EAR WHACKS
by Jonathan D. King

Like an organic apple, independent radio programming will always have its share of wormholes and imperfections. The apples at the SuperSaverMegaMart may look perfect, but why do they taste like wood? Because the content has been sacrificed for the sake of appearances to maximize profits like so much else in our corporate dominated world. This theory applies to everything that gets consumed by consumers (the current term for people) including radio. Nothing is as tart and tasty as a fresh hand-picked Hudson Valley Empire, hold the wax, please. As with apples, the best bet for a truly flavorful radio experience is to keep it local and organic.

If you are looking for a true alternative on your radio dial then you have to check on the fringes. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 further relaxed the deregulation of the airwaves that began in 1978, massive corporate mergers, buyouts and takeovers flooded the FCC, removing the limit on the number of stations a company could own nationwide and raising the cap on the number of stations a company could own in a single market. Many radio stations today consist of a local DJ broadcasting the news and local advertisements with the music being piped into the station from satellites, Kansas, or wherever it’s cheapest for media conglomerates to do that thing they do, which is make money. This has very little to do with the purpose of providing a diverse music selection to the people. That is because the goal of the music industry has devolved into choosing photogenic models with some modicum of stage presence to record consultant and executive board approved music that will appeal to the least common denominator in the demographic segments of society that spend money on music. That’s why they call it an industry, people. This is all well and good if you are satisfied with consuming a safe and homogenized McLife. For those of you with higher standards, I offer up some tart organic Hudson Valley radio stations for your listening excitement.

The news room at WVKR

For a Jeckyll and Hyde style radio experience, tune to 88.7 FM. By day 88.7 is WRHV, a reserved classical station with soothing DJs such as Mary Fairchild. But at 7 PM, Mr. Hyde shows up as The Edge assumes control until 5AM. Broadcasting for 10 years from the SUNY New Paltz campus, the student-run WFNP brings to the airwaves a raw eclectic programming schedule with an abundance of punk, metal and hardcore shows. The format changes every hour and a half on average and at times it can be honestly painful to listen to, yet it is never predictable, as the student DJs have few restraints. Programming includes a current events talk show, a Broadway show tune hour, industrial goth, hip-hop, R&B, a Latino dance show, jazz, classic rock and a comedy theater program. Where else can you hear Law/Animal Radio, a talk show about animal rights?
Station manager Kevin Connell told me one of his incentives for being involved with college radio was to provide the Hudson Valley with an alternative music outlet in the Hudson Valley. “I personally hate mainstream music. And I know there are a lot of other people that hate it as much as I do or even more. And that’s who we are here for, the people who can’t stand listening to the radio. They can turn on 88.7 and hear something different, not just the same drivel on all the other stations that you hear over and over. Cutting edge music, a lot of bands you would never hear or have the opportunity to hear something months before it would be on any other stations.” Although only on the air when school is in session (6 months of the year, 10 hours a night) the Edge has paperwork filed with the FCC and hopes to secure a 24/7 FM slot soon. Funded by SUNY New Paltz (your tax dollars, so you might as well listen) there are no commercials or executive boards involved in determining an official playlist.
Across the river and up the dial is Independent Radio 91.3 FM, WVKR. Another college station with an ever mutating programming schedule, VKR has been broadcasting from the Vassar campus for over 30 years including its AM days. As Vassar is a private institution, funding is obtained through a PBS-style fundraiser at the beginning of each school year. The beauty of this is that since the audience sponsors the station, there are no commercials. The station always meets its goals ahead of schedule due to devoted listeners. Publicity director Laura Rokkannen spoke with me about the station format. “All the major positions of the executive staff are held by students and a lot of our DJs are students. Yet during breaks when students aren’t here it is mostly community run…In the end it’s a good balance between students and the community members who are involved.”

It is the long running community based programming that gives the constantly fluxing station a backbone and a sense of identity, as well as enabling VKR to stay on the air year round. Successful shows include the Polka Rascals, the Hudson Valley Rag Shop, Radio Showtime (radio theater from the ’30s and ’40s), Blues After Hours, as well as programs of classical, Indian, jazz, and new age music. Saturday is six hours of hip-hop and R&B with the Homerun Hitters and Mr. Vince into six hours of reggae with Dexter and Super T. Got a band that’s never been heard on the air? Send a tape or CD to Scene Unseen which airs on Wednesdays and specializes in showcasing unsigned local talent. My personal favorite has long been the World Service with Judy Kaufman that airs from 12 noon to 3 PM on Mondays. She occasionally picks a theme for her show and the day I stopped by the Vassar campus she was spinning religious orchestral music performed by Orchestre Andalou D’Israel. I spoke with “the Judester,” as she is known on the air, in the middle of a major renovation scene at the VKR studio. “I started the World Service in ’96 but had been DJing here for a couple of years before that. My goal is to introduce the listener to everything that’s out there. Most people would never get the chance to hear anything from this label,” she remarked as she held up the CD that was playing. “Madga Records is a tiny label out of Israel. I am in e-mail contact with a lot of record companies and labels from around the world...And I like to represent everything from traditional music to religious music all the way through stuff like the Cuban Hip-Hop All Stars and world beat electronica.”

For a trip back in time, tune to 950 AM, WHVW, one of the few independently owned radio stations still in existence. I met with owner J.P. Ferraro at his studio in Poughkeepsie. After visiting two chaotic college radio stations (think of your average teenager’s bedroom) the WHVW office impressed me with a Cleaver family living room feel, which is appropriate considering it is a station that Ward and June would have probably listened to after dinner. When I asked about the construction in front of the building converting the former pedestrian mall of Poughkeepsie into a street, Joe dryly replied, “Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. Now when I want to score some crack or a hook up with a prostitute, I won’t have to walk down to the dangerous neighborhood over there, I can just step right out. Hey if that’s improvement...” On a roll he continued “And I always felt kind of cheated because all of the drive-by shootings and stuff happened over there. Nothing ever happened here.”

I inquired about the format of WHVW and Pirate Joe let it all hang out. “Well I don’t want to sound like a snob, but, we consider 1969 the cutoff for good roots American music and that’s what we concentrate on here. You’ll hear delta blues, country blues, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, hillbilly, country music as it was first practiced by people like Ernest Tubb, jazz by people like Jelly Roll Morton, Louie Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Green, Bessie Smith, rockabilly… I guess it’s basically a course in American roots music. Where it all came from. What did music sound like when the people making it really had some talent, when they couldn’t go into a studio and do everything digitally. When you had to be able to play the instrument to make the music; you had to be able to sing and perform on stage without faking it; when producers couldn’t say, ‘Oh we’ll fix this up, take this out, we’ll extend the voice down here, patch this up, pitch-correct that.’”

It’s my opinion that those people were a heck of a lot more talented because they had to do a whole lot more...This is the last individually owned radio station in the area. Everyone else is owned by a conglomerate; there is just next to no real local radio any more…When corporations own everything they just want to plug it into a satellite, slap it on the air, minimize expenses and keep the transmitters modulating. So really any local or individual programming gets cut because it’s deemed ‘too expensive’…The radio business used to be a mom and pop business because of FCC rules. Those days are gone with deregulation.”

One sign that WHVW is not completely stuck in the ’50s is their Web site, www.whvw.org, that includes a program guide advising listeners that WHVW is not for disco bunnies.
In response to the corporate homogenization of the world we live in, we at Chronogram are fighting the good fight to keep it real. So, before everything on the planet is owned by one corporation, probably with a name something like: MicrosoftMorganMobilMerckGEAOLTimeMcDisney—don’t worry, that’s at least a couple of years away, after W is appointed to a second term—help us, and do your brain a favor, by listening to local organic radio.