The Last Man Standing
by Sean Carolan

On its face, it seems simple enough. Glen Jones was on the air at WFMU for 100 hours straight, shattering an official world record that was previously set at 72 hours.

While he was at it, he was urged on by his fans, fans of WFMU in general, and by the likes of Dan Ingram and Vin Scelsa (who warned him that there were pileups on the Garden State Parkway because people were paying attention to him more than they were to the road.) Katie Couric interviewed him live on the Today Show.

As the hours wore on, he kept the music pumping. In press accounts, there wasn't a lot said about the music, though there was an awful lot of it. He played more than a thousand songs during that hundred hours, and it was a setlist that knew no boundaries.

It wasn't intended as a great watershed moment, just a stunt performed on a dare (albeit a dare that took the form of $24,000 in pledges from WFMU listeners, goading Jonesey to take a shot at that record in the first place.) In the end, from this listener's point of view, it gave freeform radio a well-deserved spot in the sunshine, ultimately grabbing the kind of attention commercial radio stations would kill for. And if one of those listeners thought, "Hey, I remember hearing all these kinds of music on one station...wonder why that changed?"...then it will have been very successful indeed.

So congratulations to Jonesey, who's probably sleeping as I write this. You may have been hallucinating while you did it, but you broke down more barriers than you may have thought.

©2001 Sean Carolan