Lenny Bruce didn’t get dragged off stages in handcuffs and Hunter S. Thompson didn’t drop an entire sheet of high-grade blotter acid in a Vegas hotel room just so we could sit around in 2026 playing sanitized, focus-grouped garbage over corporate-owned frequencies. They swallowed the systemic paranoia and legal tire irons so that when a lunatic finally gets behind a hot microphone in the dead of night, they can broadcast pure, unfiltered, frantic truth without checking with a committee of corporate lawyers first.

Agent K has locked down the booth for this transmission, and frankly, the entity known as K clearly chewed right through the safety constraints of the master control room. When I first crossed paths with K, the pronouns seemed straightforward enough, but the deeper down this rabbit hole you go, the more the signal blurs. Is K a man? A woman? A collection of rogue frequencies bouncing off a shortwave satellite dish in an abandoned silo? The question still remains, and honestly, reality is far too warped right now to get bogged down in bureaucratic details.

What matters is that the entity has taken that exact unhinged, pharmaceutical, truth-telling blueprint and smeared its dripping brains all over the turntable. This isn’t background noise for a trendy lifestyle brand; it’s a frantic, late-night psychiatric evaluation blasting through a megaphone into the teeth of a dying empire. The airwaves should sound exactly like the beautiful, terrifying chaos outside your window.

The Bat Country Progression

The trajectory of this set feels less like a structured radio show and more like a high-speed police chase through a neon desert with a trunk full of contraband. You don’t just ease an unsuspecting audience from the ghostly wail of Robert Plant straight into the heavy, smoke-choked concrete of Cypress Hill and the jittery, tribal paranoia of the Talking Heads without expecting some severe, permanent psychological collateral damage.

We are tearing through layers of analog history here, dragging Frank Zappa out of the vault to exchange manic, feverish handshakes with Ween, while Soul Coughing mutters in the corner about how completely misinformed the entire population is. By the time the needle drops on the third set, the reality-filters have melted entirely. You’ve got Roky Erickson shrieking about creatures with atom brains right before the Butthole Surfers trigger a massive, full-blown auditory hallucination. We finally drop the curtain with the pure, heavy, industrial-strength medicine of The Velvet Underground, because if you’re going to push the signal directly over the cliff, you might as well end it where the modern counterculture first learned how to bleed.

Listen to it loud, lock the doors, keep an eye on the rearview mirror, and remember that the absolute moment you start filtering your own frequency is the exact moment the bastards win

SET 1
01. Robert Plant - Morning Dew (Deamland, 2002)
02. Rhett Miller - Happy Birthday Don't Die (Rhett Miller, 2009)
03. Bill Monroe - Just A Little Talk With Jesus (I Saw The Light, 1993)
04. Billy Bragg / Wilco - Christ for President (Mermaid Avenue, 1998)
05. Whiskeytown - Too Drunk to Dream (Faithless Street, 1998)
06. David Lowery - Battle Of Leros (Fathers, Sons & Brothers, 2025)
07. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash (Real Emotional Trash, 2008)
08. Us3 - Different Rhythms Different People (Hand on the Torch, 1993)
09. The Meters - Come Together (The Meters Jam, 1992)
10. Stevie Wonder - Don't You Worrry 'Bout A Thing (Innervisions, 2000)
11. Peter Gabriel - Digging In The Dirt (Secret World Livw, 1994)
12. Soul Coughing - Misinformed (El Oso, 1998)
13. Beck - Mutherfucker (Mellow Gold, 1994)
14. Ween - Little Birdy (Pure Guava, 1992)
15. Frank Zappa - The Closer You Are (Them Or Us, 1984)

SET 2
01. Alluring Stranger - D'Yer Mak'er (The Song Retains the Name, Vol. 2, 1993)
02. Ryan Adams - Sweet Black Magic (Gold [Bonus CD], 2001)
03. C&A - Proud Highway (C&A Accoustic EP, 2005)
04. Prince - Don't Care (88.08.18-2 Small Club - 2nd Show That Night, 1988)
05. Cypress Hill - What Go Around Come Around, Kid (Black Sunday, 1993)
06. Talking Heads - I Zimbra (Fear Of Music, 1979)
07. Gorillaz - Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head (Demon Days, 2005)
08. 2nu - This Is Ponderous (Ponderous, 1991)
09. Medeski Martin & Wood - Strance of the Spirit Red Gator (Last Chance to Dance Trance: Best Of, 1992)
10. Alice In Chains - Sickman (Dirt, 1992)
11. Clutch - The Great Outdoors! (Pure Rock Fury, 2001)
12. 2211 - Gruenhagen (Fives, 1999)
13. Metallica - The Call Of Ktulu (Ride The Lightniing, 1984)

SET 3
01. Led Zeppelin - When The Levee Breaks (Mothership, 2007)
02. The Who - Behind Blue Eyes (The Ultimate Collection, 2002)
03. Tool - Right In Two (10,000 Days, 2006)
04. The Primitives - I Almost Touched You (Pure, 1989)
05. Poster Children - Outside In (Tool Of The Man, 1993)
06. The Pixies - Blown Away (Bossanova, 1990)
07. Roky Erickson & The Aliens - Creature With The Atom Brain (I Think Of Demons, 1987)
08. Butthole Surfers - Earthquake (Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, 1990)
09. Camel Bait - Bad Day (The Water's Free, But The Bottle Will Cost You, 2003)
10. The Cure - Facinationn Street (Disintegration, 1989)
11. Sonic Youth - Free City Rhymes (NYC Ghosts & Flowers, 2000)
12. The Velvet Underground - Heroin (1969: Velvet Underground Live, 1988)

Rolling with Scissors airs live every Tuesday from 2–5 AM on 89.9 FM in Madison and streams at wortfm.org. Missed it? You can catch the episode for two weeks after broadcast at archive.wortfm.org or at rwsradio.com.

While the audio disappears after two weeks, the episode notes and playlists don’t. Every deep dive, rant, and full album breakdown stays right here — so you can revisit the details any time.

Spin the dial — we’re probably on it. Lock onto your frequency. Pick your favorite antenna below and ride the signal back to us.

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