An emerging radio-personality and established hip-hop DJ, Peter Rosenberg earned his stripes at WMUC while a student at the University of Maryland. After brief stints at WPGC and WHFS, Peter found a home at WJFK hosting an experimental talk radio show that fused discussions of hip-hop, sports, and politics. Already an edgy proposition for the stodgy WJFK, The Peter Rosenberg show was canceled after one too many run-ins with local talk radio darlings Don and Mike.

A media maven in the making, Peter quickly packed up and relocated to New York - landing a spot on the weekend graveyard shift at Hot97. His show brings a mix of underground hip hop both new and old, interviews, freestyles, an odd fascination with pro wrestling and Rick Ric Flair, and something that has long been missing from NYC corporate radio—D.C. Hip Hop.

Check out last week’s show, which features all new material from Wale, Tabi Bonney, Oddisee, Kev Brown, Kaimber, The Package and others.

Real Late with Peter Rosenberg airs Sunday nights in New York City from 1-3 AM on 97.1 FM. MP3s are available at RosenbergRadio.com

Also: check out his videos on YouTube!

Top Shelf Oldies is an nighttime-only Internet radio station dedicated to spinning the rarest of rarities from the ’50s and ’60s pop charts. (Actually, some of them are so rare that they never even made the pop charts.) In a single three- to four-hour shift, you’re likely to hear maybe two songs you’ve heard before–unless you’re an extremely knowledgeable oldies connoisseur.

Tuesday nights, Top Shelf Oldies offers a local connection with a show called “The Time Machine,” hosted by a rotating set of three men who call themselves the DC Dynamos. Tonight, and every third Tuesday night from 8 to 11 p.m., it’s Ken Carpenter’s turn…although longtime D.C. residents and aficionados may know him better as Ken Sleeman, general manager in the ’70s for Georgetown University’s then-notorious WGTB-FM. Tune in for great oldies you’ve never heard, and drop into the chatroom to tell Ken hello.

In writing about the new Earth album, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, I was reminded of the first time I heard Earth 2, the Seattle act’s debut full-length and the record that started the drone-metal movement.

Earth 2 came out on Sub Pop in 1993, at the height of the grunge boom. At the time, I was a volunteer at a college radio station. I was as indifferent to grunge as was possible at the time, though I liked a song here and there (Nirvana’s “Negative Creep” and Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick”). Thus, I didn’t even bother listening to Earth 2 when it arrived at the radio station. I just looked at the back cover photo of Dylan Carlson and his lone bandmate and decided that it was odd—and kind of sad—that this grunge band didn’t even have a drummer.

It wasn’t until a few years later, in 1996, that I found out that Earth 2 isn’t really a grunge record. I first heard it when I visited the Trans Am house in Takoma Park to interview the D.C. post-rock band for a never-published issue of my fanzine. It was late one Sunday morning. Various housemates and houseguests were beginning to stir and eat cold pizza when I got there.

Before long I noticed that there was a really pleasant buzz coming from the speakers in the living room. Ambient instrumentals were all the rage at the time and I just figured that this churning, slow-burning music was the product of some new band that Trans Am had befriended on the road (the trio had already done a European tour with Tortoise at that point).

But I was wrong. It was Earth 2. At the time, no one was championing metal in the indie rock underground (grunge had ruined the sound of distorted guitar for a lot of alt-rock types), so whichever member of Trans Am rescued this disc from a used bin deserves props for recognizing it for what it was: a precursor to the rise of instrumental rock. Only later would it become clear what it is: a precursor to the advent of alt-metal.

More bad news from Kenya: three of the members of the DC/Nairobi afro-pop band Extra Golden are among those affected by the country’s post-election unrest.

Here are a couple of Washington City Paper pieces on the band: mine and Christopher Porter’s.

And here’s January 11, 2008 radio piece from NPR’s All Things Considered that addresses the band’s current misfortune:

Extra Golden Members Stranded in Kenya
By Joel Rose

The group’s American members are soliciting donations to help their Kenyan bandmates. Here’s the spiel from Pitchfork:

“We are asking for donations of $5. Of course we will accept any amount you can muster, but we believe that with enough contributions of $5 we can make a huge difference in our friends’ lives.

“To make a donation, please go to www.paypal.com and choose ’send money’. When asked for the email address of the recipient, enter ’service(at)kanyokanyo.com’. Please feel free to forward this message. We thank you in advance for your compassion and we hope that your help will enable us to compose a song of thanks for our next album.”

While reading news of yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing–the one at which singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett testified–I, for one, was surprised to discover that one of DC’s most successful composers has been hiding in plain sight for years. As it turns out, Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican and former chairman of the aforementioned Committee, writes gospel hymns and country tunes. Not only that, he has some hit records to prove it.

According to Dana Milbank’s article in today’s Post, Hatch claimed at the hearing–which was called “Exploring the Scope of Public Performance Rights”–that, “I have one gold and one platinum record, but I’ve been told I would have more if it wasn’t for piracy.”

His discography doesn’t cry out, STEAL ME, but the guy does have a song on the Ocean’s Twelve soundtrack, so perhaps his comment is less self-aggrandizing than it sounds. Who’s up for an illegal download of “Morning Breaks on Arlington”?

Once upon a time, in the ’70s, the District was home to one of the most subversive, radical, and otherwise adventurous college radio stations in the U.S., WGTB at Georgetown University. (Here’s a City Paper cover story on the station from several years ago.) Run by a collective of radical activists (few of whom actually attended Georgetown), WGTB was called “the voice of third-world communism” by Spiro Agnew. He was referring to WGTB’s lefty news programming, but the station was also an outlet for some of the most innovative and interesting music of the time. Psychedelic and progressive rock, avant-garde jazz, and early punk records all emanated from its Georgetown campus studio.

Today WGTB still exists, but as an internet-only station that’s nowhere near the controversial and galvanizing force it once was.

But you can still hear the sounds of its Golden Age. Every Wednesday, the net radio station WGAY broadcasts a 24-hour set from its collection of hundreds of WGTB airchecks. For a once-a-week return to the days when FM radio meant challenging the government in a government town, taunting the Catholic university that funded your enterprise, and playing music that couldn’t be heard anywhere else, go to WGAY’s website and click the “Listen Now” link at the top of the page.