Crap from the Past Radio Show

Back in 2012, I did a posting entitled "Have You Never Been Mellow", which was about a local radio show that had been saved to the Internet Archive. That show ran on the Minneapolis radio station KLBB (1400 and 1470 AM) from April 1998 to May 1999 and was hosted by two DJ's: Chuck Tomlinson and Joel Stitzel. The show ran initially on Saturdays from 9-11 PM, then later on Sundays from 8-10 PM. The whole theme of that show was playing retro-music from the 1970's to the 1980's (hence the show was named after the 1975 Olivia Newton-John hit "Have You Never Been Mellow").

Anyway, it seems that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area has always enjoyed radio programs featuring older music as that show proves. "Have You Never Been Mellow" may have ended in 1999, but the idea of the show continues in another Twin Cities radio station which is what today's post is about.

The show I'm referring to is called "Crap from the Past" which airs on the Minnesota community radio station KFAI https://www.kfai.org/program/crapfromthepast/ (90.3 FM in Minneapolis and 106.7 FM in West St. Paul). The show currently airs on Friday nights from 10:00 PM to midnight. "Crap from the Past" is hosted by DJ and radio personality by Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber.

While the show's name is a bit cheeky, the content of the show is hardly irreverent. The station itself uses block programming, hence "Crap from the Past" is one of the station's more enduring programs (having aired since 1992 although it began in the town of Rochester, Minnesota, but has held its Friday night time slot since October 2002, and has been syndicated worldwide since November 2002). Since August 2017, "Crap from the Past" has been a full, 2-hour show (having been expanded from an original length of 90 minutes).

As noted, its now syndicated too, running in Tuscon, Arizona and has aired on about a dozen different stations over the years, including on stations in Germany, the UK, Singapore (in addition to a few Internet radio streams). Its most loyal and long-standing affiliate is a station in New Zealand, where the show continues to air regularly.

"Crap from the Past" is even "branded" with its own distinct logo and website at http://www.crapfromthepast.com/. The logo (shown below) uses the same typeface and looks a lot like the trademarked Compact Disc Digital Audio logo that was used for the 1982 introduction of the compact disc (or CD) which was co-developed by Philips Electronics and Sony. The show's website is very reminiscent of early internet websites before html programming enabled more dynamic graphic designs to be part of modern websites.

Show logo aside, the Minnesota community radio show "Crap from the Past" describes itself as "a pop music radio show for people who already know plenty about pop music." Or, simply, "a graduate-level course in pop."

Naturally, with its innovative retro-themed content, the show is also saved on Internet Archive (see https://archive.org/details/crapfromthepast for the Internet Archive's page), the content is certainly the type that has found a loyal audience. The links above provide several places to find and listen to old episodes of "Crap from the Past" so I won't repeat them again. The host admits that he's a middle-aged dad in his fifties, which perhaps not ironically describes me, too (minus the dad part). Still, there are evidently enough people in the Twin Cities area to drive a 2-hour show with this content for 2 decades (27 years to be precise), plus, as I noted, a predecessor show that ran on another Twin Cities show even before that suggests the content is far from dead yet. The name "Crap from the Past" is perhaps fitting. Have a listen to the show that aired on March 1, 2019 below, or by visiting https://archive.org/details/cftp-2019-03-01.