(audience applauding) - Hello, how's everybody doing?

- Good.

- I feel like that's what you're supposed to say when you step up here: How's everybody doing?

I say it.

- [Audience member] You can do it.

- I know, I know.

- Yeah!

- Thank you for that.

(audience laughing) All right.

Going into radio was not really on my bingo card, okay?

I got into it kinda late.

I was in my 30s, and, but, you know, it was okay.

It was a decent job, I had benefits and I could support my kids, and plus I got them into all the cool concerts, so that was a win-win for mom, but I reached a point where I was kinda like, "Aah, they're just getting younger and younger," and I felt like I was starting to age out, and, you know, my kids had grown, I had gotten to my 50s, amazingly, and they were living on their own, and I was kind of working my way out of years and years of survival mode, and I needed a change, so I found a new home at WHRO on WHRV's "Morning Edition."

And now might be a good time to mention that when I was hired, I was told, "Well, hey, you know, if you want, when you're ready, maybe you could do a little music show."

It took me two years before I decided I was ready.

So that's how "Retro Underground" started.

(audience applauding and cheering) Thanks.

So if anybody has had a conversation with me about music, you'd probably find out that I have a very deep, deep-seated, unhealthy love of WHFS.

Now, WHFS was a station outside of, in the DC Maryland area, and it was everything.

Now, when I was a kid, we didn't have any restrictions to what we could listen to as far as music went.

We were, you know, it was the '70s, we did what we wanted, and my big brother and sister were five and six years older than me, and when Punk and New Wave hit America, they were right there, ready to greet it with arms wide open, with Thrifted Threads, Dippity-Do, and safety pins, (audience laughing) and of course, I wanted to be just like them, so I ditched Leif Garrett and Air Supply for Adam and the Ants.

- [Audience member] Yeah.

- Yeah.

So my brother and sister were everything, and they wanted to go to all the shows in DC, and when they would go, I would sit at home, waiting.

I would watch "Cell Block H," I would watch "Twilight Zone," and then I'd watch "Saturday Night Live," and then "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" came on, and sometime in there, they would get home, and they'd be so excited, telling me the stories of the night, and it was the best!

I hung on to every word, I ate it up, and to this day, I still love it when my sister tells that story of the one time she shared a cigarette with Nick Cave in the alley outside of the 9:30 Club.

(audience laughing) Love it!

At the time, we lived in Doncaster, Maryland, quite a bit outside of town, but apparently not far enough for our parents, because they decided to sell the farm and move us to Tucker Hill, Virginia.

Now, if you've ever heard of Doncaster, Maryland, which you probably haven't, it's rural.

Tucker Hill, more so, but Tucker Hill wasn't just rural.

The land and the homes of Tucker Hill are haunted, and the history of Westmoreland County, where Tucker Hill is, is as thick as the humidity and as biting as the mosquitoes, but it's beautiful and it's quiet.

And it was very quiet, because right around that time, my siblings had moved to Norfolk, and I had nothing, I didn't even have a TV in my bedroom, so I would listen to the few records that I had, and I would come to Norfolk and visit my sister, saw my first concert, she'd send me mix tapes, so I kinda kept things going, and sometimes, if I moved my coat hanger antenna that I had jammed into my boombox, just right, I could get "Rock Over London" on DC101.

So unbeknownst to me, also, at that time, WHFS had gone off the air, and I lamented.

I mean, how many times can you listen to "Prince Charming" by Adam and the Ants?

You know, the record got warped.

So one night, I'm there, and I'm, like, wiggling the coat hanger and turning the knob, and I'm trying to get it, and I hear, I hear something at 99.1.

WHFS had a new home on the dial, and somehow, I was getting it, loud, but not clear (chuckles), (audience laughing) but there they were, Damien, Weasel, Neci, Bob, coming through down the Potomac where it bumps into the Chesapeake Bay, touches the Northern Neck, into Bonum's Creek, around the corner to Tucker Hill, where I was.

(Crizti sighs) I couldn't believe it.

They were there, all of them, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, the Stranglers, the, the...

I started recording music off the cassette, and of course, they were all staticky and missing the first 10 seconds of every song because I just couldn't get across the room fast enough to push Play and Record at the same time to get it, but I loved those tapes, and when I turned 16 years old, my sister's husband helped me install a cassette player in my Plymouth Duster, mounted some speakers, and I had those cassette tapes in the car everywhere I went, and you best believe it took forever to get anywhere from Tucker Hill, Virginia, so I was alone with WHFS a lot, and I was living out my John Hughes fantasy in a "Grey Gardens" world, with "Lord of the Flies" happening all around me, (audience laughing) but it was home.

WHFS was home.

And since that time, I have lived in a lot of homes, and each one kind of like a movie, and the soundtrack is every single song I heard on WHFS and clutched my chest and closed my eyes with the swoon of it all.

Time has brought a lot of really incredible music into my life, songs that have defined me, have amused me, have comforted me, and they've all managed to find the rightful spot on the track list, but the music from those WHFS years are the most precious.

I knew what I wanted my radio show to be: a love letter to WHFS, a love letter to my sister and my brother, and a love letter to the child that I was when I first heard that music, and the life that I've lived since, and the person I'm still becoming.

And finally, my radio show is a love letter to all the freaks, weirdos, nerds, and posers, and I hope that when they tune in to "Retro Underground," they find home.

(audience applauding and cheering)