and hardcore rock, a sunny attitude and a deep love for music, Terre T has drawn everyone from underground legends like Pere Ubu to The Strokes to play live in the studio for her, making “The Cherry Blossom Clinic” a staple in WFMU’s weekend programming on 91.1 FM for over a decade. ENDANGERED SPECIES On Saturday, this local radio institution will lead the charge in WFMU’s annual fight for
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survival. The listener-supported, noncommercial radio station’s yearly pledge drive runs for the first two weeks of March, and like all of the station’s unpaid DJs, Terre T will be doing her part. Along with the usual swag giveaways for those who donate money to the station in the beginning of March, she’s throwing a fundraising party at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, featuring a remote broadcast of her show with a performance by garage rockers the Reigning Sound. “Back in the day if I wanted to hear CAN or Wire or something, I’d have to go track those records down. Now, you just Google it,” she says. “But since there’s so much more stuff available it is very difficult to
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WFMU
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sort through it. Why I think FMU is important is it sort of acts as a filter. Whether it’s old soul, experimental music, world, whatever, you can say ‘Oh, I never heard of this band.’ We’re helping you filter the sea of music out there.” In an era where the Internet and satellite radio are pushing terrestrial radio out of business, a noncommercial station playing freeform programming is an especially endangered species. But an early adoption of online tools has also helped the station — which runs on a $1.2 million annual operating budget — both retain and grow its audience. That audience (estimated to be more than 300,000 listeners monthly, and rising) is especially devoted, in part because “FMU” regularly features top-notch indie talent for serious music lovers of a variety of genres. A New York Times Magazine article called it “a station whose name has