WONC 89.1FM

Pure Rock FM89: The Radio Voice of North Central College

Featured Posts

NCC Students: Join WONC Today

If you’re a student at North Central College, you NEED to join WONC! Whether you’re interesting in a career in radio broadcasting or you just want to have some fun, there’s something for everyone here. Our staff is comprised of students with all kinds of majors, not just Journalism and ...

Featured

The 6L GTR Problem: SOLVED

Almost a year ago, I wrote an article about The Chats’ song “6L GTR.” The song was fast, catchy, and all-out Aussie. One thing I thought I’d solved was the mystery of what exactly this 6-liter GTR was, determining that the car in question was a 1973 Holden Torana GTR ...

Featured

Featured Local Artist: The Orchard

Mixing folk and classic rock with more modern alternative and indie music, The Orchard are a five-piece band featuring Liam Hellard (lead guitar), Connor Craney (rhythm guitar), Ryan Nelson (keyboard), Adam Hellard (bass) and Matt Chludzinski (drums). They formed in 2019 in Batavia, starting as a cover band, doing takes ...

Featured

Calling All Local Bands and Musicians

Countless musicians and bands from the Chicagoland area have made an impact in the world of music, but none of them started off as famous. Everyone starts somewhere, and we’re here to help. WONC has a long-standing tradition of featuring music from the Chicagoland area, and we want you to ...

MUSIC

Featured Local Artist: Stomach

Doom metal encompasses several eras and regional styles, but many would consider its inception to have occurred in England during the late 1960s. In the industrial city of Birmingham, the dark, blues-infused riffs of Black …

Featured Local Artist: Dust Biters

Dust Biters is a 4-piece aggressive post-hardcore band that blends influences from the early 2000’s post-hardcore/screamo era with visceral punk and technical rock n’ roll. Their music features a unique take on heavy music, upbeat …

Featured Local Artist: Evil I

In the winter of 1983, Evil I, a local hardcore punk band consisting of Craig G. (guitar), Craig S. (drums), Dave (bass), and Carol (vocals) entered a basement studio in Elgin, IL to record a …

Artist Highlight: Billy Cobb

DIY is a scene and style in music that’s all about doing it yourself, including writing, recording, mixing, and promoting. It’s been around since the inception of music and has become more prominent in in …

Featured Local Artist: Det Metra

Connor (bass/guitar/vocals), Kelly (guitar/vocals), Dave (bass/guitar/vocals), Dom (drums), and Mike (vocals) are Det Metra, a 5-piece indie/garage rock/self-described “hippie punk” band based in Chicago. After playing in a variety of bands in the Chicagoland area …

Featured Local Artist: The Last Generation

The Last Generation is a 4-piece band that puts a modern spin on classic rock; they take inspiration from classic and hard rock from the 70s and early 80s with a bit of 90s grunge …

A Little Birdie Told Me: Dylan Gardner

by Jordan Mark We're throwing ourselves back into another edition of A Little Birdie Told Me, a series where we highlight artists we play on FM89. For this round, we’re going to look at Dylan Gardner. Not …

WONC Sports

Bruner’s Beat: The Absurdity of Playoff Jimmy Butler and The Miami Heat

by Evan Bruner Everyone loves a good underdog story. No matter what sport, fans gravitate toward the little guy, the one that everyone else has counted out. Unfortunately for basketball fans, the NBA’s lack of parity …

Predicting The 2023 NFL Draft’s 1st-Round Picks

By: Sam Fretto The NFL Draft is a few hours away and for just about every NFL fan it is like Christmas Day. The draft can leave fans excited for their future, devastated, or ready to …

Predicting The Bears’ 2023 Draft

By: Andy Jachim Just like that, it’s draft day. The day I have been waiting on for months. This is a major opportunity for Ryan Poles to turn the state of this Bears team around and …

Bruner’s Beat: The Case for Anthony Richardson

by Evan Bruner The 2023 NFL Draft is just a few days away, and Alabama’s Bryce Young quarterback going first overall is close to a guarantee. This move, in many ways, makes sense. Young was a highly …

Bruner’s Beat: The Bryce Young Discussion

The 2023 NFL Draft is less than a week away, and according to most sports books and NFL insiders, former Alabama quarterback Bryce Young is a shoo-in for the No. 1 overall pick held by …

Previewing The 2023 Chicago Cubs

By: Andy Jachim With opening day in the rearview, a new season of Cubs baseball is officially underway on the north side of Chicago. Despite just playing one game, there’s a lot to like about this …

Bruner’s Beat: Why Caitlin Clark is the NCAA’s Most Valuable Asset

by Evan BrunerEver since the NCAA’s founding in the early 20th century, men’s athletics have been at the forefront of collegiate sports. Even with the implementation of Title IX and increasing pressure on media outlets to …

Specialty Shows

Alternage Presents : The Most Influential Punk Albums – The Stooges

by Jesse Hudgins All my life, whenever I’ve listened to punk music, there’s been one artist I always heard was an inspiration to all. I didn’t start listening to them until late in high school, but …

Alternage Presents: The Most Influential Punk Albums – The Clash

by Chloe Kallberg It’s mid-February of 2017, and the music wing of my high school is fraught with pacing theatre kids waiting perilously for their spring musical audition slots. Some are sussing out the competition, eyes …

The Crossroads Artist Highlight: HARDY

By: Sam Corbett After a three-month-long hiatus from being off-air, The Crossroads duo came back in a big way to begin March 2023. Zane and I reviewed HARDY’s much-anticipated album, the mockingbird & THE CROW. We …

Alternage Presents: The Most Influential Punk Albums – The Sex Pistols

Welcome to the first ever edition of Alternage Presents: Influential Punk Albums. This will be a series where I look back on punk albums, old and new, get into the history of each band, dive …

Evil I: A History of Punk in Chicago’s Western Suburbs 40 Years in the Making

by Austin Paulson The walls of Brauer House, a bar and venue in Lombard, IL, are plastered with old concert posters of legendary musicians of punk’s past. The names and images take up nearly every inch …

The Crossroads Artist Highlight: Brothers Osborne

By Zane Trumann While we usually reserve these features for new artists here at The Crossroads, both Sam and I made the executive decision to change that with Brothers Osborne’s newest single, “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ …

The Crossroads Artist Highlight: Jessta James

By Zane Trumann After a couple of weeks of theme nights, Sam and I were looking to take The Crossroads back to its roots and get back into featuring up-and-coming artists. We were lucky enough with …

Reviews

You Season 4 (Part 2) Review: We Did NOT See That Coming

Trigger warning: This article contains discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation. This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s YOU Season 4 (Part 2). by Meg Kordik For once, I think my love for analyzing television has come …

Meg’s Movie Corner: Cocaine Bear

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR COCAINE BEAR (2023) Going into seeing Cocaine Bear, 2023’s new horror-comedy, this was what I was expecting: Some cocaine gets lost in a forest, a bear finds said cocaine, gets …

YOU Season 4 Review and Why We Side With Serial Killers

Hello, YOU! The first half of season 4 of You dropped on Netflix February 9th, and wow, do I have some things to say!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3COY_HrMngcFor starters, I’ve always been a fan of this show. Despite the …

Meg’s Movie Corner: M3GAN

SPOILERS AHEAD! As a Megan myself, people have been wondering what I think of the new sci-fi horror film M3GAN. It’s funny – I’ve been seeing her name so much lately that writing my own name …

Kaleidoscope: It’s Not What You Watch, It’s How You Watch It

Netflix’s new heist drama series, Kaleidoscope, dropped on the streaming platform on January 1st. Created by Eric Garcia and stacked with a cast including Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell, and Tati Gabrielle, fans were eager to …

My Problem with Netflix’s Wednesday

by Meg KordikNetflix’s hit show Wednesday came out of the gate swinging when it was released last November. In its first week on the platform, Wednesday accumulated 341.23 million hours of streaming, surpassing the previous …

Meg’s Movie Corner: Examining the Movie Musical Genre

While I love to review movies, there’s one genre that seems to miss more than hit, so instead of reviewing just one movie, I thought I’d look at the entire genre of movie musicals. There …