I remember very clearly being in my kitchen in Massachusetts when I got on the phone with Tyler Lenane, to talk about what was then called Gimme Radio. Dude had big plans. I am forever skeptical of dudes with big plans. Metal dudes with big plans more so. If your plan is to make money in metal, chances are that plan is going to fail. If your plan is to make money off metalheads spending theirs, it’s going to fail faster. As a culture, metal is resoundingly cheap. So much so that t-shirts are a sign of pride and support. A fucking t-shirt. Think about that for a minute. Not exactly paying somebody’s mortgage, is it?

In any case, to be wary is a lesson I’ve learned over and over again, so when I spoke with Lenane, my initial vibe was decidedly in the negative. Nope. Not interested. Not gonna lend my name or time to this thing that’s probably never gonna get off the ground in the first place and even if it does will almost certainly crash back down shortly thereafter. I’ve got enough on my plate in my little corner of the internet. I don’t need or particularly want to be involved in some startup shit.

What he said to turn me around on that, I’m not sure these years later, but I recall my position had softened by the time we hung up the phone, which as I understand it is how startups happen in the first place. I put together a sample playlist and sent it to Brian Turner (whom I might idolize forever on account of his having been PD at the rightly legendary WFMU in Jersey City), used what was then their weird software back end Zetta to record some shitty voice tracks, and that was the start of ‘The Obelisk Show’ on Gimme Radio, which would soon enough rebrand as Gimme Metal. It didn’t even occur to me to post the playlists here until I was on episode eight. I really didn’t think it was going to last.

Well, define “lasting” in that context, right? Five-plus years and more than 100 episodes later, I came to really enjoy ‘The Obelisk Show’ on Gimme Metal. And whether you’re in music or you’re in tech — and Gimme Metal was in both — surviving for half a decade isn’t nothing.

But I’ve been around long enough to have seen and felt that shoe drop plenty of times. Print mags going under. Sites going down for good. Shit, I got fired from my college radio station. Whatever ‘career’ I’ve had in the last 20-plus years has been little more than a succession of layoffs, in or out of the music industry, and the most consistent thing I’ve ever done in terms of ‘work’ is this site, which I pointedly don’t try to make money with because that seems like an awfully good way to kill it dead. So yeah. I said on most episodes of the show that I was surprised Gimme hadn’t shitcanned me yet. It became a running gag. But it was also true.

I am sorry to see Gimme go. Sorrier than I thought I’d be, honestly. Getting to work with Dean Rispler as the show’s engineer for the last year-plus was an absolute dream. I sent the playlist, I sent the VTs, and he put it together with the kind of obvious care that can only come from actual passion for it. Can’t get that with a podcast, or a Spotify playlist or whatever else. It was a professional situation. There was no money — I didn’t even have a ‘tip jar,’ which I know other DJs did — but it was run like a pro company, because it was one.

Thank you to Dean, to Brian, to Tyler. Thanks to Mark Kitchens for the platypus above. Thanks to everyone who hung out in the chat or just checked in and left. I’ll miss sharing music in that way. I’ve always liked radio, hosting a program, picking tracks and talking about music. Right now, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to do it again, and that 107-episode catalog of ‘The Obelisk Show’ I guess is going to just disappear on April 29 when Gimme Metal officially shuts down. I’ve got an ep airing tomorrow though. A repeat. I had a playlist in progress when the email came in, and yeah, while it’s satisfying to know that the last song I ever played on my final new show for Gimme was Vape Warlök, I wish I’d had the chance to do it twice.

Thanks for listening if you listened, thanks for reading if you’re reading. We roll on, but Fridays will just be Fridays I guess from here out. And yeah, I’ve still got my Gimme Radio t-shirt, if you’re wondering.

Gimme Metal website

The Obelisk on Facebook

Tags: Gimme Radio, The Obelisk Show

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2023 at 10:39 am and is filed under Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.