WFNK.COM

decades of fun

Origin Story

Millions of years ago there was WFNK Radio, or at least an idea for it. I grew up in Cleveland listening to radio when it was a Real Big Deal. I was educated by media, public school, and public college.

In college I dug into radio. I excelled yet became disenfranchised. Not enough music lovers and musicians in the field.

There was big legislation during that time – the TCOM Act of 1995 -that signaled the demise of radio as a local voice. Most of my professors agreed. It was a hot topic on my campus.

Satellite radio was coming, and soon after there would be webcasting, napster, podcasts, iPods, youtube, and spotify all on the horizon in the mid 90’s. It was going to be about bringing media directly to the people without the local radio station’s help.

The only future our media professors saw was in something they were calling micro-casting. To broad-cast is to blast your product to the general public and thus requires a generalness to everything.

But to micro-cast is to pick a subset of people, no matter how small, and blast your product to them. This appealed to me. They were correct, microcasting is everywhere in the 21st century.


I was also dipping my toes in DJ’ing clubs with vinyl. I had 2 turntables, a crossfader, and a wall of vinyl to pick from every night.

I was a big funk fan. Duh. I was exploring the deep catalogs of many artists – P-Funk, Gil, Curtis, Boots – all day and at my gigs.

I was co-producing a weekly deep funk show on college radio. Wasn’t making music much myself, nothing formed, just experiments, usually soundtracks to video projects I was working on.

But I always listened to so many other things. When you play music most the day, you get, what, 16 hours or so to really listen to the world.

WFNK was an idea to microcast music first, then print, video, art, and commentary, interviews that catered to people who understood the power of funk music.

So after 100’s of attempts to do just that, I realized that I had something running that comes awfully close to that initial goal:

WFNK Radio – Planet Earth Funking For Ages – Youtube Edition:



Play it as is or shuffle. Either way it’s gonna get you going today, tonight, and tomorrow. The power of funk.


HD Update — WFNK Radio is Now Offered as LOSSLESS PURE QUALITY FUNK using Amazon Music HD. Check it out: