grassroots radio promotion

The useful "Best College Radio Stations" map in my previous posting is the work of a 26 year old radio activist and web developer named Sujay whose interest in the promise of non-commercial free-form radio was inspired by a move to the San Francisco Bay area where there are many creative, local stations ranging from KPFA's listener supported "free speech" radio at Berkeley to the more staid NPR clone KQED. 
When I asked Sujay what motivated his build of the site, he wrote "I've always sought out untainted sources of art and culture, and when I discovered college radio, I knew I found something great. I wanted an accessible map and playlist of the "best" stations and since I couldn't find them, I built them." 
When I asked whether the site included local community radio stations or if its focus was solely college radio. Sujay explained his rationale:"After initial research, it seemed like most 'community' stations relied on NPR broadcasts or were run by professional DJs.  I decided to limit the list to stations run by student volunteers. There are a lot of great stations that are not run by students, though, and that's why I'm working on a spin-off project right now that focuses on outstanding commercial-free radio shows from any station in the world."

This promising project may be part of the RADIOcollective grassroots work. From my brief email exchanges with Sujay, it seems that the value of promoting freeform radio is in its freedom for experimentation which is only possible with a freedom from regimentation. "To me, true freeform programming means that there are no rules. The DJ could broadcast static noise, satanic verses, or Top 40 hits. Obviously there are FCC guidelines, intellectual property restrictions, and hate speech regulations, but to me these are all forms of censorship."



Amen to that! In these days of homogenizing global consumer culture it is more crucial than ever to start creating our own. And when it comes to important issues, can't we find more serious moral considerations than whether or not someone has a potty-mouth?


Marlon Brando supplies a succinct analysis of our potty-mouth paranoia in his 
Colonel Kurtz monologue  from Apocalypse Now: “We train young men to drop fire on people but their commanders won’t allow them to write fuck on their airplanes because it’s obscene.” Is the broadcast of words like "fuck" and "shit" really a serious crime worthy of the significant legislative and enforcement costs involved? I wonder what the total annual cost would be?

Maybe the FCC's trivial obsession with taboo words is really just an effective distraction from their consistent promotion of media monopoly - just one more reason that grassroots radio is an increasingly important medium to use and support.

Radio & Resisting Regimentation

The image above is a map of The Best College Radio Stations courtesy of DJ Sujay of Radio Collective whose mission statement is well targeted for the promotion of genuine cultural creations rather than the mechanically produced programming that is the law in commercial radio.

"We believe that independent radio is an unparalleled source of music and cultural exchange. Our goal is to discover and share the most interesting radio shows in the world, with the world."

In the homogenized wasteland of commercial radio, there is some small degree of "programming diversity" but the spectrum is surprisingly narrow considering how much lip-service we give in America to creativity and freedom of expression. 

Jordan Page, artist, activist and social commentator, writes about this narrow spectrum of programming in his brief, cleverly titled essay "Homogenization of Radio: Let us all give thanks and pay grateful homage to Clear Channel" 

 "There are many systems of control that shape our lives in this great nation we call America. They govern our daily lives on most fronts, our political and spiritual views, but it is undeniably more personal when they attack a people's access to art by filtering and bottlenecking anything that does not fit perfectly into the mold."

There are almost 20 "morning zoo" radio shows still being aired even though this trite format has been regurgitated since the 1980's when it was considered a fresh approach being promoted by broadcasters like Glenn Beck. If you listen closely to their script, you are sure to recognize the zoo litany. 

How many dithering duos start our days with their inane banter and canned station slogans like "the 50-minute music hour?" or "the workforce block?" The subtext suggested by such standardized professional programming rhetoric seems designed for distracting or mollifying legions of cubicle-bound workers.

More about DJ Sujay, the Radio Collective and the crucial need for truly independent "freeform" programming in my next post.

Strange Cucumber radio debut

Tonight is my radio debut as StryderLee hosting "Strange Cucumber" an eclectic, engaging, varied and unexpected radio show that combines music, audio collage, sound effects, commentary, spoken word, interviews, local soundscapes, interesting audio history and more. My first time slot is Monday mornings 1AM-3AM, a time when most folks are asleep but many college students are catching up on the studying they should have done over the weekend, so I hope I can engage them.

The origin of the title is in a remark one of my fellow students made to me one afternoon at the Eastern School of Farriery: "Stryder....you sure are a strange cucumber." An old friend gave me the name Stryder because I walk so fast, so I used it at horseshoeing school. The other guys taking the 6-week summer training course didn't know what to make of a guy who read books and didn't join in conversations about "niggers, faggots and bitches." When I tired of being kept up until 2AM (when we woke at 6 to work on horses!) I packed up and moved my gear from the men's bunkhouse (population 15) to the women's side (population 3) and these guys didn't know what to think - hence, "strange cucumber."

So, I hope the title doesn't scare anyone off and that for my two short hours I will be able to entertain, inform, provoke thought and surprise my listeners.

What is Noise?

After so long a break from my last entry, I plan to use my blog more for recording notes & my thoughts about sound and radio and the focus of my research rather than a daily or weekly (or yearly!) "posting."

In Ted Conover's recent NYT Book Review titled "Noises Off" he begins his review of three books about silence with a thought provoking question:
"So it might not surprise that a writer has just come out with a book about the problem of noise. But what does it mean that three have done so, within barely a month?" Conover follows up by noting that early in each book the writer details a sonic encounter that he admits has him nodding with sympathy as a fellow "noise crank." 

This phrase got me to thinking about my own annoyance with certain sounds like the ugly and ubiquitous leaf-blower, like some high-pitched banshee of our mechanical domination. The oddly droning screech of a leaf-blower can be heard a half-mile away, so then how loud is too loud?

If I can attach audio to this post, I'll upload a recording I made outside our home. We live on a hill on the south side of the James River just outside of Richmond, VA. This area is rich with wildlife and in the recording you can hear hawks and crows and cardinals, the distant roar of the river and.....
leafblowers, cars and trucks, jets, low-flying planes and helicopters.
It's SO peaceful here in the woods!

But those moments of silence in between the mechanical noises are as peaceful and uplifting as they could be. In such moments, the efficacy and necessity of such natural noises is clear. As R. Murray Schafer noted in his 1977 book The Soundscape we have become increasingly conditioned to, desensitized by and accepting of noise - and of the power it represents.
 
Jacques Attali discusses noise and power in his slim 1985 publication Noise: the Political Economy of Music, noting that it is power that gets to define what constitutes "noise" while also justifying its own expressions of sound. From the sonic sieges of Manuel Noregia and the Branch Davidian cult at Waco, the US Government has deployed sound as a weapon.

This fact might move us to pause and consider the impact of our own soundscapes on our physical health and emotional well-being. It may be that we are growing to need the sound of the machine and so experience great anxiety in the absence of mechanical sounds - but is this evolution?


 

a necessary collection

Recently I was honored by an invitation from the Richmond Amateur Radio Club (RARC) to speak about my research, and I think I've encountered a potentially important resource for my studies - and for our nation and local community.

Though I'm just beginning to learn about HAM radio and other 'old-school' radio technologies, it was immediately clear to me that in the audience of several dozen members who gathered for their monthly dinner meeting there was a collection of important technical know-how that should be gathered and digitally recorded for future operators.

In our digital age of Web 2.0 we tend to become so enchanted with new techno-toys that we dismiss, overlook or forget the power of more ancient and stable media like radio. Rather than discarding elder technologies and knowledge, we might more profitably compose a thoughtful hybrid of the new and the old. For example, on the Internet Archive website, you can type "amateur radio" in the search box and you'll find W2XBS George Bowen's "This Week in Amateur Radio # 735 with streaming audio news stories about the wisdom and utility of amateur radio during times of emergency.

How can we most powerfully combine radio technology with newer Web technologies? In his influential 1964 text Understanding Media, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan notes how various "media...depend upon us for their interplay and their evolution" (73) and he observes the tremendous power unleashed by hybrid forms. The etymological root meaning of "hybrid" is fascinating: the offspring of a wild boar and a domestic sow - but which is the new tech and which is the old? McLuhan advocates "the hybrid principle as a technique of creative discovery." (80) Since most of the audience raised their hands when I asked who regularly got online to surf the Web, it may be that RARC members are already deploying hybrid media.

RARC's collective knowledge "amateur" radio technology is impressive, and important.
I'm hoping that, in the absence of a large audio archive project, RARC at least has an active mentorship program so that their knowledge can be passed on and we'll have it next time we're in trouble. In times of political, financial or weather emergency, amateur radio operators voluntarily form webs of communication that empower rescue and recovery when younger, more vulnerable technologies fail. While Katrina provided a notable example of this, many at the meeting had their own stories of disasters that they helped address via amateur radio networks. I'd love to get a few of those stories posted here!

power interference?

In the small window of opportunity allowed by the FCC for LPFM application, one of the objections made by corporate stations was that of interference. I'm not a technical expert, but I'm soliciting information from people who are like LBA Group, and I'll post it when it comes or you can post it here in the comments.

However, it seems that a small experiment is all the evidence I need to disprove corporate claims. Below is a brief audio of me trying to find WRIR 97.3 LPFM in Richmond, Virginia and it's clear that the station is not easy ot find, even with my RCA RP 7887 Super Radio. I have no problem receiving the station in my car, perhaps because the hood acts like a dish antenna, or maybe it's the digital tuner. In any case, as you can hear below, WRIR does not in any way interfere with the corporate stations that surround it on the dial. Corporate complaints don't stand up to a simple test - so why didn't anybody call their bluff?

(click radio tower image on left for my audio blog & the sound of corporate interference)

radio ROVE??

It may have been a nightmare, but I thought I had recently heard that Karl Rove was planning to start his own talk radio program - but when I googled the topic, I found no confirmation. However, I did find Rove's homage to Rush Limbaugh in which the conservative talk radio host is characterized as "educating, engaging and energizing" his listeners. Considering many of Limbaugh's "dittohead" fans pride themselves in their slavish repetition of his slogans we might challenge the educational impact of his show.

One point Rove may have is in acknowledging the excesses of "PC" culture, a point liberals should carefully consider. Promotion of tolerance and diversity is one thing but excessive management of language is always wrong and counterproductive - unless you live in Orwell's Oceania!

Though there have been some few liberal talk radio shows like Air America, they seem to have had far less funding and a smaller audience - why might this be so? In spite of the obsessive demonization of liberals, I find that there is very little evidence of an organized "Left" much less any liberal groups as venomous and extreme as those who demonize them. Have I missed the vast left-wing conspiracy? And if so, does the vast right-wing conspiracy still have any traction after so many years of historic incompetence, criminal activity and failed policies like media monopoly, privatization and corporate deregulation?