4 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
On Saturday nights, ‘Everything’ is all around you
KMUN radio show marks
100th episode Oct. 20
By ANDREW TONRY
FOR COAST WEEKEND
I
t’s Saturday night and the radio is
tuned to KMUN. Maybe you’re
listening at home, baking cookies.
Or maybe you’re in the car, barreling
down U.S. Highway 101 as rain pounds
the windshield.
At first you may not realize it. What’s
coming through your speakers seems
something like the radio you’re accus-
tomed to: big songs and smash cuts.
But something is askew.
The show’s sponsor — the Darling-
ton Electronic Instruments — couldn’t
be real, could it?
You perk your ears, lean in.
Was that just a PSA for … STDs?
A taste test of … Soylent? Meditative
new age music and ... snoring? George
Costanza and … Depeche Mode?
OK, you start to think — am I losing
it? What’s happening here? Has the
world gone mad?
This hilarious, subversive, snaking
and surreal ride is “Everything,” a four-
year-old program on KMUN whose
100th episode airs 10 p.m. Saturday,
Oct. 20.
For creator Will Chapman, it’s an
occasion both marvelous and fraught.
Hyper-obsessive about “Everything,”
the milestone compounds Chapman’s
never-fully-satisfied perfectionism.
The average episode takes Chapman
between 30 and 40 hours to produce. As
the barrage of audio — which includes
music movie clips, stand-up comedy and
God-knows-what-else — ping-pongs at
such a frenetic pace, live mixing would
be impossible. Anyway, Chapman’s
focus is granular: Every millisecond is
critical. It has to be just so.
While music is not necessarily the
heart of “Everything,” songs played in
their entirety serve an important role.
Though the show is genre neutral —
you’ll hear country, jazz, electronica,
rock and more — the tracks share one
thing in common: They’re insistent and
elicit a response. You might not like ev-
ery song on “Everything” — you might
even hate some — but none will pass by
without getting in your face.
Along with the music and trademark
interstitial bits — often unraveling
ANDREW TONRY PHOTOS
Will Chapman, host of ‘Everything’ on Coast Community Radio.
Will Chapman assembles the ‘Everything’ show.
via thematic threads — “Everything”
includes a number of recurring seg-
ments. Among them: “Naptime and the
Dream,” “The Everything Taste Test,”
“The Lucky Caller Fabulous Prize
Giveaway,” “Jessamyn with the Satur-
day Night Recipe,” “Off The Wall” and
more.
Some of these segments — the
“Dream” sequence (where actual,
nonsensical dreams are submitted to
the show and read aloud) and the “Prize
Giveaway” — were included in Chap-
man’s original pitch for the show.
Essentially, “Everything” emerged
fully formed. When he discovered the
tools of audio editing, Chapman realized
the ride he could take listeners on was
almost limitless. At times, listening to
the show is akin to scanning the dial of
Chapman’s discursive brain, following
rapidly firing neurons from one wild pop
culture reference to the next.
When he decided to start volun-
teering at the station, Chapman also
proposed an electronic music program,
“Electronic Tonic.” In the four years
Continued on Page 16