🔥 Tirefire Certified
Filed by L. Wren from taped broadcasts, cassette labels, and a half-burnt flyer with the words circled in red.
Tirefire Certified (adj.)
Definition: A song that was played twice in a row on NBR 101.3 by DJ Tirefire — a rare and highly unofficial stamp of underground approval.
🎧 Usage
“Dude, did you hear? ‘Flip the Lights’ got Tirefire Certified last night!”
📻 Origin
Nobody knows exactly when it started, but sometime around 1993, DJ Tirefire — late-night pirate radio host, frequent signal drifter, and alleged pseudonym for at least three different people — began playing songs back to back if he liked them.
No commentary. No intro. Just:
Track. Static. Same track again.
People started calling those tracks “certified.”
The name stuck.
📼 Certification Notes
- Tirefire has never explained his criteria
- Songs played three times in a row are either legendary… or a glitch
- It doesn’t mean the song is good — just that it hit something right
- A few tracks were Tirefire Certified by accident. They still count.
📝 Notable Certified Songs
- “Hell of a Life” – Downvent
- “I Am Shrug” – Downvent (rejected label version)
- “Brick It Backwards” – Stan (solo)
- “Sunburner (Live at Spill)” – Jace Hollow bootleg
- “Neckbrace Gospel” – Soundgrit
- “Loop Glow (Demo)” – Unknown artist, source tape degraded
🕯️ The “I Am Shrug” Incident
After Downvent’s second album was rejected by the label in 1994, a cracked cassette version of “I Am Shrug” aired on NBR. No intro. No permission.
Tirefire played it twice.
Some say it was leaked intentionally.
Others claim it was dropped off at Static Static in a paper sleeve.
Nobody’s claimed credit — and that version is still the one fans trust.
“He doesn’t do favorites. He does vindication.”
— Scene saying, circa ‘94
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