[RTS] College Radio
Apr. 25th, 2009 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jon_chaissonThe weirdest thing happened to me the other day at work.
I have an old radio/tape player that I snagged from a coworker when he left, and I like listening to music while working. I keep it on very soft, just enough for me to listen to and my coworkers would have to really strain to hear it over the cubicle walls.
I was getting a bit frustrated with hearing that All American Rejects song "Wish You Well" for the tenth time on Live 105 that morning, and wasn't really in the mood for listening to NPR (which I usually do in the morning, simply to avoid the endless-chat-and-little-music of the 'morning drive' shows), so I took a chance and searched for local college radio stations. For most, that basically entails going to the left of the dial and searching for any station playing something other than classical, news, or jazz...although over the course of many years, this isn't necessarily true anymore. Many college stations aren't about the alternative and indie anymore, but are more along the lines of shoehorning as many styles and genres of music as one can into their schedule, leaving indie for a precious few hours of the day. But I digress--I'll skip on that gripe for now.
So anyway, I found KUSF 90.3, which is of course University of San Francisco's station. I knew it was a college station because I heard something vaguely indie (as opposed to commercial alt.rock), followed up quickly by Joy Division's "She's Lost Control". Score!
It took me about three songs to realize that--just like that, without any preamble--I was listening to college radio again. I hadn't done that in years for one reason or another. I have listened to college radio now and again via streaming audio on the internets, but not for a long stretch, and there's also the fact (as stated above) that a lot of college stations play anything but my beloved alt.rock when I want to listen to it.
I mentioned in one of the first Radio Radio posts a few years back about how I came to obsess over college radio; the short version would be that sometime in late 1985 or early 1986, I found UMASS Amherst's WMUA completely by accident while searching for a jazz station. The slightly longer version is that once I realized I loved this strange and different form of rock music, I went all out and looked for and bought as much of it as I could, and listened to such stations (sometimes WMUA, sometimes sort-of-local station WMDK, but mostly Amherst College's WAMH) obsessively throughout the rest of my high school career.
Back then I was deeply fascinated by the idea of college radio--I'd always been fascinated by the radio field, even as a kid, and the idea that I was a few short years away from possibly being on an actual station myself was the coolest thing. There was also the added incentive of playing all my favorite stuff, which, come to think of it, was also the stuff that got major airplay on these stations, so that was a plus! I also loved the names of some of the shows out there...there were the normal goofy names like Tim's Show or some such...but some were creative, such as Hey Look at All Those Psychos, The Sewers of Rangoon and Haphazard Radio (the latter of which I stole for my own show on WECB a few years later). I remember really loving HR because the deejay for that show always played the best stuff. There was also their weekly top 20 countdown, called The Potted Plant Countdown (which, I believe, they still have after all these years), where they'd actually give away potted plants donated by local greenhouses by the end of the show.
Mind you, I will also say that college radio got me into sports as well. No lie! Before then, I'd rarely pay attention to any games going on that my family would watch on TV, and at high school football games I'd get bored sometime in the second quarter. WAMH changed that when I started listening to their Lord Jeffs basketball and football games. I started to appreciate not only the games themselves but also the work that went into it on the radio side--something I'd learn soon after when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
head58 and I started working at our local AM station WCAT (then called--briefly--WPNS, but I'll spare you the endless jokes that caused them to change it back) and did the station side of remotes for games.
There was also the college radio schedule that made things interesting. One could suddenly and happily find that their favorite station was back on the air because the fall semester had started and deejays had been selected after a few weeks' tryouts. I'd figure out who would be playing the best shows and listen to them almost religiously in my bedroom while doing homework. I'd be saddened when they went off the air at the end of the semester as everyone left on winter break. Sometimes I'd listen to the very last shows of the semester as the last person out of the studio turned everything off. Then there would be the excitement of them coming back at the beginning of the year, starting the schedule-following once again, and again with the end-of-semester final shows--some for good, when the students graduated--which more often than not were the deejays' own top favorite countdowns--some with their mini-countdowns of favorite PSAs as well.
After my own stint toying with both the AM and the FM stations at Emerson College (I'll spare you the gripes I had with them) and moving back home in 1995, by then the alt.rock universe had become more mainstream, and most college radio stations had become less "alternative" in the indie rock sense and started playing other genres, be it rap, metal, jazz, or what have you. For some stations, they gave up indie rock entirely, or played it late at night. Others played it during the day, integrating non-indie shows into later-afternoon shows and evenings. For the most part, though, because of alt.rock's success in the 90s, the college radio I listened to just didn't have the mystique and the excitement it once had. And the alt.rock that got played on commercial radio was watered down...it was different from your typical straight-ahead rock, but it was harmless and didn't take as many chances.
It wasn't until early this decade, perfectly tied in with the internet age, that indie rock experienced a resurgence. Some 'terrestrial' stations, WAMH included, returned to their indie roots and started playing more of the out-there stuff again, a lot more than it used to. It seemed that after a good number of years where college stations were an afterthought or a pathetic attempt at an extracurricular activity, it started being cool again.
There's also the fact that many of these stations are now streaming online. There's also a resurgence of indie rock fans out there who have come to appreciate the original 80s wave of alt.rock (enjoydivision, I'm looking at you ;) ) and their tastes have followed suit. And there's definitely new bands out there who are remarkably similar in sound and spirit to the original sounds I once found fascinating back in those days. It's a different fanbase now, and yet it seems to have come full circle again, back to where it originally started.
This all ties in with the current audio project of mine, in which I'm 'ripping' my old radio tapes into mp3 form--basically to preserve them, to be honest--and comparing college radio back then to what it sounds like now. It's really interesting to listen to, considering that the alt.rock that you'd only hear left of the dial back then in the 80s has become somewhat the norm now. Hell, there's a national commercial out there right now that uses Tones on Tail's "Go!" as background! And now, the indie stuff that gets played on college stations today are benefiting from the internet age--there are blogs and streaming stations out there playing all sorts of indie songs, giving these bands a LOT more airplay and word-of-mouth than terrestrial radio ever did back in the day. It took the genre a good couple of decades to return to its original state, but it's back again.
It may not be in the mainstream, but never mind that.
College radio is where it was born, and where it feels most at home. And I like that idea.
I have an old radio/tape player that I snagged from a coworker when he left, and I like listening to music while working. I keep it on very soft, just enough for me to listen to and my coworkers would have to really strain to hear it over the cubicle walls.
I was getting a bit frustrated with hearing that All American Rejects song "Wish You Well" for the tenth time on Live 105 that morning, and wasn't really in the mood for listening to NPR (which I usually do in the morning, simply to avoid the endless-chat-and-little-music of the 'morning drive' shows), so I took a chance and searched for local college radio stations. For most, that basically entails going to the left of the dial and searching for any station playing something other than classical, news, or jazz...although over the course of many years, this isn't necessarily true anymore. Many college stations aren't about the alternative and indie anymore, but are more along the lines of shoehorning as many styles and genres of music as one can into their schedule, leaving indie for a precious few hours of the day. But I digress--I'll skip on that gripe for now.
So anyway, I found KUSF 90.3, which is of course University of San Francisco's station. I knew it was a college station because I heard something vaguely indie (as opposed to commercial alt.rock), followed up quickly by Joy Division's "She's Lost Control". Score!
It took me about three songs to realize that--just like that, without any preamble--I was listening to college radio again. I hadn't done that in years for one reason or another. I have listened to college radio now and again via streaming audio on the internets, but not for a long stretch, and there's also the fact (as stated above) that a lot of college stations play anything but my beloved alt.rock when I want to listen to it.
I mentioned in one of the first Radio Radio posts a few years back about how I came to obsess over college radio; the short version would be that sometime in late 1985 or early 1986, I found UMASS Amherst's WMUA completely by accident while searching for a jazz station. The slightly longer version is that once I realized I loved this strange and different form of rock music, I went all out and looked for and bought as much of it as I could, and listened to such stations (sometimes WMUA, sometimes sort-of-local station WMDK, but mostly Amherst College's WAMH) obsessively throughout the rest of my high school career.
Back then I was deeply fascinated by the idea of college radio--I'd always been fascinated by the radio field, even as a kid, and the idea that I was a few short years away from possibly being on an actual station myself was the coolest thing. There was also the added incentive of playing all my favorite stuff, which, come to think of it, was also the stuff that got major airplay on these stations, so that was a plus! I also loved the names of some of the shows out there...there were the normal goofy names like Tim's Show or some such...but some were creative, such as Hey Look at All Those Psychos, The Sewers of Rangoon and Haphazard Radio (the latter of which I stole for my own show on WECB a few years later). I remember really loving HR because the deejay for that show always played the best stuff. There was also their weekly top 20 countdown, called The Potted Plant Countdown (which, I believe, they still have after all these years), where they'd actually give away potted plants donated by local greenhouses by the end of the show.
Mind you, I will also say that college radio got me into sports as well. No lie! Before then, I'd rarely pay attention to any games going on that my family would watch on TV, and at high school football games I'd get bored sometime in the second quarter. WAMH changed that when I started listening to their Lord Jeffs basketball and football games. I started to appreciate not only the games themselves but also the work that went into it on the radio side--something I'd learn soon after when
head58 and I started working at our local AM station WCAT (then called--briefly--WPNS, but I'll spare you the endless jokes that caused them to change it back) and did the station side of remotes for games.There was also the college radio schedule that made things interesting. One could suddenly and happily find that their favorite station was back on the air because the fall semester had started and deejays had been selected after a few weeks' tryouts. I'd figure out who would be playing the best shows and listen to them almost religiously in my bedroom while doing homework. I'd be saddened when they went off the air at the end of the semester as everyone left on winter break. Sometimes I'd listen to the very last shows of the semester as the last person out of the studio turned everything off. Then there would be the excitement of them coming back at the beginning of the year, starting the schedule-following once again, and again with the end-of-semester final shows--some for good, when the students graduated--which more often than not were the deejays' own top favorite countdowns--some with their mini-countdowns of favorite PSAs as well.
After my own stint toying with both the AM and the FM stations at Emerson College (I'll spare you the gripes I had with them) and moving back home in 1995, by then the alt.rock universe had become more mainstream, and most college radio stations had become less "alternative" in the indie rock sense and started playing other genres, be it rap, metal, jazz, or what have you. For some stations, they gave up indie rock entirely, or played it late at night. Others played it during the day, integrating non-indie shows into later-afternoon shows and evenings. For the most part, though, because of alt.rock's success in the 90s, the college radio I listened to just didn't have the mystique and the excitement it once had. And the alt.rock that got played on commercial radio was watered down...it was different from your typical straight-ahead rock, but it was harmless and didn't take as many chances.
It wasn't until early this decade, perfectly tied in with the internet age, that indie rock experienced a resurgence. Some 'terrestrial' stations, WAMH included, returned to their indie roots and started playing more of the out-there stuff again, a lot more than it used to. It seemed that after a good number of years where college stations were an afterthought or a pathetic attempt at an extracurricular activity, it started being cool again.
There's also the fact that many of these stations are now streaming online. There's also a resurgence of indie rock fans out there who have come to appreciate the original 80s wave of alt.rock (
enjoydivision, I'm looking at you ;) ) and their tastes have followed suit. And there's definitely new bands out there who are remarkably similar in sound and spirit to the original sounds I once found fascinating back in those days. It's a different fanbase now, and yet it seems to have come full circle again, back to where it originally started.This all ties in with the current audio project of mine, in which I'm 'ripping' my old radio tapes into mp3 form--basically to preserve them, to be honest--and comparing college radio back then to what it sounds like now. It's really interesting to listen to, considering that the alt.rock that you'd only hear left of the dial back then in the 80s has become somewhat the norm now. Hell, there's a national commercial out there right now that uses Tones on Tail's "Go!" as background! And now, the indie stuff that gets played on college stations today are benefiting from the internet age--there are blogs and streaming stations out there playing all sorts of indie songs, giving these bands a LOT more airplay and word-of-mouth than terrestrial radio ever did back in the day. It took the genre a good couple of decades to return to its original state, but it's back again.
It may not be in the mainstream, but never mind that.
College radio is where it was born, and where it feels most at home. And I like that idea.
