Dream Pop and Big Sonic Heaven

Dream pop, is a genre I fell in love with by listening to 96.3 fm “The Planet” in Detroit at a younger age. This station of the early 90’s would specialize in spinning synth pop moguls like The Smiths, XTC, Depeche Mode and the band that changed my views of music for life, The Cure. The Planet had two weekend night progams. On Saturday night, I would find myself religiously listening to Saturday Night Flashbacks. It was all 80’s music from 10 until 2am.

One Sunday summer night I was in the garage rebuilding a bike with the radio on. Thinking it was Saturday I eagerly waited for the 80’s pop music heard on Saturday. What I got instead was completely different. At first the opening music sounded very erie. It went on to play A Forest. Loving The Cure, I listened on to hear more songs that sounded nothing like I was used to. The ‘pop’ was all gone and replaced with dreamy, magical sounds. This was the first time I ever heard Big Sonic Heaven.

DJ Darren Revell opened a whole new world to me and his show became a big art of my life. for the 8 or so years it was on, I rarely missed a week. It was what I fell asleep to every Sunday night. It was what had me staying up until 2 am and waking up Monday morning groggy. Lauren and I had our first kiss listening to it. Its what reminded me of her, after our breakup. It was the soundtrack to our late drive one night when we got back together.
Being a fan, and realizing that there were many others like myself, I first started the LiveJournal Community. Thats when things started to get rough. Darren was rarely on. Other DJ’s were subbing. Finally in January, it was announced that NYC DJ Thom Kikot was going to take over after Daren had resigned from radio. It only look about a month to get one of the worst emails ever.

BSH
RIP
4/21/3

Darren and I thank you.

t.

Thats when the community started to grow and I started to receive emails. I guess by being the maintainer of the LJ community, I had become a second-hand spokesman as well. People werre constantly asking me for song titles played on BSH. Others were looking to copy the format on other stations.

To be continued…