Panic , and I was like, “Oh my god, what’s this?” They couldn’t believe this fifteen-year-old girl was buying this record.And then I started working at [Massachusetts-based music chain] Strawberries Records & Tapes, and we all know that no one works in a record shop for the money.
Sharing music and building community is at the heart of what you do, whether it’s Classic Album Sundays or Balearic Breakfast . Where did this all begin for you? Collen “Cosmo” Murphy: I had a show for four years on my high-school radio station,WHHB [in Holliston, Massachusetts]. I was really into turning people on to music. I had started record collecting when I was fifteen and, at sixteen, was working in a record shop. I grew up in a small New England town where pretty much everybody listened to classic rock and Top 40, so I was a bit of an anomaly, but I had some other friends too that were into different kinds of music. One was Mary Caruso, who I did the radio show with called Punk, Funk, and Junk .
So that became your education?
Everyone that worked there was a music obsessive, and had their speciality. My assistant manager was a jazz fanatic and introduced me to Charles Mingus, Pat Metheny, and Chico Freeman.Another manager was into 1960s psychedelia, so I got turned onto Electric Prunes, the Chocolate Watchband, and all those things. Another was a DJ who looked after the remix 12-inch section. So I was taking all of these things in.
It’s a great name. The title kind of gives it away but what were you playing?
What radio stations were you listening to?
I was playing more of the punk stuff but Mary was getting me into the new sounds of hip-hop and electro. I always had a really open mind with music, and loved searching for it. I would go into Boston on my own to [second-hand record store] Nuggets. One time, they were playing Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Rip, Rig, and
Boston had some of some of the most progressive commercial radio stations in the country. And there were two that I really listened to. One was WBCN, which was a freeform station that started in 1968, the year I was born. The program director, Oedipus, had a
32 WaxPoetics
( clockwise from top left ) Colleen’s alma mater, Holliston (Mass.) High School, home of her first radio station, WHHB; Colleen in Tokyo, on her first visit to Japan in 1989; flyer for a 1998 gig at New York’s Bar 85; photo booth slide from Tokyo; Flyer for a 1997 appearance at Precious Hall in Sapporo, Japan.
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