The first thing you see when you enter the KRLX studio: a wall of records. At 3,000 discs, it’s enough to keep the weekly vinyl-only Ribe Radio Hour fresh for decades. Standouts include: A 1985 single of Hüsker Dü singing the Mary Tyler Moore theme song. A 10-inch acetate platter of Hoagy Carmichael’s 1930 “Barnacle Bill, the Sailor.” Computer Music, the “quite awful”—in the words of KRLX co-manager Henry Burkhardt ’26—1970 LP “realized in the computer centers of Columbia and Princeton universities.”
“I found ‘One Nite Stand’ by Father MC, one of my favorite songs of all time, because my friend had a show where we’d grab random releases off the shelf and go straight on the air,” says Burkhardt. He recently created a searchable website, Chronicle, to catalogue KRLX’s inventory. But while some entries include a link to Discogs and Spotify, many don’t. “With some of these, maybe you can find the label, but there’s almost no information on the album, and it’s not on Spotify. I love that. You can stream millions of songs whenever you want. But with these, you can only listen right now, right here.”