“The Pack Rat’s Rat Trap” was the weekly radio show I hosted on the University of California, Santa Cruz’s student radio station KZSC. The show ran for almost two years, but then I had to stop hosting it due to policy changes at the station about alumni hosting shows. C’est la vie!

The show was an eclectic mix of everything that I was listening to that week, and the premise was simple: I am a serial music hoarder. Like really just the worst. I have piles of records and CDs and a massive folder on my hard drive of albums I’ve meant to listen to. And that’s not even mentioning all the stuff saved on Spotify or Bandcamp or in my web browser’s bookmarks.

So the idea was that I would listen through chunks of that musical backlog and then curate a weekly playlist of all of my favorite stuff I found, plus whatever else I had been listening to that week.

I would play the songs intercut with commentary on what I thought about them, how I found them, or jokes that only I thought were funny. Some weeks there were themes. Sometimes people would call in and tell me I was doing a good job. It was a fun time! I miss doing it. So I’ve decided to bring the spirit of the show back. Albeit in a new form.

Every other Friday I’ll compile a brief playlist of selections from my recent musical discoveries and obsessions, accompanied by my thoughts. Maybe this will only be a place for me to catalog my love of music, or maybe someone else out there will find some cool new music through it!

Either way, the Rat is back, baby.