RADICAL RADIO

Boulder, Colorado, 1965. I'm nine years old.It was the best curbside find of my short life; a table top AM radio and some torn speakers. I could salvage the speaker magnets to pull iron filings out of the dirt but what if the radio actually worked? I hid this loot under my bed for surely there were parental prohibitions on such valuables. After bedtime, I plugged in my radio. The faint orange radio-tube glow flowed out of the broken top of the radio and cut through my darkness like a fuzzy spotlight. Then the quiet static of my new radio successfully amplified the universe's background radiation. As I've done countless times ever since, I slowly, almost imperceptibly, moved the dial on my primitive radio telescope to find new forms of the good life on earth in my now rapidly expanding universe. KOA, KLZ, KVOD, and finally KIMN 950 in Denver. Every station had an adult talking to me, not as a miner of iron filings, but as peer exploring adult places, things, and music far beyond the limits of my elementary school. From that first night and continuing today, radio remains a portal into humanity without the geographic limits of face-to-face interactions. I put my little hand inside that radio to attach my homemade antenna that I would move to find the distant clear-channel stations of KOMA (Omaha), KMOX (St. Louis), and WLS (Chicago). I was profoundly moved but I kept my growing relationship with these distant voices secret, secret, secret so nobody could take this magic from me. To this day, I hide my radio image from my listeners because the radio magic I experienced always required secret invisible mechanisms. I wasn't a TV kid because TV took my attention and left me with worthless baubles. “Fakey!” I would shout at the screen. Denver only had three major television stations and a local independent with tacky home-made programs like professional wrestling and monster movies but the new FM radios had doubled the number of AM stations and each new station had more breadth and depth than all the four TV channels combined. Radio talked to me while I went about my life. TV talked at me and demanded all my attention. Then radio took a big leap and fully distinguished itself when I found the “free form” stations of KRNW (Boulder) and (KFML) Denver. Later I would be flabbergasted that free form station KCFR (University of Denver) was actually trying and succeeding to be non-commercial. (KRNW and KCFR were inadvertently non-commercial. They were involuntary patrons of the arts.) These three free form stations audaciously declared all other stations as; “narrow, boring, and hopelessly square.” Oh such great new gifts from the radio gods now! Free form stations swore an allegiance to audio artistry and breaking the fourth wall by encouraging listeners to have a conversation with the radio. Not the horrible phone in shows but an (imaginary) dialog. I now carried a notebook to write down the unusual musicians and songs I heard. I started guessing what song a show host would play. I tried to figure out how they were thinking about radio and music. And yes, I talked to the radio too. I wanted to see if I was right so I became, “that kid who always calls.” My imaginary conversation with the radio was becoming real, “Was that … on drums?” “I noticed you played Tommy Bolin after Jimi Hendrix. Did you do this on purpose?” It was my first experience with art that found me instead of being thrust upon me by others. “My art” slowly emboldened me to explore myself on the creator side. It might take months of calls but after they recognized my voice, my real agenda would pounce, “Can I come down and watch you work your show. I promise I won't bother you.” Off I would go on my bike to bother them with every question about every thought in their head and every move they made. But it didn't bother them, they liked someone inquiring about all the nuance and thought they mastered to carefully craft every moment of their show. I got my FCC license when I turned 16 but I wouldn't operate a board much less create an audition tape until someone pitied me enough to actually train me. August 1977, Elvis died and all the world's mourners and commercial radio stations figuratively jumped into his grave to writhe on top of his coffin and (now that he couldn't object) maybe rub some of his glory onto themselves. Four months later, my favorite musician, Rahsaan Roland Kirk died and Thee Harrell at KCFR does a three hour tribute to Kirk. I was soon befriending Thee Harrell over the phone and (now) driving the 40 miles to KCFR where I declared I was going to get on the air and do an all night Rahsaan Roland Kirk show just like Thee. My first lesson from him: Thee:“Do you know what FM stands for?” Me:“Frequency modulation as opposed to amplitude modulation. In frequency modulation the....” Thee:“No kid... It means “Fucking Magic” and if you don't create it during every second of your show then you're betraying the music, me, and every reason you've worked to get here.” 1978 KUNC (Greeley) was the high power radio station that hated the college students it was chartered to train. After trying my usual phone stunts and begging for their training, Thee helped me make an audition tape and KUNC took me seriously. Since no student or KUNC staff wanted to give up their Saturday night, management hired me to change the six sets of reel-to-reel tapes, give six station ids, measure the tower output and lights every hour. The desperate-to-not-work-Saturday-nights-staff was amazed I showed up every week. With this bargaining power, I was allowed to play jazz after midnight (after the university administration and radio station management's bedtime). My mentors taught me well, “Management won't judge you based on whether you do good radio or crappy radio because they don't know the difference. To avoid getting fired, simply never appear at the station during sunlight hours and always take the worst shift.” My first Rahsaan Roland Kirk special was a six hour show one year after his passing. It was a successful show because station management dutifully slept through it. Flush with a year's worth of not getting fired, I vowed to never get paid for radio and radio has never offered. I did annual all-night Rahsaan Roland Kirk specials and I felt the same “fit” on the other side of the mic as I did listening to that AM radio I found as a little kid. I went onto graduate and law school studies in telecommunications where I had the privilege to learn from the exact people who created the policies and regulations for FM and non-commercial radio. Beneath their regulatory bureaucrat disguises, I saw dashing, dramatic, even acrobatic heroes with their thrilling stories of creating one of the most idealistic industries in America, public radio. I then worked in Washington, D.C. for the exact people who ruined all radio. DC was the center of the great telecommunications conflict between commercial interests and artistic interests. It was where matter and anti-matter destroy each other like the fighting Beal and Loki from Star Trek. Thankfully, my radio artistry mentor's tools continued to work perfectly so I both avoided and survived these destructive conflicts. The people representing commercial interest were friendly, intelligent, and oh so slick. (FCC Chair, Mark Fowler, charmed my mom.) However, I immediately recognized them as “the goons of radio.” They never had an inkling of radio's beauty. Not even an interest. They were flat grey men. Banal cogs in a strict financial process that vacuumed up scattered telecommunications assets and then redistributed the consolidated mess to their shareholders who were handsomely rewarded. These financial processes purposely neglected the matters of audio artistry that my mentors and I held so dear. In fact, matters of artistry were incomprehensibly quirky to them. When they even noticed such matters, it was only to note them as aberrations to their sacred financial processes. Later they would tell stories of these quirky encounters to amaze and reassure their fellow country club denizens that their shared high status was legitimate because (unlike us radio natives) they alone “exclusively follow financial rules and processes.” Of course, the consolidation of these quirky independent radio stations into nationwide conglomerates made radio into today's soulless horror show. The consolidation was so complete that today there are only a handful of commercial (and even non-commercial) stations that aren't controlled by a national or regional corporation, foundation, university, or religious organization. My show is on a few of these remaining independent stations and I treasure the two times they remarked, “Jamie, you're a radio guy.” In a reciprocal version of the country club types, every week my listeners and I reassure ourselves with audio evidence that our shared status as “radio guys” was legitimately granted. Unlike the destroyers of art, we remain exclusively and deeply moved by radio. Just like when we were kids. But unlike the goons, we radio guys can flourish in both worlds of work and art. The goons can't distinguish the profound difference between the human joy of art and heartless wasteland of a financial process. Hell, if they can't tell the country club food is crappy, how are they going to know what “F.M.” radio stands for?