France Gall At Seven, Biscayne Already Bright

Seven AM, a Saturday in late April, and the first thing WXLI put in the air was France Gall — Ella, Elle L'a, which is almost a dare at that hour. Light already on the causeway, joggers on Venetian, the city doing its slow pre-coffee stretch, and the station chose French pop instead of a four-on-the-floor. It worked because it admitted the hour. You can't fake 7 AM.

From there the set walked upward in patient steps. Baccus eased in a Just Be Good To Me rework, Carl Craig's Moskow Diskow glinted like chrome on a passing car, and by Cosmic Girl — Jamiroquai at 8 in the morning, windows down somewhere on 836 — the session had decided what it wanted to be. Not a peak-time room. A weekend that refuses to waste its own daylight.

The middle hours kept leaning forward. Pete Heller's Big Love, Jakatta, Ian Pooley with Rosanna and Zélia bringing Portuguese over a drum that felt like it had been left out in the sun. Then the turn: Mousse T., Prydz's Call On Me, Rinocerose, Byron Stingily doing Sylvester via Don Carlos. Eleven AM behaved like midnight for about forty minutes, and nobody argued.

Blinding Lights landed around noon the way pop does when it's earned — not a reset, just a handshake — and the session pivoted into its long disco close. Daft Punk with Nile Rodgers, Soulsearcher, Madison Avenue, M People moving on up into lunchtime. Louie Vega's Last Night A DJ Saved My Life felt less like nostalgia and more like a thank-you note. Sade's Ben Watt remix stretched out near the end, lazy in the best sense, and Plastic Plates closed the door gently, around 1 PM, on a Saturday that had barely begun.