DJ Name: T-Time
Show Name: In The Garage
Show Time: Saturdays from 4-6 p.m.
Show Description: The best of garage rock, DIY, and emo.
How did you find out about WKNC?
I knew about WKNC when I came to NC State in 2018. I didn’t end up joining until Fall 2020 just because I was lazy. Then 2020 came around and I needed some human interaction. So I decided to join the radio station. And I guess over the pandemic, I had broadened my music taste quite a bit, so I felt that I was worthy.
Where did the idea for “In The Garage” originate?
So, the name of the show is a Weezer reference. It’s a song off of the blue album, “In The Garage.” I just thought it was a funny name, and that it was hilarious to have a Weezer reference that most people will probably look past. But the idea of it came just because I had just started getting into like, emo and punk over the like pandemic because before that I had only really listened to Gorillaz, classic rock, and Weezer. So when I decided to just broaden my musical horizon, emo was the genre that I stuck to.
Do your sets generally have specific themes, or are you just going by the general parameters you already have set for yourself?
I didn’t start doing themes until I got on HD-1. The thing with emo is that there’s a lot of discourse in the genre about whether we should classify different waves of emo. I personally like the wave system, you know, First and Second Wave are more like punk and raw kind of stuff. Third Wave is more like commercialized pop punk, you know, the emo that everybody knows. Fourth wave is more harkening back to the First and Second Wave and the Fifth wave is current emo. I like to do themes around different waves. Sometimes I’ll just make a theme based on how I was feeling that week. There’s also a few sub genres there’s, you know, Midwest Emo, Screamo, Math Rock fits in there somewhere. Yeah, but I just loosely base my shows around one of those things.
Favorite phone call you’ve ever gotten during a set?
I didn’t start getting phone calls until maybe about a month ago. And I mean, it’s still, you know, not as frequent as I expected it to be. But it still surprises me when I do get a phone call. I got a phone call once and it was an old man looking for a guy named Aidan. That was really funny. But, I think my favorite phone call was when I gave away Phoebe Bridgers tickets. And the person who called me was super excited. What I did to give them away was I said “Call the station and tell me your favorite emo band and you win Phoebe Bridgers tickets,” and they called in and they were like, “Pierce The Veil! Pierce The Veil!” And I got to be like, “You got the tickets.”
Do you have any guilty pleasure music or any music that you secretly like?
I don’t think there’s any music that I secretly like. Yeah, but I do have music that most people will be embarrassed to listen to. And those would be Weird Al, They Might Be Giants… I absolutely love the VeggieTales silly songs. Like, I’m not embarrassed to say that. But, um, if there was a way to, like, somehow sneak those into my set, I probably would. But yeah, I think I would lose a lot of listeners on that. I guess another guilty pleasure of mine would be like one hit wonders. Especially like from the 80s and 90s. I just think they’re fun.
Do you have a favorite one hit wonder?
I think my favorite one hit wonder would be “She Blinded Me With Science” by Thomas Dolby.
So before this interview I took a look at your Spotify account, could you explain the “Emo Playlist But It’s Only Never Meant” to me? Can you walk me through that?
So I just got bored at work one day, and I was like, okay, “Never Meant” by American Football is kind of a meme in the emo community because it’s… the riff for “Never Meant” is iconic, in my opinion. It’s also kind of been made as a joke. Because I guess it’s very emo and emo is just so melodramatic. This song is very melodramatic. It’s gotten to the point where the band even knows it’s a meme. And I knew that there were a few covers of “Never Meant,” but I didn’t realize there were that many covers. And some of them are kind of facetious. I think my favorite one off that playlist is the lofi hip hop cover… it’s just so funny to me.
Is there a story behind your DJ name?
Okay, so there was this guy in high school who was kind of a jerk. And he always, like, picked on me or whatever. And he would call me T-Time. He played a lot of golf, so I assume that it was supposed to be a pun or whatever. I didn’t really care at the time. But then when I started my DJ training sessions here, Laura jokingly called me T-Time without any sort of prior knowledge. And I was just like, okay, sure, I’ll go with that.
Favorite aspect of being a DJ?
I like when I’m doing my shows, I become a more exaggerated version of myself. Because I don’t really have a radio persona, per se. I just like putting my personality out there. I like being extremely self aware with the music I play because I know emo is cheesy. I want people to like, know that. I know that emo is cheesy. So I’ll make little jokes and comments about, you know, how cheesy some of what I’m playing is.
Do you hope to do radio after college?
If there’s a way I could, and if the right opportunity arose I would absolutely love to, you know, keep doing stuff like this.
Preferred method of listening to music (vinyl, CD, streaming platforms)?
I mainly listen to Spotify and Bandcamp. Occasionally, I’ll go to the record store, go to the used bin, and find something that looks interesting. And I’ll just get it and listen to it. And see if it’s good. There’s a lot more misses than hits. But I think it’s fun. Because you don’t know what you’re getting. Sometimes record stores will have like these mystery bags of seven inch singles. And I absolutely love those because sometimes you’ll find like, you find like one hit wonders in them and you’re like, oh, I love this. But mainly, I just listen to streaming services. I also have a whole little subsection in my collection of records that probably shouldn’t be on vinyl, but they are. Like there’s one I have, and it’s this lecture by this old dude. It’s like from the 60s I think and it’s him giving a lecture about sex education. There’s another record I have and it’s a seven inch single called “Sounds Of The American Fast Food Restaurants,” and it’s like an ambient album of fast food restaurant noises.
