On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, over 5,400 kilometres from the controversial celebrations in Washington DC, Nick Johnson, a Trinity assistant professor in drama, broadcasts his weekly two-hour radio show from House Six of Trinity. In some ways, it is a typical Thursday night. Johnson, an American hailing from El Paso, Texas, comes up to the Trinity FM studio a little before 10 o’clock in preparation for his show Plastic Soul, with his show theme and music all pre-planned. One would wonder what the effect of the looming inauguration of Trump would have on an American drama professor’s student radio music show.
Within the first hour of Johnson’s Plastic Soul show, Run DMC’s song “Down With The King” and a well-recognised protest song, Public Enemy’s “By the Time I get to Arizona”, both get airtime alongside mixes of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator. Listening to the show live, I was still – in hindsight rather naively – unsure whether or not Johnson’s music choice was a consciously political statement the night before the inauguration of a divisive, if not deplorable, president. Johnson’s following song choices, however, rid my mind of any existing doubts as to his intentions. “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)” and Matt Monro’s classic “From Russia with Love” provoke a smile from me as the politics of his show suddenly become crudely obvious.
“I am a political person”, Johnson admits, as if there was any doubt, speaking to The University Times the morning after his show.
Plastic Soul has been running on Trinity FM since Johnson arrived to the College as a student to do a research master’s on Samuel Beckett
Having been involved in radio since his days in high school, it’s clear that Johnson isn’t afraid to use this platform to make political statements. His show, Plastic Soul, has been running on Trinity FM since Johnson arrived to the College as a student to do a research master’s on Samuel Beckett. Johnson came to Trinity after receiving funding from the Mitchell scholarship, an academic grant which allows 12 US academics to study in Ireland for free for one year. The scholarship from the US-Ireland Alliance is run in honour of former American Senator George Mitchell. Mitchell chaired the 1990s all-party peace negotiations for the Clinton administration in Northern Ireland which ultimately resulted in the signing of the Good Friday agreement.
This scholarship got him as far as Front Square for Trinity’s Freshers’ Week 2004. Having participated in student radio back at his high school in Boston, when he saw the Trinity FM stand it was a no brainer to join. While the Mitchell scholarship enabled Johnson to be financially comfortable while studying for his first year, when he returned to Trinity for the 2005/06 academic year he did so with no funding, no grant and no job.
“It was a really rough summer, it was, like, I didn’t get any funding. I was newly single and this was the year of Arcade Fire playing Electric Picnic in 2005 and, like, I had like nothing. Like, I was trying to hitch rides just to get to the concert and do all these things”, Johnson recalls, laughing in the comfort of knowing it all worked out for him in the end.
He decided to make his two-year research master’s into a four-year PhD, the middle two years of which he funded solely through busking. Regularly playing under a lone street light that illuminates Johnson Court alleyway (an alleyway just off Grafton St), Johnson was able to make between £100 and £200 a week which enabled him, with help from his savings, to survive through college.
“I got to know security really well, because I’d be leaving right about 11.30[pm] with my guitar, and then I would come back in like two or three hours, when the Guards would be cleaning up the streets and ask me to stop. I’d come back and the guys on the gate, they’d be like: ‘How did you do?’”, he laughs, while impersonating a particularly jovial Trinity security guard.
“Where is My Mind” by The Pixies was the most financially successful track to busk to according to Johnson. I enquire, perhaps stupidly, about the buskers classic “Wonderwall”. “I never played it, and I refused to play it”, Johnson replies matter-of-factly.
Despite his refusal to play certain types of music during his busking days, a listener to Johnson’s Plastic Soul on Trinity FM could hear just about anything. For Johnson, the theory of the show can be summed up as “totally eclectic music” that is “theme led”. The show certainly is eclectic in that it draws from a wide pool of sources, as songs on the show differ drastically in style and genre, but that is made up for by their common “fundamental human ideas” and themes.
The dramatic skipping between genres may not sound like the best premise for a radio show, but it’s Johnson’s genius as a DJ, however, that enables his listeners to notice the things that the songs have in common, such as their message, rather than their obvious musical differences. It is his skill of connecting naturally opposing songs that is the beauty of the show. Put simply, in Johnson’s own words, the songs on his show all “speak to each other”.
There’s a lot of border thinking in my show where I don’t really trust genre, I don’t really trust distinctions, I don’t really trust solid identities
While talking about both politics and music, Johnson, who himself grew up on the American-Mexican border in Texas, repeatedly brings up the concept of “border thinking”. Fluid borders and open genres are a crux of the Plastic Soul show. For example, on the night before Trump’s inauguration, Johnson’s music flows from the Beatles to Run DMC, Arcade Fire to Matt Monro, without question.
“There’s a lot of border thinking in my show where I don’t really trust genre, I don’t really trust distinctions, I don’t really trust solid identities”, Johnson explains.
It’s probably a mix between coincidence and personal experiences that Johnson holds these ideas in a time when “border thinking” in the US is becoming a national and international conversation. If the first week of the Trump presidency is anything to go by, the construction of a wall on the US-Mexican border now looks like it could become a very real prospect. For Johnson, his thoughts on political and physical borders are very much the same to his thoughts on music’s borders: he doesn’t see the point in them. “There isn’t really the need for these distinctions, so when I see these distinctions being made in the states between people of different religions having different patriotism … or because of the language they speak or the colour of their skin. This is a very fundamental betrayal of what I hold to be the values of my national identity. I think that fires are being lit in the country that we can’t easily extinguish.”
Johnson believes that the recent presidential election is proof that the US is forgetting its true heritage. “The idea of isolationism, anti-immigration, it’s at odds to the fundamental history of the country”, Johnson says. He then points out that it was exactly that melting pot of culture that produced the soul and hip-hop movements, something that those from the US can be proud of and see as what the country can achieve when it is open to all.
I think that fires are being lit in the country that we can’t easily extinguish
Although Johnson stands by the freedom of the music genres on his show, he admits that for a live set of Plastic Soul, he would most likely have to stick to one genre to keep a dancefloor moving. This is a challenge that Johnson is all too happy to take on, however, as current Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Entertainments Officer, Padraic Rowley, has enlisted him to play a Plastic Soul set at Trinity Ball this year.
But what sort of vibes would a Plastic Soul set bring to Trinity Ball, considering the show entertains so many different genres? “I would definitely lean in the direction of hip-hop”, says Johnson. “Obviously the period I know the most about and that I play the most is the so-called golden age, you know, ‘89 to ‘94 to ‘98. This kind of era is where I would have the densest collection of interesting things.”
With hip-hop’s golden age appearing to be his genre of choice for his Trinity Ball set, keeping the dancefloor moving might just be the only time Johnson decides to put aside his tendency to mix genres. There is no doubt, however, that he will find a way to bring his signature eclectic style of DJing to the most hotly anticipated event of the year.
