Last Broadcast of “Something Else”
On Sunday, December 19 Chicago’s longest running radio show for experimental, avant-garde music, phonography, and other genres of audio art will make its final broadcast. In less than two weeks Philip von Zweck, the host and producer of Something Else who started the show in 1995, will move on. As he told me, “It’s been 15 years.”
Writing in the past tense now…
Something Else was a non-commercial, volunteer effort that aired weekly on WLUW 88.7 FM. Aside from a 9-month haitus in 2004 (during which time Philip wrangled a string of volunteers to substitute for him while teaching at Brooklyn College), for four hours every Sunday night Philip played recordings and hosted live performances by a countless number of local, national, and international sound-text-radio artists, avant-garde composers, and experimental, improvising musicians.
I hope Philip’s effort will be remembered and appreciated. The historical significance of Something Else lies in the simple fact that there was no other Chicago radio program focused on live performances and recordings by seldom-heard artists and musicians making non-commercial, unpopular, risk-taking, art historical, bravely exploratory, and “bleeding edge” work in the new and marginal field of sound-as-art. While many occasions to hear this type of work on Chicago’s numerous public and college radio stations existed, as a regularly scheduled, weekly show, I think only WHPK’s Radio Dada and WNUR’s Airplay would compare. When WLUW began Internet streaming Philip’s show became internationally accessible.
