-originally aired on WTTU 88.5 FM The Nest on Saturday, March 14, 2026
-listen to the audio archive:
Stream The 40th Anniversary of United Underground - TOTR 523 by Teacher On The Radio | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
-most of the episode is a lo-fi cassette rip of my high school radio show on WSHJ 88.3 FM in Southfield, Michigan, from spring 1986
-all views only represent the host, the guests, & the artists played, never the student managers or the Communication department or the university
U2 - The Three Sunrises
R.E.M. - Green Grow The Rushes
United Underground - April 9, 1986 - WSHJ 88.3 FM in Southfield, Michigan
hosted by Andy Smith
-This is a reconstructed playlist & a partial recording ripped from cassette to CDR to digital mp3; there are possibly songs played that are missing from the playlist; there are possibly songs listed that were played on the radio but are not played here; some songs may be excerpts. “United Underground” was a three hour program, & this is a 90-minute tape.
Cabaret Voltaire - Partially Submerged
Salem 66 - Chinchilla
Salem 66 - Across The Sea
R.E.M. - Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)
[brief excerpt of public service announcement]
R.E.M. - Can’t Get There From Here
Sonic Youth - Brave Men Run (In My Family)
The Pogues - Sally MacLennane
(Andy talk back; dedication to Ernst)
The Replacements - Here Comes A Regular
Rain Parade - Kaleidoscope
Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Brand New Friend
Marc Almond & the Willing Sinners - Oily Black Limousine
Cactus World News - Skin and Dust
Tom Waits - Downtown Train
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Some Candy Talking
The Men They Couldn’t Hang - The Bells
The Housemartins - Anxious
(Andy talk back; 8pm- ‘completely groovy music’; reading from the Black Poets anthology; “roses and revolution” by Dudley Randall)
Musing on roses and revolutions,
I saw night close down on the earth like a great dark wing,
and the lighted cities were like tapers in the night,
and I heard the lamentations of a million hearts
regretting life and crying for the grave,
and I saw the Negro lying in the swamp with his face
blown off,
and the northern cities with his manhood maligned and felt
the writhing
of his viscera like that of a hare hunted down or the
bear at bay,
and I saw men working and taking joy in their work
and embracing the hard eyed whore with joyless excitement
and lying with wives and virgins in impotence
And as I groped in darkness
and felt the pain of million,
gradually, like day driving night across the continent,
I saw dawn upon them like the sun a vision
of a time when all men walk proudly through the earth
and the bombs and missiles lie at the bottom of the ocean
like the bones of dinosaurs buried under the shale of eras,
and men strive with each other not for power or the
accumulation of paper
but in joy create for others the house, the poem, the game
of athletic beauty.
Then washed in the brightness of this vision,
I saw how in its radiance would grow and be nourished
and suddenly
burst into terrible and splendid bloom
the blood-red flower of revolution…
Husker Du - Ticket To Ride
Husker Du - Green Eyes
Julian Cope - Kolly Kibber’s Birthday
The Cult - Rain
(Andy talk back; Kahlil Gibran - Sand and Foam)
Lou Reed - Street Hassle
Boomtown Rats - Drag Me Down
Elvis Costello & the Attractions - Let Them All Talk
The Skids - Circus Games
(Andy talk back; “unlike those big corporate ones”; reading from the Black Poets anthology; “The Plight” - James W. Thomspson)
The Virgin Prunes - Ballad of the Man
Howard Devoto - The Rainy Season
Mike Peters - Radio i.d.
The Alarm - Across The Border
The Alarm - Absolute Reality
(Andy talk back; calendar: anti-war events, “open stage” - community concert series, concerts, etc.; “I graduate from high school on June 12”; “Phillip Glass is playing....look around the papers for that”)
Philip Glass - ???
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
The Beatles - Love To You
Hair - The Flesh Failures
(Andy talk, poem; the security told us to sit down)
The Church - Unguarded Moment
Echo & The Bunnymen - Never Stop
(don’t talk about it, “not meant to be a great eulogy” for Paula Ward)
U2 - Bad
10,000 Maniacs - Daktari
Lone Justice - Sweet Sweet Baby (I’m Falling)
The Cure - In Between Days
--
To produce the weekly episode of “United Underground” each Wednesday night, we hauled two giant wooden crates of vinyl albums in the back of my shiny blue Subaru, from our suburban bungalow in the Ravines, to the industrial-looking high school at the corner of 10 Mile & Lahser. Some of those discs were found on weekly borrowing trips to Play It Again Records on Northwestern Highway. In exchange for an informal shout-out on the air, Alan lent me a stack of albums from his used stock for each show every week. My high school sat adjacent to the Presbyterian church I attended those four years; the same church campus where my Daddy’s ashes are interred.
Often I would bring friends with me to the live broadcast, to help write down in a log all the songs we played in our 3-hour shift. Friends also helped me answer the phones, which sometimes rang off the wall. I reckon I had way more regular listeners back then, than I do now on the college radio, where I have hosted a program for almost 19 years. Many of my friends would listen, & I also made friends with lots of the people, who began as listeners. Not all listeners were sympathetic fans, though.
The episode (from which I have recovered these portions from the cassette) was aired on April 9, 1986. Its immersion in 80’s indie is indicative of my eclectic tastes from those days. But we were also a punk & hardcore adjacent program. The following Wednesday, the day after the United States attacked Libya, I went all-in with my fiery activist passions. (The number of anti-war events mentioned between concert announcements on the calendar run-down in this salvaged 4-9-1986 episode is evidence of my activist yearnings of those days.)
That concluding spring term on the air, the spring of my senior year, I invited the communist lead guitarist of a local punk band Forced Anger to be my guest on the air, to advocate for a national student strike called “No Business As Usual,” not unlike the student strikes of the 1960s, not unlike the current anti-ICE walkouts or the BLM activity among youth in 2o2o, though this 1986 event was much smaller.
The day after that show, the day after the punk guitarist had me play some crunchy cuss-filled & n-word-laced callouts about “the pigs” by a band called The D***s & after advertising the student strike, basically promoting truancy to every high school listener in the metro area, I found myself in the Principal’s office. I sat in the hot seat for a meeting about the previous night’s episode. It didn’t go well.
(The implication of my worst iteration in the authority figure's eyes was that Reagan was a "pig" for attacking Libya & supporting the Contras & stoking Cold War nuke fears, among many other things, like demonizing the LGBTQ community during the AIDS crisis.)
As the principal leaned in to defend guns, cops, armies, Reagan, ‘murica, & the like, I found myself invoking Jesus of Nazareth & the Catholic-Worker-style pacifism I had inherited from my lefty parents. The Principal wanted to make sure, though, that I would renounce pacifism if someone raped my grandmother. That is the argument they always take. (I actually had a gun-nut here in Tennessee tell me that my pacifism basically proved I didn’t love my wife, because nothing says marital fidelity like owning a firearm to defend your castle. My wife agrees with me, though, about all that peace & love stuff. We are not stockpiling any second-amendment bunkers at our house.)
Even though I got suspended & my radio show was summarily yanked from the airwaves, I did sneak back on the WSHJ airwaves a couple of times. Later that same spring, we were excited that the station got invited to do a remote broadcast at the local mall. With permission from our faculty adviser, I got to co-host with the younger sister of the Disoriented Rain Dance fanzine editor & on-again off-again sweetheart.
Beyond that, I was still required to attend the radio class period each weekday. That class was always a joyfully chill affair, especially for folks like me with severe senioritis. One weekday after seeing the legendary Layabouts for the first time at Alvin’s by Wayne State, I snuck into the booth to broadcast tracks from the NO MASTERS album that I had acquired the night before. If anyone was listening, they were treated to the subversive ska-&-world-music-infused skank & dance rock of Detroit’s “laziest” band.
That night at Alvin’s would be a portal to my future. I met my lifelong friend & fellow radio guy Peter Werbe for the first time at the show. Peter’s Sunday night WRIF show Nightcall was a staple for young liberals & lefties across the Metro area. We would become intense collaborators for the ensuing decades. After the pandemic, Peter published his novel “Summer On Fire” about the Detroit rebellion of 1967 & the counterculture community of that heady heyday. That book would bring us full circle, as it would occasionally end up on my American Mixtape syllabus & was the focus of TOTR 395 back in 2021.
