Episode 455: Ten Years, Man! TEN YEARS

Thank you. You may have, uh--

10 years, man! 10! 10 years, man! 10! 10 years! 10 years! 10! 10 years! 10 years! Where have you been for 10 years?

You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I am Charlie, in the studio with Ameet, Matthew, Fred, Marlee, a young Rascoe, Philip, [INAUDIBLE], and Cody. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.

That's right, Charlie. Today's show is called "10 Years, Man! 10 YEARS."

Oh, that was nicely done.

Which is a rather dated--

Easy.

--reference from the film Grosse Pointe Blank.

And you heard that relevant quote from the film at the top of the show. "10 years!"

So are we doing a show on John Cusack or '90s action comedies?

Oh, we really should. But no, that reference is about the shocking and rewarding fact that Lost in the Stacks is 10 years old today.

The very first episode of Lost in the Stacks was broadcast at 7:00 PM Sunday, January 24, 2010-- CHARLIE BENNETT: That can't be right. --AD.

That can't be-- I've got it right here. It can't be right. So we're taking a self-indulgent victory lap, and we're eating some donuts in the studio. I hope everybody got one.

We're going to talk about how we started, what we're doing, and how we've changed on the air and off.

If you want to join the conversation, # the hashtag for this show is #LITS455 for Lost in the Stacks, episode 455. Feel free to tweet your thoughts, questions, or favorite LITS -Mas memory with that hashtag. CHARLIE BENNETT: There's plenty of those.

Our songs today are about celebration, longevity, and growth. We're pretty excited about the fact that we made it 10 years with one of the more--

10 years!

10 years, man!

10 years, man! 10 years!

10 years with one of the more interesting academic projects that we've all ever been involved with.

10 years!

So let's kick off the show with a banger. Fred.

Oh, boy.

Fred, what do we have lined up?

We've got a good one. It's about reflecting on good times. And according to Lizzy--

Lizzy Rolando.

She'll be joining us shortly. According to Lizzy, this next song is a, quote, "bomb ass tune."

Let's hit it. This is "Salad Days" by Mac DeMarco, right here on Lost in the Stacks. [MAC DEMARCO, "SALAD DAYS"] As I'm get--

That was "Salad Days" by Mac DeMarco, right here on Lost in the Stacks. Today's show is called "10 Years, Man! 10 YEARS." And here we go with the 10-year anniversary celebration of Lost in the Stacks. Ameet, I want you to let your mind wander back to a fresh-faced, young, user experienced librarian, and tell me how you could have possibly gotten yourself mixed up in this whole radio thing.

Yeah. You know, when I came into your office for the first time, Charlie, you'll recall that--

Was it the very first time?

Yes, the very first time.

Ambush.

I saw a 90 Day Men poster, I think. And I thought, wow, this guy's into cool music. So-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Used to be, yeah. At least, you know, there'll be something good about this job. And then I realized I had actually listened to WREK. You could pick up WREK and WRAS in Knoxville, Tennessee, at night. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's pretty intense. Usually after midnight, the airwaves would get there, would creep into the East Tennessee Valley.

But you know, never cross the streams, dude.

I know. Well, that's-- 10 years later. And what happened? Yeah.

So you were in an office covered with rock and roll posters. You had heard WREK before, and something started cooking. I still-- my favorite part of this whole story is that I said, hey, we should definitely get the library on the radio, meaning we should do PSAs or something like that.

Yeah, 30 seconds.

And you didn't miss a beat. You said, we should totally have a show. And it was off to the races.

Yes. Well, this could also be the fact that I'm not a very good listener. And I was listening to the idea in my head, instead of what you suggested.

Well, you had done user experience, so you liked databases, and printouts, and things like that, but people actually say, no, wait, I didn't say-- OK, fine. That was something you missed. So I printed out the playlist for the very first episode. Matthew had a question after the intro. You want to throw in? We can start talking about that.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that you started the show at 7:00 PM on a Sunday.

Yeah.

And I was thinking of Lost in the Stacks as an established show for 10 years. Like, why are you on a weekend? Why at night?

Why not the lunchtime library [INAUDIBLE]?

This is prime time.

The first Lost in the Stacks was a Sunday special. Philip, you need to come on over here and get on a mic.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm here.

You have mentioned several. This is Philip Burrus, everyone, who was, I think, really our first listener in almost every way.

Perhaps. I definitely heard the first promo. I was sitting on 316, coming back from a client meeting. I heard the first promo, and I said, library show and rock and roll? I don't know what these people are doing, but it was something that I thought would be interesting enough to listen to. And I've listened to every episode since.

Yeah.

I have not missed an episode. A few I've caught on podcasts, but I have caught 99% of them live.

You have WREK playing in your law office.

All day long. I say--

You are a special kind of lawyer. Philip has been such a part of the show that he is now a sponsor. He's a shouted out sponsor for the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group. But you said it there, library, rock and roll, how are they going to make that work? And how did we make it work?

How are we going to make that work?

That's your exact line from the promo. We were terrified. I'm looking back at the playlist. We were terrified doing this first show. You know how I know?

Because everything is about books. CHARLIE BENNETT: Everything's about books. There's 45 minutes of music on this. Oh, yeah!

And three 5-minute interviews. I listened to the intro of this show. I went back all the way to the archives. And listeners, you will not be able to find it. And I listened. We were terrified. And we were recording it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean--

You were trying to think of some cool way to say, yeah, we were. But no, we just were.

Yeah. I'm starting to think that the terror has not completely disappeared.

Ah.

It's just changed form slightly.

Is it because you're looking at me? Is that-- OK, so the very first episode was called "Books and Letters." It was a Sunday special, 7:00 PM, January 24. It started with us saying, "Welcome to the radio show. It's the only library radio show with rock and roll. OK. What's first, Ameet?" You said, "Let's start with some music." And then a computerized voice shelved the set. Do you remember that? We used--

Oh, yeah. That's right. CHARLIE BENNETT: --text to voice. Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: Here's the lineup. We did Talking Heads, "The Book I Read," Tom Waits, "Books of Moses," Belle and Sebastian, "Wrapped Up in Books," Field Music, "Got to Write a Letter," Magnetic Fields, "Book of Love," Velvet Underground, "That's the Story of My Life," Camera Obscura, "French Navy." Ameet, would you like to tell everyone why "French Navy" was such an important song. Well, well, there's the word library in the song.

And we talked about why this was on 7:00 PM on a Sunday to try out. But once we made the team, we were still uncertain if this was legit. So that's why it's at noon, the lunch hour, when we can do our own thing.

That's right.

During the work week.

We were sneaking out.

Yeah.

"Open Book" by Cake, "The Letter" by PJ Harvey, Dire Straits's "Romeo and Juliet," "Letter to Bowie Knife" by Calexico, and then "The Book I Write" by Spoon. Our guests were Amaris Gutierrez-Ray, who is a Georgia Tech student and editor of the literary magazine Erato. Kirk Henderson from archives, who's still around, and Dr. Karen Head, who is a Georgia Tech faculty member and a poet. And that was the show.

Yeah.

We did those interviews in one take. Do you remember that?

I-- CHARLIE BENNETT: You don't remember. I don't remember anything.

Were they in person?

They were. We had them here in the production studio. It was one take, 5 minutes. And we were like, get, get, get off the mic. Now, since then, since that really clinched version of the show, we've expanded. Just the process of doing the show really opened up our idea of what we could do on the radio show. Do you have a memory of when you realized that we could do whatever we wanted to?

Well, I think it actually-- it really started when we tried to do a live broadcast at a library conference. So I was in Baltimore on the phone.

That's right. The tech did not quite work.

The tech didn't work, but I thought if it had worked, this would have been incredible. It kind of worked. CHARLIE BENNETT: It kind of worked. Yeah.

I remember the first time that we had an argument with our board op about the way we put the music sets together. And that was like, oh, we can just talk about whatever we want, whenever we want. No one's going to stop us. And that was their mistake. I have some notes here. Do you remember when Allie Low did her first mid-show break and defined the 'Amen' break?

I do remember Allie's signature breaks-- impressive. CHARLIE BENNETT: Long, long monologues that she wrote out and scared us with. And do you remember the first cold open? I don't remember. What was the first cold open?

I don't remember either. I was hoping you did.

No, I mean-- no, I have no idea. No, you have no idea. As we were running out of time, as we always do on Lost in the Stacks, I wanted to do some shout outs. This show would not have lasted for 10 years if it were not for some people who joined. I have a list here. Anybody know where Lizzy is? Is Lizzy here? Get on there. Come on.

Oh, that's me.

Oh, it's so nice to have you back, even if it's just for one show. Did you get a donut?

No, not yet, but thank you for having me back.

Yeah. We were knocking the students away from the donuts for you. October 25, 2013 was your first show as an associate producer.

I feel old all of a sudden.

Don't you look at my head, my bald head and say you feel old.

That's a long time ago.

Yeah. And then Fred was music supervisor on the same show, August 23. No, not the same show. Excuse me. Fred's first listed credit as music supervisor was August 23, 2013. Wendy's first show as a guest producer was "The Myth of the Archive," January 25, 2013. We also had Amy Decker, who could not be here today because she lives in Alabama, for some reason. 2017 to 2018, she was a host. Marlee, your first show was in 2012. Did you know that?

I know. I feel like the oldest one here.

And you guested six times and have produced or co-produced another six shows in the past 10 years.

Go me.

You are a member of the team.

I think, also, I was a guest on your first year before I actually knew I was ever going to work at Georgia Tech.

That's true. And you tried to get Ameet to admit that he was in a rock and roll band at one point or another. Yeah, it didn't work. I also want to shout out to Melanie Kowalski of Emory, who's produced a couple shows, and also we have multiple guest producers from the Georgia Tech Library, including Liz Holdsworth, Karen Viars, Amanda Pellerin, Sonya Slutskaya. And can anyone remember anybody else who made a show happen before we go to the music set?

Listeners.

Good call, Matthew. Good call. All right. I've lost my place in the set. OK! This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called "10 Years"-- I can't do it as well. Do you want to do the "10 years" quote?

10 Years, man! 10 YEARS."

We'll be back after a music set.

File this set under PN2093.C64.

Hey, guys. Kyle Tate here. Man, has it really been 10 years since that first episode of Lost in the Stacks? I can't even believe that. Nothing lasts in student radio for 10 years. Nothing! I mean, students come and go. Shows come and go. So the fact that you guys have been able to keep this going for a decade is truly something special, something amazing. And I remember those early episodes so clearly.

That was "Moonlight on Vermont" by Captain Beefheart, and before that, "Happy Birthday" by Altered Images-- songs about celebrations.

You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. And today's show is called "10 Years! 10 Years, Man!" Charlie, what have you learned to do since we started this radio show? Like, have you picked up some skills from this thing?

Oh, a couple. Yeah, so the music that happened right before you came back on air, that little cut from Television's "Friction"-- I've learned how to edit. I never had any experience doing any sound editing or music editing. And now, I teach classes on it. So it was intense at the beginning, trying to make things work that we didn't really understand. But like, oh, I want to have a bumper, and I want to have theme music, and doing all that stuff. But now it's sort of just regular.

And it's free open source software you're using.

It is, yes.

Shout out.

I'm not advertising anything when I say I use Audacity. It's the Audacity of sound. Yeah. What have you learned?

I've learned that in order for anything to be sustainable, we've got to have a big team. So in the first segment, we talked about the longevity. What made this show last 10 years, and what got us through the valley of death is everyone in the studio.

That's true.

Lizzy, Marlee, Fred, everyone that we listed, all of the students, that's the only way we-- so that's what I learned is got to have a big team. CHARLIE BENNETT: What's funny, though, is that you also learned the skill of basically being a talk show host, of being a host, because you were saying it really clicked home for you that, oh, this is a radio show, the first time we did a show with no guests, where we just had a conversation.

We used to have three guests for every show. I want to open this up to the rest of the studio. Like, what have you learned working on a radio show that I think no one here expected to ever do?

Speaking extemporaneously. Filling the dead air, and being able to say something when Charlie looks at me expectantly.

I think-- yeah, Marlee, I second that, because this has been terrifying sometimes. It still is. But the need for some space that's exploratory, or my archivist impulse is to do the interview for hours, and ask every question, and be ultimately thorough. And I have to make space for exploration and open-ended questions and piquing interest and how that has been so nourishing for me professionally.

Yeah, Wendy's interview scripts are short books. They're kind of fantastic. They're so well researched. She's so ready for what she wants to do. And then sometimes I'll walk in to do an interview with her. I'm like, who are we talking to today? And I feel like that sometimes bums you out. But also, I've sort of brought you over to my side of rolling with it and not having every single point ready to go.

Yeah, I definitely have learned from that when I try to prepare for my interviews. There are times when I think, what would Wendy do? And add a few more questions, just to make sure that I have a few more bases covered. But yeah, the technical stuff that you mentioned, that's helped me, and I've actually applied that in librarianship, like learning how to use sound and how to manipulate sound. There's a whole information literacy about how sound is heard and how you create it, and the content.

We discovered the phrase "sonic literacy."

Sonic literacy.

For the Sonic Youth.

And I stole that for a webinar that I did recently, sonic literacy. So we're going to get that out there.

Right. And you and I actually presented at the Georgia Teachers Conference about a similar topic.

I don't know that I have a wildly unique answer, but I do feel like working on the show helped me roll with the punches a little bit and be comfortable with that. I'm definitely not an improviser, by any means.

But if you keep talking and let someone, yes, and, you can get to the end of the segment, right?

Yeah, exactly.

One of the best things about this show is learning to do a show in 2015 using 1997 equipment, because I'm thinking about the first few times we tried to do a conference call recording.

Yeah, I still have scars from that.

Yeah.

I mean, literal scars from going underneath the board and trying to make it work. It was awful. Matthew, you've been board up for a while now.

Yeah, yeah.

What's happened to you since you've been working on Lost in the Stacks?

Well, I've been involved in WREK. I've done other radio shows, but this was the first show I got yelled at on. That was a new experience for me, and learning how to deal with that on air is a good trait.

If you really want to, you can explain exactly why you got yelled at.

I mispronounced some band I don't care about.

Ooh, I really should yell again about how it's not I-N-X-S.

This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called--

"10 Years, Man! 10 YEARS."

And we'll be back with more on the left side of the hour.

I wish I had a car horn to really set the scene for that particular clip. 10 years! Where have you been for 10 years, man? OK, today's Lost in the Stacks is called "10 Years, Man! 10 YEARS." And I would like to take a moment or two to give a shout out to the amazing board ops and show team members we've had over the past 10 years. On the board and in the studio, we've had founding producer Kyle Tate, who you heard at the top of the last music set.

He slipped out.

Cody, I'm talking about you.

He's laughing about it.

Allie Low, Perry Shuman, Mitchell Dawkins, Avinash Sastry. Avinash was a long-term board op, and he used to yell at us, Matthew. So turnabout is fair play. Jaywalk, Jonathan Walker, Daniel Smith, Andrea Kuklenyik. Oh, I can never say her name.

This is Jaywalk. You are listening to Lost in the Stacks here on WREK Atlanta. From beautiful sunny San Diego, congratulations on 10 years of Lost in the Stacks. (SINGING) Happy birthday to you, and many more.

You're singing.

Joni Mitchell with "You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)." Before that, the Illuminati Hotties with "You're Better Than Ever." And we kicked off the set with "Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age" by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Those were songs about longevity, growth, and radio. We have a question from the audience participants on today's show. Steven.

Hi.

What's your question?

So at the beginning of a music set, there is instructions given to file this set under a name. Would you be willing to explain what that means?

Steven, I'm so glad you asked. That little sequence of letters and codes, usually, in most shows, refers to a Library of Congress call number, usually for a particular book that we look up in the Library of Congress, look up a specific call number, and put it in there. I know that you're going to ask me exactly which this book is, but I've forgotten since I programmed it into the script last night. But HE9711, it either has to do with--

With aging, right?

Yeah, it could be like aging, longevity, something like that. We take the theme of the songs and decide what unites them, and try to pick out a book, or in some cases, an archive record, a finding aid, something like that. Sometimes we even use Dewey decimal. Now, that's what we decided to do on this show. A lot of libraries decide to do that. Should they do that? Should we do that? I don't know, but that's what we do.

I want to point out that Wendy's shrug was eloquent and aggressive.

OK. So back to-- back to the show? Back to the show? Back to the show. OK. You're listening to Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called "10 Years"--

"10 Years, Man! 10 Years."

"10 years." Ameet, I've got a question for you. What do you take away from Lost in the Stacks and use in your work in the library?

So the best thing about the show is we have an excuse to reach out to people that we admire and try to get 30 minutes on the phone. And we talked about all of the great students that have been on part of the show, but just think about all of the incredible librarians and archivists and the archivist of the United States, for example, people that are pretty high up in the profession, or doing creative things, they've been part of the show. And that list would be very long.

Fred, we should ask you. What do you take from Lost in the Stacks and apply to your professional job?

I think along the same lines as Ameet. It's a way to engage with what you learn about your profession. So everyone in librarianship is always learning more about librarianship. But sometimes when something comes across my radar, news feed, or something like that, I think, oh, this would be a good opportunity to not only learn more about it myself, but share it with a wider audience.

The thing that popped in my mind-- I think it's related to that-- is the Charlieism of, "Can you unpack that for me?" Because I think about that all the time. Not every day, maybe almost every day. And I think this comfort with-- or this embrace of curiosity that that question is, and also a comfort with not knowing, and just a delight in wanting to learn and making space to listen to someone else who can share or teach something. The unpacking, I take with me.

I'm going to cut that out and put it into my portfolio for promotion review, because that's very good. Marlee.

Yeah, that's-- being very curious, digging, digging as deep as we can in 8 or 9 minutes, learning to ask better questions. Rolling with it is something that I take into the classroom every time I go to teach something.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm starting to see a lot more the interplay of spontaneity and creativity and the chance to come back the next Friday and to learn a little bit more and to improve. That's all stuff that I bring into teaching as well.

Sometimes when Fred and I are planning class sessions, I'll end up saying, and then in the next segment, I mean, in the next activity. Like, I just think in terms of the radio show, and how the flow of the project goes. Lizzy, you ejected from librarianship. And I think that worked out for you. Have you-- did you take anything with you to your employer that can stay unnamed if you wish, or we can open it up?

Oh, I don't know that it has to be a secret.

All right.

Yeah. So I work at Mailchimp.

That's CIA.

Yeah!

And one of the most directly relevant things that I feel like I definitely learned a lot about and improved, which was already touched on, was just asking questions, because I went initially into a user research role. And so a big part of the work that I've done is understanding what people are trying to achieve when they use a tool like Mailchimp, so that we can make it better.

Very nice. Wendy, I'm going to fill just the tiniest bit of time, so the microphone can get over to you, so that you can close the segment, because we've got a script, and we're following it all the way to the end.

So I get to say this show title, too? I'm excited. This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called "10 Years, Woman! 10 YEARS."

Nicely done.

We'll be back after a music set.

File this set under Z682.T6.

Hi, this is Karen. I didn't realize until I was reading the information about Lost in the Stacks' 10th anniversary that I was actually on the very first show. And I'm really honored and delighted to have that piece of news, because Lost in the Stacks has become such an amazing addition to our community. Wonderful, wonderful work. The interviews are always inspiring and unusual and interesting. And so happy, happy, happy 10th anniversary, Lost in the Stacks. Here's to 10 more great years.

[TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS, "PRESSURE DROP"] I say, a pressure drop Oh, pressure Oh, yeah, pressure

"Pressure Drop" by Toots and the Maytals. Before that, "7 Times Around the Sun" by the Jim Jones Revue.

Played 1.4 times to make it 10 times around the sun.

A special request from Philip Burrus, by the way. See, you get math. You get everything in Lost in the Stacks. These were songs about getting things right, getting things wrong, and keeping up the work just the same.

Happy birthday, Lost in the Stacks, the once only and now original research library rock and roll radio show. I think to finish off, we're going to let Philip Burrus take us out. He chose the Jim Jones Revue, and now you get to put a final thought on this episode.

So that Jim Jones Revue song talked about carrying a load seven times around the sun. You've done it 10 here. I learned of that song on this show, and that first promo ran, I think, two good weeks before the first show. So as a listener for 10 years and two weeks, I have to say I am-- I continue to be amazed by the creativity and ingenuity of this show. You've taken a concept and made it really an Atlanta institution.

Everyone needs to know that Philip did that top of his head. No notes, no preparation.

But we'll pay him.

And now, the credits. Let's count it off, Chuck.

3, 2, 1. [MUSIC PLAYING] 2, 3, 4

Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, produced by Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Wendy Hagenmaier, and Fred Rascoe.

Matthew was our engineer today, and the show was brought to you in part by the library collective, and their social and professional network, the League of Awesome Librarians, LAL. Find out more about them at thelibrarycollective.org.

Legal counsel and a birthday cake with a file in it. We're provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.

Special thanks to every listener who ever called in, wrote us a letter, a postcard, or an email, or met us and said, oh, you do Lost in the Stacks? I love that show. True story-- once I met someone and [they] said, "Oh, you do Lost in the Stacks? I like it. It's kind of dry sometimes."

CHARLIE BENNETT: And I don't know how to follow that up, except to say, and thank you, as always, to each and every one of you on the other end of this mic, listening to this show.

Find us online at lostinthestacks.org. And you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix.

Kind of dry sometimes? Man, Fred! We're having a celebration. Next week on Lost in the Stacks, just after Data Privacy Day, a show called "#DoNoHarm."

It's time for our last song today. I'm getting choked up. We're 10 years older.

A little bit greyer.

Hopefully, we're 10 years wiser.

Nope.

A lot has changed, and a lot will continue to change, but one thing that will stay the same is that college radio is always going to be left on the dial and right on the music.

Ameet, let me stop you there for a second. How many people do you think still look at a dial when they're listening to radio?

You can't-- you can do that in the Retro Tech Lab.

Oh, very nice shout out.

Let's close with a live version of "Left of the Dial" by The Replacements right here on Lost in the Stacks. Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend. We love you!