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Click HERE this SUNDAY at 6PM CST to hear EVERYTHING OFF BEAT w/ DJ Chuck Wren! In Chicagoland, you can hear us on WLUW-FM 88.7 on your old skool radio."!!! When Jump Up! label head Chuck Wren started this radio show back in 1989 on Northwestern University radio, he had one goal in mind: play ska music from bands who keep the music alive. This show was NOT based on ska's past, but was programmed to ensure the music's future. It did NOT play the Specials, Beat, Madness, Skatalites, and Desmond Dekker week after week. The bands aired were fresh and new, and could benefit from the radio exposure by playing in Chicago to crowds of familiar fans. These concerts would naturally introduce new people to the music, who would spread the word to others. The simple plan worked, and as early as 1989 "new" bands like the Toasters, Bim Skala Bim. New York Citizens, Lets Go Bowling, and The Bosstones were playing to large underground crowds in town. The weekly radio show forced Chicago to notice ska's "Third Wave", and the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Reader, Illinois Entertainer, and New City all joined in by doing features on the program. New City magazine even named us 1997's "Top Concert Promoter", tabulated from a readers response poll. These years of hard work paid off, we switched to a commerical station in 1996. Moving to WCBR-FM 92.7 Chicago enabled us to reach more listeners and promote concerts on a larger scale. Then in late 1998, WCBR-FM was sold and turned into a contempory hits station, so we packed our bags and relocated to WJKL-FM 94.3, a station based out of Elgin, yet able to broadcast even farther west than we've even been before, so outlying parts of Rockford, Peoria, and Tinley Park, in addition to the Chicago metropolitan area. Well, as the story goes.......management wasn't really happy with DJ Chuck rallying all the various brokered shows into a "union" of sorts, so they found a loophole in his contact and one day kicked the show off the air! Nice people, eh! In March or 1999 we continued to press forward, bringing the show to high profile WCKG-FM 105.9---a CBS owed station that aired shows from Howard Stern and Steve Dahl. We worked hard and sold sponsorship/adtime to pay for the hour long show, which lasted untill our main internet music sponsor went through cut-backs and pulled out. Unable to sell that amount of advertising in such short notice, we pulled the show in September of 2000 with little warning.....this was a decision that was VERY hard to make. We had reached so many new fans on that powerful CBS station......but one thing that bugged us about WCKG-FM was it's "anti-internet" policy---since CBS couldn't figure out how to make $$$ off web-broadcasting, they refused to do it. It was hinted to us at the beginnng that "webcasting" would be a part of our arrangement with WCKG.....I guess the time was right to leave! So, as of January 7th 2001....we've taken the show to an uber-cool college station: WLUW-FM 88.8. In recent years, they opened up their airwaves to persons of the local community---it was like coming home again to my early radio days. You know--when radio was fun, pure, and NON-commerical. No selling of ads, no political deals, no sponsorship pressure. Just good radio. Weekly. For the music, for the scene. AND FINALLY, for the first time, people WORLDWIDE can hear "Everything Off Beat" on the WORLD WIDE WEB----so please tune into www.WLUW.org Sundays 6pm CST to hear our radio program!!!! Currently, we boast ska-archives of over 5000 titles, entensively covering the U.S. and European scenes. We swap with collectors all across the world, so we end up playing some of the most interesting, obscure stuff around! That's why magazines like Guitar World and Alternative Press used us as a source for ska articles. The radio show enabled us to launch Jump Up! Records in 1993, and to date we've got over 20 releases with a dozen more on the way. We promote shows of all sizes, from the Fireside Bowl and Off The Alley all-ages clubs to the massive Metro or House of Blues. If its ska in Chicago, we're behind it 100%! That's about it! Over and out!! DJ Chuck Wren If you'd like your CD, 7" or LP played on our show, please send a copy to: JumpUp! Records PO Box 13189 - Chicago, Illinois 60613 (USA)
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