Top 40s radio plays only a handful of songs by any artist and pretty much ignores the rest of their entire album. These ignored and underrepresented songs are the focus of KDIC DJ Julia Hart’s ’17 radio show, “B-Sides and C-Sides.” Hart pairs together popular songs with other great, lesser known music to create an eclectic mix of the familiar and the obscure.
The show’s name comes from a time when records had an A-side and a B-side. An artist’s single would usually find a place on the A-side, leaving the B-side for less popular songs. This has been replaced with the singles most played on the radio, interspersed throughout an album, but the term lives on to describe a musician’s more obscure work.
“The way I listen to music is, I’ll buy a whole album and then just listen to the whole thing over and over again. I found that albums will have one really great song that everyone knows and other great songs that no one knows because they’re not played on pop radio,” Hart said.
B-Sides and C-Sides plays music from a variety of genres and decades. While alternative music is Hart’s favorite genre to play, she also draws inspiration from the music that her swimming teammates play in the locker room that is topping the charts.
“It’s a variety of music, really, because I could really party to the music I play, but then some of it is really more contemplative,” Hart said. “I really do ask around and try to get input from people, as well as try to do the research on my own and try a variety of things.”
Theme weeks are another favorite of Hart’s. Her recent themes include a 50s/60s night featuring Elvis and the Beach Boys, and a show that paired a group’s music with songs by one of the group’s members, including Destiny’s Child/Beyoncé, The Jackson 5/Michael Jackson and Fall Out Boy/Patrick Stump.
“When [Fall Out Boy] went on hiatus a couple of years ago, [Patrick Stump] released a solo album and I really love it a lot,” Hart said. “It’s much poppier and it’s got kind of an R&B side to it, which is really interesting, and it shows off his vocal range. … That album was so strange that I wanted to investigate further.”
Hart’s time slot falls over the dinner rush, which means that sometimes instead of listening to her on the radio, her friends can watch her in the DJ booth.
“I spend a lot of time dancing up in the studio,” she said. “All my friends wave at me from across the way, because they see me grooving out.”
In addition to showing off her dance moves and varied taste in music, Hart loves that her show allows her to connect with her friends, family and roommates through the music that she plays.
“I think that’s really fun when people I know listen and they want to interact. That’s really cool that people hear what you play, even if it’s just silly pop music. People kind of disregard it, but I think it does have meanings in our lives. Even if it is something silly … it’s still a song that people connect with,” Hart said.
Hart also takes pride in introducing her friends and family to new music that they’ve never heard before.
“It means a lot to me that people care and they listen and then they care enough to keep listening and then go on and do their own thing with it,” Hart said.
To hear your favorite artists’ B-sides and explore new music with Hart, tune in to B-Sides and C-Sides, broadcast on 88.5 FM or kdic.grinnell.edu, on Mondays from 6 to 7 p.m.
