This week, we’re tuning in with a few of the DJs for U.Va.’s newest radio station, WXTJ. The station is student-run and follows a free-form format, so there’s no rotation of songs that DJs must play. DJs are entirely responsible for finding and playing their own selections, and their varying tastes make WXTJ one of Charlottesville’s most musically-diverse radio stations.
WXTJ is off the air this summer, but the DJs have you covered with a massive playlist full of music to keep you in the loop. The station will return to streaming in the fall, and will soon be on the local airwaves as WXTJ 100.1 FM.
Note: The station does more than broadcast tunes. They’re hosting a house show featuring some bands from Charlottesville, Richmond, and Harrisonburg next week.
Sara Ho (third from left) is one of three hosts of WXTJ’s “Two and a Half Asians”
Sara Ho
Co-coordinating Director and co-host, Two and a Half Asians
Songs 1-13
Q. What was the first song you loved?
A. Bongo Bong, Manu Chao, My parents owned a copy of Putumayo’s World Playground compilation for kids which my sister and I have probably replayed a bajillion times. Thanks Mom and Dad.
Q. What was the last song you loved?
A. My co-host, Rebecca, just sent me a song called “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” by Martha Wainwright, because it’s “right up my alley.” It is actually pretty good.
Q.What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. American Idiot by Green Day on CD. I was in middle school and I bought it from Best Buy.What was the first album you bought with your own money?
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. A compilation of Charles Aznavour’s greatest hits (I’m studying abroad in France right now).
Q. What is the best part of being on the radio?
A. 1.) Being pushed to discover new, interesting music to play every week. A lot of WTJU veterans have an encyclopedic knowledge of music, while I have yet to reach that level.
2.) For two hours every week I have to drop everything I’m doing and just sit and listen to music with my co-hosts, which makes for some great times.
3.) People are easily impressed when I tell them I’m on college radio (but then get disappointed when I tell them we’re not on FM …at least not yet!)
This is what I’ve been listening to lately. I’ve been listening to mixtapes from the music blog Aquarium Drunkard, which is a great place to find forgotten music from the 60s or 70s – a lot of which is not on Spotify or practically anywhere else on the internet. That’s where I first heard Miriam Makeba and Blaze Foley. Some of the artists here are ones that I first heard on WTJU and WXTJ, like Vaadat Charigim, Dark Dark Dark, and Beat Happening.
Judith Young
Judith Young
Co-host, Judith and Sam Awesome Show, Great Job!; Booking
Songs 14-25
Q. What was the first song you ever loved?
A. “Lucky” by Britney Spears. Oops! I Did It Again was probably the first album that was mine instead of my parents’. I had choreographed dance moves.
Q. What was the last song you loved?
A. “Grass Stain” by Waxahatchee killed me recently. I love it so much. She gives me all the feels.
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. The first album I remember buying myself was Pretty. Odd. by Panic At The Disco when I was probably 13. It’s still in my top 5 albums. I think it’s because it was one of my first ventures into my own music; it wasn’t just my parents’ music that I liked, or pop music for kids, or just Top 40 stuff that everyone listened to. It felt like my own music and that I could listen to whatever I wanted, and I think that was really a game changer. Also “Northern Downpour,” please.
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. Richmond band Night Idea’s cassette Paths, when I saw them at the Tea Bazaar. They’re great. Please check ’em out.
Q. What is the best part of being on the radio?
A. The best part is forcing people to listen to what I want to listen to. Like when I want to play Hall & Oates for an hour, the people are just gonna have to take it.
I chose songs that I have been recently listening to, for the most part. Tryna keep it fresh.
Rebecca Graham in the WXTJ studio
Rebecca Graham
Co-host, Two and a Half Asians
Songs 26-37
Q. What was the first song you ever loved?
A. My first musical love will always be “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. I can never get enough of it and it’s always really exciting to have a definite answer when asked, “What’s your favorite song of all time?”
Q. What was the last song you loved?
A. “Loud Places” by Jamie xx and Romy from The xx. They really knew what they were doing with that one.
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. It was the Hot Fuss CD by the Killers, though it was really a joint purchase with my older sister. I really attribute my love of musical discovery to her.
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence + The Machine. It’s a masterpiece.
Q. What’s the best part of being on the radio?
A. I never realized how much I would enjoy hosting a radio show. The best part of being on WXTJ is its core goal of sharing good music. It is one of my favorite past times. I absolutely love being able evoke emotion from people solely because of the music I choose to share with them. Mutual appreciation of certain songs or artists is a really beautiful thing and finding delicious tunage that I’m able to play for other people gets me ridiculously excited every week when the good old time slot of my show comes around.
Here’s a mix of what I’m into right now and what I will never stop listening to.
Jim Clarke
Jim Clarke
Co-host, Jim and Andrew in the Morning; Producer, Altered Frequency
Songs 38-48
Q. What was the first song you loved?
A. “The Quiet Things No One Ever Knows” by Brand New
Q. What was the last song you loved?
A. “Devil’s Whisper” by Raury
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. This Will Be the Death of Us by Set Your Goals
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. Pale Horses by MeWithoutYou
Q. What is the best part of being on the radio?
A. The best part of being on the radio is interacting with the audience. As self-indulgent as subjecting our music taste on the public can be, the texts, calls, and Facebook messages from our listener(s) bring us to the board every Saturday morning.
The bizarre selection of songs I’ve chosen represents the albums and artists that have defined my summer so far. They’ve played on repeat in my car during traffic jams, bumped me through slow days at work, and have been horrifically disfigured during roadtrip singalongs with friends. For me, these are the sounds of summer 2015, the punk-post-indie-hiphop soundtrack of my last summer of irresponsible adolescence and the strange limbo space of collegiate pre-adulthood.
Sarah Alberstein
Sarah Alberstein
Co-host, B2B Underground; Station graphics
Songs 49-59
Q. What was the first song you loved?
A. “Dreams” by The Cranberries
Q. What was the last song you loved?
A. “Archie, Marry Me” by Alvvays
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. The Boy Who Never by Landon Pigg
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. Greatest Hits/Best Of Salt-N-Pepa
Q. What is the best part of being on the radio?
A. I get to be on the radio! Plus I’ve met some of the coolest people at U.Va. through radio. It’s a fun lil’ niche community within the university where everyone just hangs and appreciates music together.
Here are some songs I’ve been listening to lately or, songs I’ve recently discovered and am feelin’.
Will Mullany
Will Mullany
Co-coordinating director; Producer, Altered Frequency; Co-host, Hummus for Breakfast
Songs 60-71
Q. What was the first song you ever loved?
A. Probably the entire Hard Days Night Beatles album due to repeated exposure to the film by my parents.
If we are being truly accurate, it was probably one of the songs that my Dad played on piano when I was falling all over the floor as a toddler. He would play a bunch of old, old blues and folk songs, most of which came out of a 1930’s piano music book from a public school in Iowa. A bunch of Stephen Foster songs like “Old Black Joe,” “Old Folks At Home” and “Hard Times” and other songs. Not exactly what I continue to listen to, but that sort of old, early American music really continue to strike at my heartstrings when they reenter my life from time to time.
Q. What was the last song you loved?
A. I had a really serious case of frission the other day listening to Backwards by LSD and The Search For God.
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. Embarrassingly enough, the first purchase I can remember making was this really silly song “Another Postcard” by the Barenaked Ladies for 99 cents off the iTunes store in 2003. I was too young to know how to work the whole system (I was in third grade), but for some reason I really wanted that song. I think I was drawn to its absolute absurdity as a piece of music. So, I gave my mother 99 cents in my hard earned change and had her get it for me. [I don’t have the song in my library anymore. Not too broken up about it.]
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. Den-Mate’s self titled debut.She’s a friend of mine from high school, based around the D.C. area. I’m hoping to get her to come to Charlottesville for a show with WXTJ.
Q. What’s the best part of being on the radio?
A. If you treat your 2-hour a week show like a job, it becomes a powerful, driving force to dig through all the music that is out there and find music that is both awesome and that some people might not have been exposed to. I’ve found some pretty weird stuff that I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise putting together shows for XTJ. Also nice: Having time to say whatever you want without people back talking you.
One week ago, I was living in an unfinished basement and had been in the mood for pretty lo-fi, weird, basement-type guitar music. That takes us through track 6. I have since moved into the upstairs of the same house, and am inhabiting a beautiful white room with comparatively outstanding ventilation, so I’ve been in the mood for more dreamy and swirly, reverb soaked music since then.
Eleanor Birle
Eleanor Birle
Co-host,
Songs 72-82
Q. What was the first song you ever loved?
A. “Shoop,” by Salt-N-Pepa. I have my dad’s vinyl copy of the single framed in my room.
Q. What was the most recent song you loved?
A. It changes so frequently, but currently its any track off Kendrick Lamar’s new album, To Pimp a Butterfly.
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. I’m pretty sure the first album I bough with my own money was a Red Hot Chili Peppers album.
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. Vince Staples’s Summertime ’06.
Q. What is the best part of being on the radio?
A. I have met all my best friends, and my current roommate, through the radio and to me, that is definitely the best part.
My song selection is a range of rap and hip-hop, ranging from fresh tracks that have been released this week to 90’s songs I listened to growing up. I grew up listening to a lot of punk music as well, and I see a lot of that in much of the hip-hop I love today.
Ruby Shrestha
Ruby Shrestha
Host, Gettin’ Rubylicious
Songs 82-92
Q. What was the first song you ever loved?
A. I think the first song I ever loved was 1901 by Phoenix. Their album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has just come out and I had recently discovered the alternative station in my hometown. I would listen to 1901 everyday on my cheap iPod knockoff until about the end of my freshman year. This was the song that really sparked my interest in music outside of top 40 pop.
Q. What was the last (most recent) song you loved?
A.The most recent song I’ve loved is Cry by Made in Heights. Sabzi of Blue Scholars takes care of the production aspect of this fantastic duo. He uses all of these weird elements to make up the intro to the song. He uses this strange high pitched dog bark, breaks it down and somehow turns into the back beat for the song.
Q. What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A. Embarrassingly enough my first album I bought was the High School Musical 2 soundtrack. I was in middle school and was in love with Zac Efron. I would do anything to support Zefron, so I bought the CD with my birthday money.
Q. What is your most recent album purchase?
A. Jamie xx’s In Colour and Made in Heights’ Without my Enemy What Would I Do
Q. What’s the best part of being on the radio?
A. I love being forced to find new music for each week (no sarcasm intended). I’m the type of person who listens to the same 5 songs on repeat until I find something better. So being forced to make a ~2 hour setlist every week forces me to actively find more music that I like and the audience might potentially like as well. I also like sharing new music with my audience that they might not have heard of.
Due to the absurd amount of construction on McCormick Road and my lack of a vehicle, I’m required to walk ~20mins to work everyday (which is not a bad thing). Because I am part of the generation that likes to plug and ignore my surroundings, naturally, I made a playlist for going to work. The songs on the playlist are not all from my “walking to work” playlist, but they do compromise a good chunk of it. The first few songs are my pump up jamz that wake me up at 7:30 am.
Cville Niche 
August 20th, 2015 → 12:02 pm
[…] he landed a coveted (and rare) spot as a DJ in WTJU’s rock department. He also helped establish WXTJ, U.Va.’s student-run radio station, a couple of years […]