Hi, I’m Dawn Marie. This site started over 15 years ago by Chad Kempfert, a music collector, scholar and sage of the new wave and post punk music genre, focusing primarily on 1977 – 1984. He was a lover of all things indie, goth, alternative and absurd. He wrote for an alternative music site for an online portal in the early 2000’s. Starting Strawberry Tongue Radio in 2002 on Live365, he originally played primarily Modern Eon songs. In 2003, he revamped the station and continually added more and more post-punk, new wave, electronic, goth, post-rock and experimental tracks to the station including both classic and contemporary artists. Many of those songs were ripped from rare 7″ singles from the late 70’s and early 80’s that he had collected over the years. Chad passed away, unexpectedly, in 2005.
Despite his passing, I was fortunate enough to have shared many years with him and shared his passion for this genre of music and understand his mission in creating Strawberry Tongue. The site and the station have been continually maintained, adding, culling and preening tracks here and there. Previously, I also used to write for an 80’s music site on the same online portal, and when that finally sucked the life out of me, I quit writing about music for close to ten years. I never stopped listening, collecting, and thinking about it. In 2014, I slowly began to rebuild the site, pulling out some of Chad’s old content, writing new material, and focusing on emerging artists in the genres of post-punk, new wave, indie, electronic, gothic rock, experimental and dream pop. In 2016, Live365 closed their doors and the station moved to a new steaming host, and the website has been revamped.
The ethos of Strawberry Tongue has always been to explore the difference between what is beautiful, what is ugly? What is diseased, what is healthy? It’s about pushing limits and exploring new territories and expanding your musical palette. We relish the past as much as we love the future, so you will hear a smattering of songs from artists that range from the 60’s to current. We lean towards a “darker” and sometimes more experimental sound, however, we hesitate to say we are goth or emo. But, we might play both of those types of music from time to time. Oh, yeah, and we dig new wave, cold wave, post-punk, electronic, post modern, post-rock and indie & eclectic alternative. And dream pop, let’s not forget dream pop or chillwave. Then there is our love of Dadaist noise and Charleton Heston yelling. You’ve been warned.
Welcome to Strawberry Tongue.