The Dizzy Express first took off as a college radio passion project by Nicole Nelson in September 2021 and continued until she graduated the State University of New York at New Paltz in May 2024. WFNP, the university's free-form station, was a safe haven for her love and knowledge of music.
Paying homage to Cream's 1967 "Disraeli Gears," jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, and her own bouts of dizziness: DJ Dizzy Gears was born.
In May 2025, Nicole began working behind at the scenes at a major public radio station and grew doubly inspired to revive the Dizzy Express in some way or another. So, that following August, she created a new weekly song series hosted on the show's Instagram page.
Inspired by traditional English bridal rhyme "something old, something new, something borrowed, and blue," the Something... Series began as a way to provide dedicated listeners four diverse songs to explore every Friday.
Something Old is at least fifty years old
Something New has been released within the past couple months
Something Borrowed is a cover
Something... is a different theme every week!
At the start of 2026, the Something... Series was converted from only instagram posts to a fully fleshed-out blog, which lives right here!
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MORE ABOUT NICOLE'S RADIO EXPERIENCE:
In addition to three years as a free-form disc jockey (which included all music curation, hosting, and engineering), Nicole also served as WFNP's Traffic Manager and Secretary, honing her acute organization skills with a unique awareness of FCC policies. Nicole scheduled Public Service Announcements and tracked what was played on air for the WFNP Public File Records, which were submitted to the FCC. She also regularly trained incoming DJs and tracked attendance to ensure radio programming was running smoothly.
At WQXR, Nicole has taken part in a wide range of duties from seamlessly transitioning overnight programmed music, supporting production during both in-studio recordings and live events, being the station's sole Digital Producer, and more.
Between both roles, Nicole has garnered experience using Zetta, MusicMaster, MegaSeg, the Axia iQ Broadcast Console, the Audioarts Engineering AIR-1, Focusrite Scarlett 2I2, and Spinitron.
Inspired by traditional English bridal rhyme "something old, something new, something borrowed, and blue," the Something... Series began as a way to provide dedicated listeners four diverse songs to explore every Friday.
Something Old is at least fifty years old
Something New has been released within the past couple months
Something Borrowed is a cover
Something... is a different theme every week!
At the start of 2026, the Something... Series was converted from only instagram posts to a fully fleshed-out blog, which lives right here!
──── ✦ ────
MORE ABOUT NICOLE'S RADIO EXPERIENCE:
In addition to three years as a free-form disc jockey (which included all music curation, hosting, and engineering), Nicole also served as WFNP's Traffic Manager and Secretary, honing her acute organization skills with a unique awareness of FCC policies. Nicole scheduled Public Service Announcements and tracked what was played on air for the WFNP Public File Records, which were submitted to the FCC. She also regularly trained incoming DJs and tracked attendance to ensure radio programming was running smoothly.
At WQXR, Nicole has taken part in a wide range of duties from seamlessly transitioning overnight programmed music, supporting production during both in-studio recordings and live events, being the station's sole Digital Producer, and more.
Between both roles, Nicole has garnered experience using Zetta, MusicMaster, MegaSeg, the Axia iQ Broadcast Console, the Audioarts Engineering AIR-1, Focusrite Scarlett 2I2, and Spinitron.