November 9–16, 2000

cover story

Calling Dr. NoOne

Pete sounds good: The mysterious Dr. NoOne.

by Chris Nosal

Through desktop multi-media speakers, a song fades in and a radio voice speaks, "Welcome to the beginning-of-the-week Drugmusic webcast. I’m Pete, Dr. NoOne, with your musical medication in the Windows Media format…"

Dr. NoOne is a Drexel grad, computer aficionado and former WKDU disc jockey who’d rather not reveal his real name, preferring to be known as Pete Sounds (get it, Beach Boys fans?), or simply Dr. NoOne. He makes his living as an engineering tutor, but he gets his kicks delivering doses of mind-expanding music to the masses via his website, www.drugmusic.com.

The site, in operation for three years, is nothing fancy to look at. But it’s easy to navigate, and its content sells itself to listeners all over the world. Pete finds time to do three shows per week, one in Windows Media and two in Real Audio format, so he can reach as many users as possible. He prefers the sound quality of the Windows format, but Real Audio has better system compatibility. And if listeners fail to get their day’s prescription filled, Pete also archives old shows and playlists for two months.

As of November, well over 47,000 music fans have visited the site to stream the shows through their computers at home, school and, of course, work. Dr. NoOne is helping to redefine the concept of office drones. His site is linked to respected URLs in the space- and psych-rock genres, like the DroneOn mailing list (www.no-fi.com) where Pete began sharing his love of bands like Spaceman 3 — you know, the band that took drugs to make music to take drugs to. Not surprisingly, many of the webcasts contain at least one track from Spaceman or its offspring, like Spiritualized, the Darkside or Spectrum.

When called on this affinity via the telephone, Pete just laughs a little. "People begin to expect it… I got an e-mail from a guy in Japan last week, and that’s what he requested [more Spaceman 3]."

But listeners can also get a shot of Funkadelic, New Order, some British indies, abstract electronica like Oval, punk rock, even Hawkwind and Black Sabbath. Pete also solicits and plays tapes, CDs and MP3s from unsigned bands, as well as filling requests for CD-R mix tapes of shows. He believes the old jock credo about exposing listeners to new things and pushing boundaries. And since he doesn’t DJ anymore, which he enjoyed a lot, the website’s a fun way for him to maintain his musical connections while snagging perks along the way, like free CDs and free plugs on higher-profile websites.

So what about the drug music?

"All music is drug music," explains Dr. NoOne. "Music itself is a drug, so I can play just about anything I like."