertaking. This labor of love keeps me off the streets for more than 50 to 100 hours a month.
To mark my anniversary, OutSmart asked me to look back over the 100 shows and pick some highlights. That’s a hard task indeed, as I love so many genres, and there are different ways of looking at the subject. I started by just paging through my site, seeing what artists, songs, albums, interviews, and theme shows caught my eye. So here goes.
I love doing theme shows, which allows me to explore a particular aspect of our culture. If someone would ask me what show to listen to, if they could only check out one show, I have an easy answer. My June 2004 show, titled “Queer Music Before Stonewall,” was very satisfying to me and also won an award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, in the category of Local Music/Entertainment Program. I went to the ceremony in Baltimore to pick up the award. Gee, how many times in your life can you do something like that?
