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Lately I've had a lot of time on my hands. In December, I was involved in a car accident that laid me up on the couch for a bit. This week, wintry weather shut down the entire city of Austin for three days.
What to do when there's nowhere to go, you've read all the books in your house, and the video store has been stripped clean of everything but a few lonely Betamax copies of Ernest Goes to Camp? I, for one, have been listening to the radio.
For those of a certain age, broadcast radio is pure magic. When I was a teenager in the late '80s, my only sources for new music were fanzines, the record collections of my friends' cool older siblings, and especially college radio. We lived close to Boston, and I was able to tune into some truly great stations, like Boston College's WZBC, MIT's WMBR, and Harvard's WHRB — lifelines for city kids stuck in the suburbs.
These low-watt stations came in a bit fuzzy on my big, clunky boombox, but they did come in. I spent thousands of hours listening to the radio as I did my homework, or sprawled around my messy room. On summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors, I would set up my sleeping bag on the screened-in porch, reading and listening to music until the sky began to lighten. Back in those days, music and literature were completely new and exciting; they hinted at the huge world of people and ideas outside my little town. I listened and read uncritically, absorbing everything I could. I listened to Coil, Can, the Fall, Minor Threat, and the Wipers, as well as local bands like the Neats, Mission of Burma, Thinktree, and the Cavedogs.
I still love independent radio. Austin's two noteworthy radio stations, KOOP and KVRX, share the same frequency. KVRX, UT's student-run station, broadcasts from 7:00 p.m. until 9:00 a.m. Monday through Friday, and from 10:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Most DJs follow a free-form format, with special-interest programs scattered throughout the schedule. Right now is an especially good time for out-of-towners to tune into their live feed at http://www.kvrx.org for a primer on the Austin bands that will be playing (or playing despite) South by Southwest.
KOOP is one of only a handful of truly independent, nonprofit community radio stations in the country. The station has weathered more than its share of controversy and disaster. In the first three months of 2006, it was hit with two fires. The first happened on a Friday night in January; most of the record library was destroyed, and much of their equipment was damaged, but they were soon back on the air. The DJs popped a few more records into their milk crates and found mp3s to replace the music that had melted. Soon enough, everything was back to normal.
The March 2006 fire was far worse. The building, and everything inside of it, was completely incinerated. KMFA, Austin's classical music station, lent KOOP the use of their studios for several months until they could find a new location.
There are many reasons to tune in to http://www.koop.org's live stream. On Tuesdays, the station broadcasts ten hours of Spanish-language programming, including my favorite, Gilbert Guerrerro's Spanish Rock Radio at 4:30 p.m. Over the past few years, the Saturday lineup has become the best ten hours of radio anywhere in the country, finishing up the night with Stronger Than Dirt, easily my favorite radio show of all time. Scott Gardner sifts through piles of garage, punk, mid-century German shoe commercials, and flavor-of-the-month indie bands to come up with a consistently mind-blowing show.
Commercial radio stations
have worked hard to become
the moribund, irrelevant
dinosaurs they are. |
Commercial radio stations have worked hard to become the moribund, irrelevant dinosaurs they are. Let them focus-group themselves out of existence, and take the payola-bleeding major labels down with them! Non-commercial radio is still a vital cultural resource, and we, the listeners who love it, must nurture it.
If everyone who listens to college and independent radio stations were to donate just $25 yearly to their single favorite station, those stations would be able to buy transmitters large enough to rival some of the smaller commercial stations. Underwriting is another great way to support your local radio station. For the past year, my small business has underwritten one of my favorite shows, and the response has been well worth it. The new clients my underwriting spots have brought in have become friends, and they in turn tell their friends about me.
In a world where old media has become the enemy of the people and the Interwebs are a confusing morass of suck-ass bands with more marketing savvy and ego than talent, independent radio is more important, and more relevant, than ever.
Posted February 2007
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