The WFMU 2012 Marathon Has Begun!; Your Chance(s) to Support The Castle Come This Thu./Fri. and Next!

WFMU is essentially about fun. Good times, good music, laughs, and personalities our listeners can relate to. In my 28 years on-and-off with this most-unique broadcast entity, I have been continually amazed that a radio station with no particular regional or political focus continues to garner the support from our listeners that it does. Back in the 1980s, when the marathon goals were much more modest, only in the tens on thousands, our listeners supported us then as they do now, with a goal set at 1.3 million. This means that WFMU has grown with the culture, grown with the economy, and most importantly, the populace. In the face of do-it-yourself music stations like Pandora, and Clear-Channel homogenization of nearly everything else, YOU want us to keep going, and that just about brings a tear to these hardened old eyes.

It's early Spring again, already time for the 2012 WFMU marathon (we began officially at 9 a.m. this morning), and I look forward to WFMU's fundraiser, as the most listenable, party-atmosphere, good-time shilling in public broadcasting. As opposed to dreading the pumping and the pitching, I dearly look forward to it, and every time that phone rings during one of my shifts, it's true excitement. I'm negative, dreary, and dour about most things in life, but the WFMU marathon is one happening that finds me earnestly pumped. We make a great time of it, the staff at large, broken off into pairs as we are for the occasion, and this year promises to be the height of entertainment.

In terms of my show specifically, I have watched this show's community grow greatly over the last year. Tremendous numbers, new faces and names are in the My Castle of Quiet family since Spring 2011, and the more I stumble upon new members of my tribe, by doing this show every week, well, the merrier. I'm finding that there are a lot of people out there who "get" The Castle's cinematic concoction of modern noise and sound art, horror soundtracks, and black metal music and doom, more and more, the longer the show is in existence.

So, what do I specifically have for you this year? The Castle premium to end all, perhaps, (though, in my view, they've all been pretty damn good); for the third year in a row, I have solicited, unreleased, original rare tracks from the artists themselves, artists that have in one way or another, through live appearance or simply through constant airplay, have been favorites, "house bands" of the My Castle of Quiet program. The collection is a very-limited CDr (as all WFMU marathon premiums are) available to anyone who pledges $75 or more specifically to my program. It's entitled In the Dark, There Are Fingers That Grab, My Castle of Quiet companion #3, and here's what you get—all new, previously unreleased tracks by Wretched Worst, NRIII, Enslaved By Owls, Daath Valley (Steve Witchbeam & Steve Kenney), Lea Bertucci (of Twistycat), Kavra, Malkuth, Moonknight, FUN, Grasshopper, Decimus, Lord Time, Glass Coffin, Harassor, Demonologists, and Mr. Matthews. Original artwork, front and back-cover paintings by Sarah Zahn. As Krusty the Clown would say, "Hah? Hah?!"

You can pledge to the show at any time by using the digital "widget" at our main playlist page (click on "PLEDGE"), or by visiting this page, which neatly displays the station-oriented swag your pledge can earn you.

Or, simply wait for The Castle's real-time fundraising broadcasts, this week, at midnight, Thu./Fri., Feb. 23/24 (with co-host Diane Kamikaze), and the following week, March 1/2, (with co-host Professor Dum Dum.) Please, join in the fun, which is to the greatest extent what WFMU is really about, though even fun costs money, and must face the reality of a yearly operating budget. You can win prizes specifically geared to our programming, drawings are for anyone who pledges $15 or more, and don't forget that doozy of a premium CDr.

I'll say thanks in advance, or as Ozzy might put it, "I LOVE YOU ALL!!!" I truly hope to connect with you during these next two weeks. Make an old, horror-obsessed freak proud, and remember that it's the gooey, hard-to-define ectoplasm between the larger chunks, the misty aether of commonality, that ultimately holds our community together.

Your host and author,
Wm. M. Berger