Sean McCarthy, a Shippensburg sophomore, is currently majoring in history.
In his spare time he studies for his classes, longboards (a form of skateboarding) and works on improving his banjo skills.
All in all he is a typical college student trying to graduate and have some fun.
Oh, and one more thing, he has a weekly radio show: WSYC Punk.
Every Tuesday McCarthy leaves his house around 7:30 p.m. and longboards across campus to get to the CUB.
Once WSYC Metal, the previous show, wraps up, McCarthy sits down, plugs in his MacBook and gets to work.
It has been one year since McCarthy first started running his radio show and two weeks since his last show.
Tonight he has something special in mind—the Mighty Return Show.
After kicking off his show with “Point/Counterpoint” by Streetlight Manifesto, McCarthy dives into his greeting and tells his listeners to go see the band live as soon as possible.
With a flick of the switch he has got more music playing.
McCarthy leaned back in his leather office chair and relaxed for a few minutes, just listening to his music, and leaned over to grab a log sheet for the first half of his show.
“We just have to fill out these,” McCarthy said as he held up a log sheet. “And make sure we don’t have any curses on the radio, ourselves or in the music, and we’re good.”
As one would suspect with a show titled “WSYC Punk,” McCarthy’s two-hour block is full of punk music, but that is not all he plays.
McCarthy enjoys playing anything from punk to ska to reggae, or anything else he just feels like listening to.
The possibilities are just about limitless.
“Punk is my favorite kind of music,” McCarthy said as he faded one track out and another one in almost seamlessly. “Has been since eighth grade.”
McCarthy gave his mandatory weather report before switching back over to the music.
He got out of his chair and walks over to the opposite wall and begins to look ed at the different albums provided by the station.
Every now and then he took one off the rack, looked at the track list and puts it back. Finally, he found what he was looking for.
“They put this here just for me,” he said holding up The Ramone’s self-titled album.
He looked at the album a little bit longer than some of the previous ones before putting it back.
As one of the founding members of the punk rock movement, The Ramones are a favorite of McCarthy’s, although they are not his absolute favorite band.
The Beatles have that honor, followed closely by the more modern Misfits.
He let himself get lost in the music again, occasionally singing along or playing in an air band. Another one of his favorite bands, Less Than Jake, starts to play.
“I’ve always enjoyed music and thought doing a radio show would be awesome,” he said. “When I got to school I met someone who had a show, went to a meeting, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
The show started to wind down and the DJ began packing up his things.
He brought down the microphone, the boom squeaking audibly and talked to his audience.
It was time for him to close his show and introduce the next one.
“This show is very, very close to being over. So close, in fact, that we’ve only got one song left,” McCarth said.
“Here’s Pokémon Dubstep. Have a good night everyone.”
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