COMMUNITY
An Interview with Oscar Zubia Jr. from Planetary Group
Growing up I was always consuming music, whether it was flipping through Bay Area radio stations, dancing to Daft Punk on MTV after school, or crowd surfing at Warped Tour, I always needed to know what was new and good.
AUGUST MD of the MONTH: WHSN’s Mark Nason
As a lifelong music fan there are albums I’ll never tire of (The Lemonheads’ It’s A Shame About Ray for instance) but three albums from this year that I’ve been hooked on are Easy by The Weeks and Beth Ditto’s new solo album, Fake Sugar. Dan Auerbach’s new solo LP Waiting On A Song is another winner.
An Interview with Nick Duncan of Sub Pop Records
“College radio stations offer a platform for people who are genuinely passionate about music to communicate directly with their community about the music they love. Generally speaking, nothing is focus-grouped or groomed for airplay. There aren’t any charts or graphs or numbers that determine the station’s rotation (if there’s even a rotation at all). It’s a direct and sincere relationship between the people at the station and their community. That is an increasingly rare thing.”
JULY MD of the MONTH: INDRA RAJ
“KGNU gets a lot of recognition in this area because of our alternative approach to presenting news and music programming, and a lot of people get to know us through friends and by word of mouth. That said, we are also deeply committed to getting out and participating in community events and festivals so people can get to know us, but also so we can support other community organization and non-profits in the area that align with our mission.”
JUNE MD of the MONTH: UMFM’s Michael Elves
“Pretty much the entirety of my musical history can be traced back to George Michael (I’d go deep on Prince a little later). Wham!’s Make It Big was the first album I ever got, in 1984 when it was new and I was eight.”
An Interview with Co-Sign’s Tyler Freese
“The reason college/community radio matters is the exact same why it has always matters. People > algorithms.”
Interview with Jess Caragliano from Terrorbird
“In a time when our industry (and much of our life!) is so focused on the digital space with algorithms predicting what we want to see or listen to, the existence of a local space where actual human beings from the community are curating content content live on air, is more important than ever.”
MAY MD of the MONTH: WLOY’s Margaret Jokoh
“One thing I love the most about the station is that we are heavily involved with the local music scene but also in service. We hold our own stage at Honfest (a local music festival in Hampden), play music at several events on campus and the coolest thing we do is bring in local artist to do concerts once a week on campus! But the one thing I love the most that we do, is aid in this BBQ for the homeless. Different people from the staff come to play music, help BBQ and just hang out and talk to people, it’s really cool and makes you appreciate what you have.”
APRIL MD of the Month: KSJS’s Franco Miranda
“KSJS is well known throughout San Jose for the station’s attitude of local music. They heavily promote artists and bands from the Bay Area as well as promote shows that are in the Bay Area. The Program Director, the managers, and I connect with the community by promoting local events and participating in food drives among other events.”