This site is a radiophonic magazine based in the Hudson Valley, with radio art, local news, music coverage, writing about visual and sound art, pirate radio, and more from Tom Roe, and other writers and artists. Most articles go up first for paid subscribers, and then later are available to free subscribers.
Tom Roe is founder, with others, of pirate station 87X and free103point9 and non-profit Wave Farm. He is a radio artist, writer, editor, DJ. "Donald Drumpf Theatre" is his weekly radio show, and this is the place for his collected writings. Roe is a sound transmission artist who performs with transmitters and receivers using multiple bands (FM, CB, walkie-talkie), as well as prepared CDs, vinyl records, electronics, and theremin(s). He coined and popularized the term “transmission art.” Roe has also written about music for The Wire, Signal to Noise, and The New York Post, where he wrote an alternative music column. Roe wrote about the New York City free jazz scene in The Wire magazine’s book Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music (2002). Roe contributed to a 150-page illustrated catalog (SUNY Press, 2015) about the Videofreex, for a Dorsky Museum show.
Roe has led many "Radio Lab" education lectures and workshops, speaking about how to perform with transmitters and the history of radio performance and microcasting at venues such as Columbia University, Yale University, Brooklyn College, Flux Factory, The Kitchen, NYU's ITP Program, Kids Discover Radio in East Harlem, Grassroots Media Conference at The New School, RPI University in Troy, and other locations. He has also performed at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, as well as in Poland, Prague, Germany, and Spain, and at many places in New York City and across the United States.
Roe's Donald Drumpf Theatre was a radio theatre program with sounds culled from the previous week, about a fictional, theatrical presidency. It ran weekly from January 2016 to January 2021 and was broadcast by over forty stations across the U.S. His current program Turn On The News is the weekly newscast from the fictional Radio Network, with parody radio coverage of the radio and its headlines. Now with computerized news readers, and fewer meddling reporters, plus aggregated reporting, and automated music.
Why subscribe?
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives. "Turn On The News" from Tom Roe and others for information about what is going on in the Hudson Valley, international radio art news, music, and sound art reviews and interviews, pirate radio news, and more about sound and the Catskills, and other issues.
Thank you!
I would like to thank you all for subscribing, and listening each week. It is an honor for me to have you tuning in “Turn On The News.” There are so many great writers reading here, and so many wonderful souls, and a bunch of folks I do not know. Thank you all for being here, it is inspirational, and wondrous.
Hopefully, I don’t overwhelm you with messages. Currently there are three emails going out, and you can increase or decrease that at your Substack settings. The emails are:
Monday: “This Week in the Hudson Valley” with events to attend, rallies to support, issues to address, sounds to hear, and images to view.
Wednesday: “Donald Drumpf Theatre” is a half-hour radio theatre show since 2015 chronicling the hilarious misadventures of a fictional American president. This is also subscribable audio, or what some call a “podcast.”
Friday: “This Week in Radio Art” highlights interesting broadcasts, trends, pirate signals, open calls, experiments, studies, and frequency improvisations.
When subscribing, please only choose the sections that apply to you. You can receive all three of those emails, or opt-out of getting any of them. Either way, you can access all of the pages at “Turn On The News.” Depending on where you live you might not need Hudson Valley news emails, or you might not be interested in radio art alerts. It is very easy to turn off the Substack emails and receive fewer or none of them. You can turn off the multiple notifications too. And message me if you need help.
Stay up-to-date
Never miss an update—every major new post is sent directly to your email inbox (minor posts, and cross-posts, also fill the site each day). You can also get the Substack app to read all this, and a lot more.
Join the conversation
Write to Tom Roe at tomroeradio@proton.me if you would like to contribute words, images, or sounds. Or if you have a problem with something here. You can have your say too. Also, send albums for review, press releases, and whatever you’d like to say to tomroeradio@proton.me. Participate in the comments section, or support this work with a subscription if you can. Thanks for visiting.
