Chris McKay & The Critical Darlings at WUOG

In a weak moment, I invited that no good slacker Chris McKay and his buddies to come dj with me at WUOG one Tuesday night. Mistake. I’m just kidding, we actually had a lot of fun while causing all sorts of mayhem.

Chris, Josh, and Frank came into the station quietly, passing by our two singer/songwriters in the lobby and leaping into the control room where I was happily typing away for this blog. We sat around just chatting for a bit, discussing the departure of their guitarist and listening to Young Goodman Brown. Through a flurry of mixed signals, I mistakenly cut off Mr. Brown’s performance on the last song. My apologies. A brief talk about what was expected of my guests led to several cheeky looking eyes, especially from Chris.

As always, we started off with Pylon. I sent the boys from the room to go gather some local stuff for their shift. Imagine my surprise when they came back with roughly half the collection cradled in their arms. It shouldn’t be a surprise that they had a bit of difficulty deciding what to play. I always try to make my guest djs comfortable but I insist that they read the promos, ads, and weather reports. It gives them a feel of being a real dj, having to read difficult names and announcements on air.

Josh was pretty quiet for most of the night. A bit shy and very much the strong, silent type, he drums for the Critical Darlings. Frank was probably most at ease with being a dj, picking out songs before time was up, checking on the playlist, etc. Chris…well, he’s Chris. Every single time that microphone went on, it was a verbal sparring match.

“MY NAME IS NOT GORDON!” I yelled across the room as Chris was telling our lovely audience what songs we had just played. Gordon Steep. Really? I understand my last name is quite ripe for parody but sorry Chris, R.E.M. beat you to that punch a long time ago. This Gordon/Jordan thing ended up fueling most of our material with Chris’ constant advertising for a guitarist filing up the rest of our banter.

I did get to ask a few questions of the band, like where “Satisfactionista” came from. It’s a good term for Chris. Frank and Chris also discussed the origin of “Rage On” since the song was requested by a listener. I had to ask the favorite magical creature question again. The answer? A foop.

Listening in via our webstream were two of my buddies from Murmurs. Needless to say, they were on Facebook chat cracking up the entire time and encouraging the abovementioned teasing and torture. I may have threatened to strangle Chris at one point. Or three.

All in all, it was a really fun night. I felt a little bad that I was still absolutely beat from staying up for the past 48 hours getting some work done. Regardless, I had fun and I hope they did too.