SATURDAY SHOWCASE -- Heliotrope

Recent Playlists

Music on my show ranges from indie/ alternative rock to hip hop, punk, random classic rock songs, occasional folk, and the dirty music that refuses to be labeled correctly.  Each show begins with a Bob Dylan song to pay tribute to the legend (as one may invoke a prophet), then progressively picks up its pace to strong, raunchy beats, jumpy rhythms, frisky songs and the random melancholy sweet melody, to give us pause with a mixed drink and our memories.  I pick my music by the song and artist’s ability to capture my attention with a story or a beat.  Hackneyed rhymes get scrapped and urban poets get front stage.

Born under the influence of a tiny town in Minnesota (dad playing records every night), I let the straight grid of gravel roads fill in the farming country’s pauses with music dug up in used record shops and scabbed off near-strangers.  My close friends and I fed tunes to each other like much needed nutrients under the overcast sky, watching the flat fields stretch on to forever.  Those fields still fetch a good distraction from eternity and I still have a continuous soundtrack playing.  Just the corn is red rock and cactus now.  And the cars are a little more dependable.

But when you’re left in the middle
of the Midwest sky
oh, everywhere you look
is the other side.

-- Josh Ritter

Heliotrope can be reached at   heliotrope.kafm@yahoo.com.