 |
| · · · · · · · · · |
|
Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
|
|
| · · · · · · · · · |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Radio Archeology: Part 4
The Internet and MP3s bring new challenges
and opportunities to KSPC
Artifact // Basement Tapes (vinyl) 1995 and Basement Tapes Volume II
(cd) 1997 // the station releases two volumes of live, in-studio
performances by an eclectic array of indie rock artists.
|
|
David Escovitz '06 is one of the station's veteran
deejays. |
|
 |
|
|
Indie music produced an unexpected side effect. Music no longer emanated
exclusively (or increasingly, at all) from big companies in Hollywood or
New York, so local scenes broke out in areas with strong college radio
stations — Austin, TX; Athens GA; Minneapolis, MN; Seattle, WA; and yes,
even good ol’ Claremont, CA. Josh Abelon PI ’95, who served as a deejay
and music director for four years at the station, recalls, “There was
definitely an Inland Empire — mostly Claremont — music scene at the
time, mainly centered on the various players of the mighty Shrimper
empire.” Local music promoter and KSPC deejay Dennis Callaci’s record
label and associated bands quickly became the house music of KSPC.
Callaci did his morning show at the station and worked at Rhino Records.
“There was musical energy in the air at that time, with bands like The
Mountain Goats, Nothing Painted Blue, Refrigerator, and WCKR SPGT,”
Abelon said. “It was a real artistic community.”
The community was vibrant enough that deejay Erica Tyron SC’92 began to
devote the final hour of her weekly show to live bands and the area
music scene. Tyron replaced Fricke as KSPC station manager in 1992, and
she worked with the staff to upgrade the station’s equipment for
in-studio performances and KSPC-sponsored concerts on campus. In 1995,
the station released a vinyl record of live, in-studio and on-campus
recordings, The Basement Tapes (a clever double reference to both
college rock grandfather Bob Dylan and the KSPC studio’s “underground”
location in the basement of Thatcher Hall) and followed it two years on
with a second volume, this time released on the latest breakthrough in
music technology: the compact disc.
In 1995, the station descended deeper into the underground music realm.
With major record labels quickly buying up the smaller ones, the KSPC staff voted to cut ties altogether with commercial music. “We
started to feel that diversity and true independence within the music
world was slowly crumbling away,” said Music Director Abelon. “I believe
we were the first and possibly only station in the U.S. to filter music
in that way.”
 Abelon recalls that KSPC received some angry response because of the
decision — mostly from major record labels — and he had a response at
the ready: “We decided that once you had major label backing, you didn’t
need our station’s help. KSPC existed to help provide an audience for
the music that normally falls between the cracks. Once a band crawled
out of said cracks it was free to fly without us.”
Even before it cut ties with major record labels, KSPC had come under
some criticism for becoming, perhaps, too esoteric. The station had
emerged as one of a small number in the country that encouraged and
enabled its deejays to draw freely from a wide range of non-commercial
and/or overlooked, forgotten music, with New Jersey’s legendary WFMU as
grandfather of the movement. Opposition to the station’s programming
peaked when a student called for a campus forum to discuss the station’s
music. The only attendees turned out to be avid supporters of the
station’s maverick stance.
“There was a running joke among a few friends that if you heard dripping
water, unusual chanting, screeching static — whether on the radio or not
— you were probably listening to KSPC,” says Matt Abrams ’97, a deejay
from the era who has continued to remain associated with the station as
an alumnus volunteer. “It wasn’t a mean-spirited thing, and many of the
jokesters were in fact listeners, but the station’s reputation for being
out there musically did precede it in some minds.” It didn’t take long,
however, for the music scene to catch up with KSPC, and the station
found that non-commercial, often unsigned bands featured on KSPC wound
up with commercial, major label deals — and would be promptly dropped
from the station’s library. “It’s tough when you realize you have to
give up on a favorite Yeah Yeah Yeahs song because they’re starting to
play them all over the place,” says Abrams, “but there’s solace in …
keeping KSPC sounding new, helping good bands get big, and keeping radio
moving in a way that it can’t if we don’t stay a few steps ahead” of
commercial radio.
Artifact // www.kspc.org
Like everything else in the modern world, KSPC quickly found itself
becoming “wired” and rolled into the new millennium free of the Y2K bug
(remember that pointless hysteria?). The station struggled to update its
equipment and get onto the Web. Tyron remembers that it took nearly two
years to sort it all out, but thanks to computers and the internet, KSPC
now broadcasts 24/7/365 and can be heard virtually anywhere in the world
via its Webcast.
Groovy vinyl still has its place on the KSPC
playlist. |
|
|
Breaking through the traditional boundaries of time, space, and
information access also have impacted the music scene in
ways still too
new to measure. Tyron notes that current student deejays tend to come to
the station more fully aware of the vast amount of music and information
“out there” thanks to the Internet. “In the early days you really had to
be digging through the bins and talking to people at record stores, and
looking through magazines. It was really a lot harder to find out what
was going on,” she says. Today’s deejays "have done all this work and
research and gathered all this information that just wasn’t readily
available to everyone before.”
KSPC deejay T-Kay Sangwand SC’01 discovered KSPC as a high school
student while “scrolling through stations on my trusty walkman” and
quickly got hooked on the station and several of its deejays. She
e-mailed KSPC deejay Drew Eastman ’01 and told him that she was a fan of
his show and the music he played, which was completely new and exciting
to me. He responded and they became fast friends through frequent e-mail
correspondence. When she was admitted to Scripps, she let the gang at
KSPC know, and they took her out for coffee to celebrate. “It was a
classic scene,” she says of their arrival, “[the KSPC group] was across
the street with the car doors and windows wide open, blasting Ladytron’s
‘Playgirl’ and dancing on the sidewalk.”
But as KSPC turns 50 in the age of file swapping and MP3s, does the
station have any dance steps left? Will it live to see 100? Sangwand
notes that the two most listened to radio stations on her computer are
KSPC and Internet-only station dublab.com. “College radio stations are
absolutely still important and relevant,’’ she says “because their
programming is determined by social, artistic, and political merit and
not profit value alone.”
|
| |
 |
|
| |
