Welcome back to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard. I’m the director of 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio, a feature film about, you guessed it, college radio, now available for download at 35,000 watts.com. With me today, my co host, Lisa Girard Hello. And our resident music guru, Keith Porterfield.
Howdy. Thanks for having me back.
We want to know what makes a college radio band a college radio band. What are some of the common threads that we see and the music that came out of college radio? So one of the things you have to understand right off the bat is that college radio is its own thing.
It’s its own entity. It’s very free spirited. And that’s what people love and loved about being in college radio. Students ran the station, they might have had a faculty advisor or mentor type adult person, maybe giving some guidance. But for the most part, most college radio stations are run by students, and those students turn over every year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years.
And in that, you can have many different cycles of themes or theories or whatever you wanna call it happening at these stations. So you’ve got student DJs, and those DJs are often music aficionados. And we all kind of play by our own rules and our own playbook, and we kind of made it up as we went. And that’s part of that that freedom that we had to explore. In that there was no format at most stations.
It was either the students bringing their own music to play, designing and creating and producing their own specialty shows. They might do a jazz show. I hosted an industrial show. You know, you could do whatever kind of music theme you wanted to explore. Some stations were a hybrid, so they might have a little bit of a format, like, don’t play anything that’s played on commercial radio.
Everything else is okay, or it might have been completely structured. And, yeah, you had a music list that you had to go off of that was created by the music director like we did at KTXT from Keith when we were there. And sometimes there’s flexibility in that too, where you could get a DJ’s choice. Or if you had a specialty show, you were responsible for filling that hour of music, and that wasn’t necessarily gonna be dictated to you from your music director. I think one of the biggest differences to keep in mind is that college radio is noncommercial radio.
So it’s the left of the dial. It’s usually below the frequency of 90.1. And that was not advertised supported radio. So there were not commercials, and there weren’t advertisers dictating to station managers what kind of music they thought would, generate more ears. And so not being limited by advertisers expectations in the business department, in the marketing department, even to some degree, just left the door wide open for all sorts of music to come through those those speakers over the airwaves.
So with those doors being wide open for exploration, Keith, what can you tell us about your experience at KTXT as the music director and your relationship with, you know, the music that we were playing at that time? Yeah. I think the, you know, the topic being what makes a college radio band a college radio band. The first thing that you have to really think about is that, especially in those days in seventies, eighties, nineties, college radio, the music landscape was a lot different than it is right now. Nowadays, with social media and everything being what it is, if you’re in a band, you know, you can put up your own YouTube channel and it sits right next to a YouTube channel of some gigantic band, and maybe you’re not gonna get as many views as these other guys are, but you’re kinda competing on a sort of level playing field, and you’re at least in the same arena that they are.
And that was a lot different than a lot different experience than what a lot of bands had back in those earlier days because you weren’t on a major label. There was no way you were getting on on major radio, on regular radio, or getting your song played in that way. And so, you know, while at at KTXT, we did play some major label stuff, especially bands that had kinda started out in the, in the college arena and then kinda graduated out into, major success. Most of what we played, were bands that were still looking for a big deal and didn’t really have any other options for getting their music out there. And so, of course, what do they do?
Well, the next best option is this massive network of smaller radio stations all over the country, that is, you know, obviously college radio. And so a lot of those smaller And with no format. Yeah. Exactly. And so, yeah, even less of a hurdle toward getting your your music on the air.
And so, you know, a lot of those labels have their own representatives. A lot of the smaller labels would gather together and hire a company to be representative for them. And those reps would call radio stations. And as the music director at KTXT, I used to get, you know, dozens of calls. I almost dreaded being in the office on some days because I couldn’t get anything done because my phone rang just constantly with, reps from, smaller labels looking to try to push their bands.
And so, you know, there were levels of gatekeeping there that kinda kept some bands from bubbling up farther than they did. Even to get to the college radio level was a pretty serious feat. You know, you really had to work at it to pull that off. Do you remember in the film, one of the bands talks about how they had to literally address their own envelopes and send their CDs and tapes to stations as well. I mean, it was like grassroots as grassroots gets.
Absolutely. And I would get calls, you know, from all these reps, and so many of them. I had the ones that I knew I could trust their stuff was gonna be good. I had the ones that I knew their stuff was likely not going to be very good. And so with the limited time I had, I paid more attention to the to the things that were getting pushed by representatives that I knew well and that I could trust.
And if you didn’t have representation, if you just sent us a CD or a, you know, vinyl record cold, there was almost no chance that I was gonna have enough time to to review that, because there was so much stuff. I used to get every day a full mail crate full of CDs and vinyl, and it’s just impossible. You can’t listen to all of it. And so, yeah, that was yet another kind of, hurdle to jump over is, you know, you had to get your stuff to college radio stations. And then on top of that, you had to make sure that somebody at that station was actually going to listen to it and give it a chance.
And then on top of that, it had to be good enough to compete with all these other bands that were there. And so, you know, even getting to that that far, even getting to college radio was was really difficult for a lot of these bands. I mean, I got a lot of respect for the ones that really stuck with it and would continue to push new records out and would continue to have the reps call and and browbeat me until I was gonna put it on the air. Maybe not quite as, a bigger deal nowadays, for bands that are trying just trying to get started out. You know, obviously, everybody’s looking for a venue to get your music out there, but there were just less avenues for it back in those days.
So, Michael, can you help us understand what what’s the common thread of the the music that was played? I think that’s why this question interests me so much because, you know, you have, like, country music is gonna be on a country station. Jazz music is gonna be on a jazz station. Pop music is gonna be on a pop station. If you say, well, okay, college radio plays college radio music, that encompasses pop and jazz and rap and dance and, rock and grunge and industrial like.
So you can’t just say, oh, well, it’s this type of music because we played every type of music. So then the question becomes, what separates a band like REM or the Pixies or Sonic Youth, where you immediately think of them as indie alternative college radio bands from a rock band like Aerosmith, say, who has never been thought of as a college radio band, but is essentially playing the same genre of music as, you know, a Sonic Youth or a Pixies. I’m fascinated by that. I don’t know if there’s an answer to it. And I was actually thinking earlier, like, you have super poppy, hugely mainstream artists, like, say, a Phil Collins, who would occasionally make kind of a weird quirky track like in the air tonight, which I could see being a song.
Like, imagine a world where the cure records in the air tonight. That could kinda work. Right? It’s a quirky, atmospheric you could see Robert Smith taking a putting a twist on that. Conversely, you can The Cure had some really poppy, amazing, catchy songs, the type of which Phil Collins was known for knocking out of the park, like, left and right.
Right? There’s a crossover even there, but you’re never gonna confuse Phil Collins for the Cure. Is it the lyrics? Maybe to some degree, yeah. I think a lot of college radio bands, REM is a good example of that, where the lyrics are just they’re just deeper than than what you’re often gonna hear, you know, from a mainstream band.
They’re gonna they’re gonna reference things that make you have to go to a dictionary or or today, you you know, you’d have to go to Wikipedia to, like, look it up and be like, what the fuck were these guys even talking about? Right? I think raging against the machine. I mean, their lyrics were completely, totally politically loaded, whether you directly heard them or interpreted it later, but we were playing rage before they hit it big. I’m also, by the way, just as a side note, fascinated by people who didn’t understand Rage Against the Machine as a political band or understand that they had a viewpoint because I I’m not really sure how you would miss that, but there are people that did.
But anyway yeah. So lyrically, I do think whether it be because of their of the of the lyrics being too political, too raunchy, too whatever Yeah. Now you’ve got another avenue to get that music out because college radio generally didn’t have a problem with that. Musically, I would argue that across the the wide spectrum of stuff that you would hear on college radio, musically, it’s more challenging. I think it’s more, likely to to go past the kind of standard 3 chord pop.
Although, you know, certainly there are pop punk bands that made a career on just playing 3 chords, which is not a diss. I mean, that’s not a No. A judgment call about the type of music. It’s just a fact of life that a green day will make it to the mainstream because it’s accessible music. But, you know, think of a band like Scott Sonic Youth, say, where that’s a challenge.
Sometimes those albums could be challenging to listen to. Like, that’s not always just pop it on and, like, have a light bop around the house kind of music. Like that’s and there are a lot of bands that we played that went a lot further than Sonic Youth in terms of, like, dissonance, in terms of really complex musical structures. That’s kind of where I land on on the discussion, I guess, is that there are factors at play in with the music that was made that then ran some of those people up against the gatekeepers that Keith was talking about and then find solace in college radio that you’re talking about, Lisa, about there were no gatekeepers. There was no advertising No fraud.
That you had to worry about. And I don’t know that that’s, you know, the answer a 100% of the time, but that I think is the answer a lot of the time is either lyrically or musically or both. Those artists were too challenging to just catch the ear of the mainstream record label label A and R rep or catch the the the ear of of the mainstream listener and and needed to find a different outlet. A lot of commercial rock and radio, those people were buying songs. They were not really writing their own songs.
Not all of them. There certainly were bands that were writing their own songs. In the college world and in the indie rock world, almost everybody is playing their own music. Those people are are into music not because they wanna be huge singers, not because they wanna have number 1 hits, but because they wanna write songs and play those songs themselves. They don’t wanna write them for other people, you know.
They don’t wanna do other people’s songs, although those bands do do covers, obviously. And I think the, you know, one of the things that is a theme through college radio bands is that these are all artists that are trying to, get their own music out there, their own songs, the songs that they have written. And I think one thing, and I hate to say this because it almost sounds like I’m dissing a bunch of bands that I really like, one thing that does keep The Cure from being where Phil Collins is at and having them switch places or those kinds of things or other bands, one that quickly comes to mind from the major rock world is Journey because they had Steve Perry as their vocalist who’s quite possibly the greatest rock and roll vocalist of all time. A lot of these college and indie bands are not great singers. They don’t have really great vocalists.
If you’re used to hearing Steve Perry all the time and then you get Black Francis, you know, shrieking about Monkeys Going to Heaven, you’re not not necessarily on and on to that second song, you know, especially if you’re really into the the slickly produced, really professional vocal, you know. So a lot of these bands, you know, they’re great bands. I love the pixies. I could listen to Frank Black shriek all day long. But is it as, you know, the same quality of vocal as as Steve Perry or even say like Sebastian Bach or somebody like that?
Not really. Not really. And I think in a lot of cases, a band like The Cure, in order to have a hit like Friday in Love, you’re overcoming Robert Smith’s vocal as much as you are, leaning on it, you know? And there are a lot of people, myself included, The Cure is my all time favorite band. I love Smith’s kinda pracked operatic vocal style.
But again, if you’re listening to top 40 radio, and back in those days, you were used to hearing, you know, say, Whitney Houston on the radio, even a band like the Sundays that have got a great singer in, Harriet Wheeler, her voice is you know, I could listen to her sing all day. She sounds like an angel. But she’s not Whitney Houston, and, you know, that’s not Harriet Wheeler’s fault. It’s just Whitney Houston is one of the greatest singers that was ever alive, you know? And so I think to a certain extent, and again, I hope it doesn’t come off like I’m insulting some of my favorite my own favorite bands here, But I think that could be a bit of an impediment to some of these bands, you know, launching all the way up into major, you know, major radio play and and major stardom.
Michael, I’d like you to wax poetically about your favorite band, REM, and why REM was such a college radio darling. I mean, they are the gold standard of a college radio sound. I think it’s safe to say that if you surveyed, you know, enough people to get a decent sample, 50 people that knew college radio and said, okay, name college radio band. REM is gonna be in that conversation every time, every time. It just absolutely across the board.
It’s interesting in the film, 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio available for download now at 35,000 Watts dot com in the film. We talked to, Bertus downs, who is the manager of REM, and I actually asked him this exact question and this quote is actually in the film. Maybe I’ll play it right now. To me, what separated them out made them more likely to be championed by college radio, made them, like, worth fighting for. I think just that they were really doing what they loved for the love of the game.
They weren’t doing it for commercial purposes. They weren’t doing it to fit a format. They were just trying to to make their art. They were trying to make their statement. That was what Bertus thought really spoke to the kids that were in college radio that they liked that.
So beyond the music and the fact that REM has written dozens and dozens of great songs, unique yet accessible music. The other thing that college radio liked about them was that their attitude, who they were as people. It became obvious as they continued through their career that the kind of people they were and the kind of artists they wanted to be and that really meshed very well with the idea of what college radio wanted to be, you know, independent, not beholden to anybody, not seeking some sort of higher plane of existence, but just wanting to be what they were and wanting to to I love that. They wanted to make their art. They wanted to make a statement.
And I think everybody in college radio kind of is the same way. We all thought we were kinda making our own art by sharing other people’s art, by bringing our own twist to our shows or whatever it was. And I think that that, extends to some of the other bands that get listed with them as quintessential college radio bands. I think the one that came up probably the second most was the Violent Femmes in terms of Oh, yeah. Great example.
As Karen put it in the film, and maybe we can share that clip right now. The college radio phenomenon was in full effect when the Violent Femmes came around. That was besides REM, the Violent Femmes were the first band that really captured the hearts and minds of college radio. How you do that? Who knows if if there was a formula for that?
Everyone would have been doing it back then, but certain bands did. REM did. Violent Femmes did. Sonic Youth did. Pixies did.
I would say Husker Du and Sugar, you know, the Bob Mould bands did. I think that’s a common theme through a lot of these bands, is that they’re not willing to make compromises. Not willing to change what they want what they wanna do, the kind of songs they wanna write. And there is an authenticity to that, that I think plays well or at least, you know, at the time played well, with us in college radio, not just at our station, but at other stations. So, yeah, I definitely think that that has a lot to do with it.
Going back to Violent Femmes, I think that’s another great example of, like, the lyrics and how complex or out there they can be and they still hit. I mean, we all know that one song that uses that one word that everybody knows. Like, that was never gonna get played on commercial radio. Doesn’t mean we were still FCC licensed, so we still had to follow some rules, but we got clever. Those of us in college radio would have probably been more than happy to play a lot of stuff that that we either didn’t play or that we censored, and it wasn’t because we were prudes.
It was because if for no other reason, we weren’t gonna be the one that got the FCC license yanked from the station. Right? You did not wanna be the DJ, or you certainly didn’t wanna be the station manager who was sitting in the station manager chair at the time where the FCC license got yanked from you. So there was rules that we had to follow. Another thing we didn’t touch on is, like, we were a place for regional and local bands to be featured as well.
So we can go over that in future episodes, but that was another big part of what makes a college radio band a college radio band. So, yeah, that’s a good point. We could probably do an entire other episode on that, but we talk about that in the film too, that local and regional bands of, again, of any genre were able to get a foothold by kind of, you know, calling their local station up and being like, Hey, we, you know, we got a tape or we got a record or whatever. Yeah. For KTXT in particular, without the Dallas music scene, we would have lost about 30% of our playlist.
So that was very important to us, back in those days. This is a great, like, late night sitting around drinking beer, debate. If you’re one of those people that likes to debate music, and I bet a lot of the people that are listening to this podcast are, we’d love to hear obviously what you have to think about it. So let us know through socials and whatnot. But, yeah.
What makes a college radio band or artist a college radio artist? Think about it. Thanks for listening. Remember, 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio, a feature documentary about college radio is available right now. 35,000 watts.com.
Keith Porterfield, our resident music guru, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Right. So go online, 35,000 watts.com, and, share your feedback. Let us know what you think makes a college radio band a college radio band.
You can also just let us know what you think of the podcast. Would you think of the film or if you have a fun story that you’d like us to share? You can also find us on all the socials, and we are always checking and posting on those as well. So if you wanna comment there, that’s great. We are on TikTok now and, of course, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Like we said at KTXT, let’s keep it locked to the left, and we’ll see you on the next episode of 35,000 Watts, the podcast.