Sonic Insanity radio show 1989-2004

SONIC INSANITY was an integral part of my life for 15 years. It was the radio show I did with best friend and co-host Ron "Evil Eye" Pappert. The story of my DJ'ing goes back to when I was a Senior in High School. My high school had a radio station, albeit a small one broadcasting at 48 watts, on WIRQ-FM. A friend in high school (Gary Sauer) and I both became members of the radio station and we got our own metal show on Friday nights from 5pm - 8pm. We called it "The Metal Force" with Mercyful Mike (me) and The Axe (Gary). Many classmates called me Mercyful Mike because of my love for Mercyful Fate. It morphed into "The Mercyful One" by 1989. We DJ'ed that show from Autumn 1988 til Spring 1989. I purposely failed my Senior year so I could come back the following Fall to DJ the show again. That didn't quite work out; that's another story.

Around December of 1988 we met Ron. He heard the show and was recording us each week. He started coming down to the station and hanging out with us during shows. He also brought these new things called CD's. We had all vinyls to play since every Friday evening I'd haul my entire vinyl collection down to the radio studio (like 7 crates full!!!) and play from them. CD's were very new at that time. Anyways, when summer came and the show ended, Ron had gotten a slot in at another local radio station at the University of Rochester 88.5 WRUR-FM. He got Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 2pm-4pm and he called his show "Sonic Insanity". When I found out I couldn't get my show back at my high school station, I joined up at WRUR-FM along with Ron and for the summer of 1989 we each did our own shows. Sonic Insanity was Tues/Thurs 2-4pm and The Metal Force was Thursdays at midnight til 3am and it was just me. By Autumn 1989 we joined forces and co-hosted just the one show, and we went with "Sonic Insanity" as our shows name. I did occasionally do "Metal Force" specials for a little while, but soon stopped with that name altogether. Me and Ron did that show voluntarily for 15 years on every Tuesday evening at various time slots: 6-10pm, 7-10pm, 8-10pm, 8-11pm, etc. It was a college station where we volunteered and we put up with a lot of shit and got away with murder on the air. lol.

We recorded a LOT of our shows on tape. To rip them all to the computer could take YEARS! But I started burning some shows. I ripped 2 entire shows and parts of a few other significant shows. They are time capsules into the music scene of black and death metal. You can hear what we did for the scene here in Rochester and how we openly mocked christianity and basicly anything we felt like. And we played tons and tons of death, black, thrash, speed, doom, heavy metal. We did yearly specials mocking X-mas and Easter plus we celebrated pagan festivals, did "Black Metal History month", death metal specials, 80's thrash specials, all kinds of little bits and we also made our own promos and used occasional sound-effects records.

To learn all about the shows history and see the website we had used up til we ended the show in 2004, follow the below link. It really is an interesting read. Take the time to visit it and see what our radio show was all about. Read the Bio and see the convoluted history of various suspensions we received and the struggle we went through to stay on-the-air until we gave up in mid-2004.
http://www.angelfire.com/fm/sonicinsanityradio/

Evil Eye & The Mercyful One

Here are some shows and parts of shows that I have ripped to my computer and am sharing with you.


10-27-92  Halloween show'92  (complete show in 8 parts)
DOWNLOAD HERE

4-30-96  Walpurgisnacht early '80s special  (complete show in 8 parts)
DOWNLOAD HERE

4-1-97  April Fool's Show (1st 90 minutes only)
DOWNLOAD HERE

11-17-98  "Russian defamation show"  (last 38 minutes - we were accused of  "defaming Russian culture" in a mic break bit introducing the band Mental Home)
DOWNLOAD HERE

9-11-01  "9/11 show"  (1st 45 minutes only - we did a show the night that 9/11 happened)
DOWNLOAD HERE

Evil Eye Ron

headbanging at the console

getting ready for a mic break