And welcome back to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard, and I am the director of a feature film called 35,000 Watts, The Story of College Radio. It is unsurprisingly about college radio, and it is available for download right now at 35,000 watts.com. The podcast you’re listening to is also about college radio. And one of the things we like to do is bring on folks who were in college radio and talk to them about their their life in college radio and their life since college radio.
And we have a very special guest today. He is probably known to some of you who have seen the film. Some of you actually who’ve seen the film that that worked at WUOG may know him personally. But if you’ve seen the film, he was introduced to you in this clip, by Arval Poe. They paired me with this white guy named Spencer.
So let’s dig in. Spencer, how are you doing today, man? Great, man. I just love your film. I love your work.
Just love how you incubate creativity and allow people to to time travel and, you know, celebrate this bottom up spirit of nourishment. I’m just really glad to be here today. Thanks for joining us. It was, it was an obvious thing that we had to talk to you after talking to Arvelle for the film and and for his podcast. I think you had a big influence on him.
You You obviously had a big influence on some other folks at WEOG during your time there. So tell me, you know, going you went to the University of Georgia, obviously, is where WEOG is. Coming into college, did you know about college radio? Were you thinking about college radio when you when you got to school? So we had to back up a little bit.
I spent my freshman year at Sewanee in Tennessee. It’s the University of the South. And I all all my money that I’d saved up that summer, I was working bagging groceries, at at Kroger, I spent on CDs. And, you know, so I basically show up to college. I’m totally broke, but I got this amazing CD collection.
And this is, like, in 94, and it’s a special time because there’s still a little bit of the East Coast, West Coast hip hop rivalry. But the Wu Tang Clan has just come into existence and Outcast, you know, the south, like, you know, you almost have these, like, regional pockets. You’ve got, you know, the ghetto boys, you know, from from from Houston. There’s even, like, some stuff from Memphis happening. And that was amazing.
Like, dance hall reggae was was a thing. I was a huge fan of Rhino Records and these compilations. So I was just buying up stuff. I couldn’t help myself, man. I’m like a crack addict every time I go into the in into the into the record store.
And I was looking at, like, curation. Like, I liked, like, CD collections, particularly, like like, particularly, like like, Rhino. They had some stuff that was, like, almost like roller skating. Usually, they had, like, some low rider, like, impala, like, you know, through emotion, like, on the cover art. And and so I got there, and I was, like, I gotta do something with these CDs.
So I had a morning show, and I just wanted it to be, like, the party had never stopped. You know, you had such an amazing time, and then you I guess you go to sleep, and then you hear, basically, the same jams at night you would hear on the morning. So I was there for a year, and I wanted more. Like, I just wanted like, there was, like, one, place to listen to live music. And Athens, Georgia has more bars per square mile than anywhere in the United States.
And so I’d go to Georgia. I had a little scholarship there. And, yeah, it was WOG, 90.5, 26,000 watts, and almost as many choices. It had this legacy, you know, this synergy with with REM and b 50 twos and Pylon. And and the people who worked there were also amazing.
Like, this was still, I think I mean, yes. There’s that you can still have a career in radio, but, like, this is, like, before it became so homogenized. This is, like, before, like, Clear Channel’s, like, takeover. And so there was a little more, I think, personality to it. I figured out a way how to jump the line and not have to do any training.
And there was this show, called Minority Matters, and it was a talk show. And they didn’t they didn’t have anybody on there. So we could start getting on the air immediately without any and I figured, you know, I had done this year at a different school. And also, I was born on this interracial Christian commune in South Georgia. It’s called Cornelia Farm.
And its founder translated the gospels from Aramaic into this modern southern English. And it inspired, doctor King’s I Have a Dream. It was the birthplace for Habitat for Humanity. So these, like, sort of, like, these, like, racial dialogue had always been, like, instilled into me. My dad’s he’s a Episcopal minister, so his sermons were were on it.
And so I just wanted to, like, have create this forum where we talk to people in a way that was, like, both fearless and also nonthreatening, really to foster dialogue. So Arvel and I, we became, like, fast friends and and good buds. And I remember one particular episode, there was a fraternity that had the confederate flag, which was part of the Georgia state flag at that time. So it’s basically the Georgia state flag, maybe they would have the confederate flag, But they also had cotton grown in their front yard. Right?
And then they would have, like, these, like, old South balls. Like, it was just it was just seemed a little too much. And I should say, if you didn’t grow up in the South, you you don’t realize how I hate to say normal, but that kind of stuff wasn’t super unusual even into the eighties nineties in the South. Like, so No. And and so we ended up we called up the president of fraternity, and he was nice.
We invited him on the air. He said, sure. I’d like to talk to you. And, you know, from his standpoint, they’re from they’re from counties in South Georgia where cotton is huge. It’s a huge part of their economy.
And so for them, they were growing this as a way to it’s almost like a training ground, like you would maybe have tomatoes or you know, that was their intention. And it was good because we left this conversation with more understanding. We understood his intention was not to, like, like, glorify Gone With the Wind or, you know, this lost cause. But he also I think he understood that to an outsider, it might look like that. So Right.
I don’t I don’t think that they I think they stopped growing cotton after our conversation. In my mind, there’s not a lot of places besides college radio where a dialogue like that is likely gonna happen. And I think it’s really cool that it that it’s college kids who I think sometimes get dismissed as being, you know, naive or uninterested or unwilling to kind of engage in those kind of things. I I find it really fascinating that you guys were ready to kinda tackle that head on and say, you know what? We can use this platform.
And we talk about this a lot in the film. This is a platform for more than just music. Like, obviously, we love playing music. We love sharing music. That’s a big part of what you wanna do when you go into college radio.
Yeah. For sure. But you got you guys were finding other ways and maybe perhaps, I I think probably more important ways, really, to use that platform. And I think that’s fascinating to do that at such a young age because I don’t think I even me being in college radio and being a station manager at a station, I don’t think I was quite there yet. I don’t think I was I wasn’t using the platform in that way.
So I’ve I’ve it always is I I love that you guys were, and I I love hearing the stories about how you use that platform to help kinda bridge those gaps. Oh, it was so much fun. It really was. And like Arvelle said, the show ended up, like, attracting some of the brightest guys at the university. I was a little bit on the periphery.
I wasn’t in the black theatrical ensemble, obviously. But, you know, there was they were putting on some amazing plays. There was, like, a strong DJ scene. Obviously, Danger Mouse, his his show. Once Arbel and I, we had a plan for coming up with a music show.
I could tell you a little bit about that in a second. But, yeah, this the show, in a lot of ways, it just allowed us to jump the line because there was a need there. We said, oh, okay. We’re gonna do this. We had an idea for it.
And then, boom, we were able to have our own show without having to do any of, like, the apprentice work. And that got us a little bit into trouble, but, I we in that, we would play like the Isley Brothers, or we would play Ice Cube. But our intention was to play the Isley Brothers with Ice Cube. It was like almost kind of like a Who sampled before Shazam or before the Internet. So people were all always trying to mine, like, oh, what are the the songs that the current jams are are sampling?
You know? And just sort of seeing, like, again, sort of that time travel that that hip hop was experiencing at the time. I love that idea. That’s still a great idea for a show or a podcast to go back and dive into the foundations of what was used later in hip hop in terms of sampling and and that type of thing. And I also wanna come back to, before we get too deep into music, if there’s any college students or maybe high school students who are listening to the podcast or thinking about getting into this world, being willing to either do, like, an early shift or do a show no one else wants to do or to come up with an idea that is not being done is the best way to get yourself seen and get yourself on the air at at most stations.
I I, you know, I can’t speak for every single station. Stations have different ways of of how they fill their airtime, but having that kind of ambition and wherewithal to, like, put yourself out there and be like, hey. We want to do this show or we want to you know, I’ll take this shift is, a a really good way to, like you said, skip the line because a lot of times there is a long line to get, to get a shift. So that’s cool that you guys kinda figured that out early on. Yeah.
But, I mean, even, like and the cool thing about the radio era is, like, these shows weren’t being taped. Like, I have a couple tapes that I made myself. But if the g j was really good, we would. I set my alarm and get up at 5 in the morning because I knew this amazing young DJ was gonna be bringing the hits. So getting to the music, you obviously you know, just from the story you’ve already told us just on the podcast, you kinda came to to University of Georgia with some some of your music taste kind of formed already.
It sounds like hip hop and rap are a big part of that, but also kind of an interest in in in the more I I was gonna say retro, but that’s not exactly the right word, but soul music, the the music that kinda r and b that kinda came before hip hop. What helped you form that kind of early on? And then how did that happen? I’ve always been I’ve always been interested in music as a form of healing, and particularly, like, with civil rights and the idea that Barry Gordy did as much for civil rights as Martin Luther King and created this shared soundtrack. But even with segregated radio there in Nashville, WLAC had a 50,000 watt channel that I think the FCC gave him permission to overload it on the condition that they would play r and b to underserved communities.
And so that when people when blacks and whites, like, before they actually met, you know, at these protests or at these peace marches, you know, they are actually had a shared soundtrack. You know, they’re listening to the same songs. And then Mhmm. You know, when people listen to the same music, they can dance and fall in love. And, you know, I think probably the best indicator of racial progress now is just how open we are of interracial marriage.
I mean, it’s nobody cares at all now. I’ll I’ll tell you a little bit about my family’s journey towards racial reconciliation in South Carolina, where where my dad is from. I think that my time in college radio in in in the cultivation or or curation of these playlists made it so that when the white symbols and the black symbols, when we did come together for the first time, Like, this name is unique that, you know, if your last name was Johnson and you’re white and you’re Johnson and you’re black, it could just be a a coincidence. But, clearly, when I made this discovery inspired by Henry Louis Gates that my family had enslaved people in South Carolina, that these people testified against the Ku Klux Klan, that they led this migration back to Liberia, West Africa, that all these stories had been purged from my family’s collective memory, but there was enough trace in there. And when I reached out to the black Simerals telling them what I found discovered, I felt a duty to, her her name was Harriet Simeril, and she was the government star witness in this federal reconstruction trial that essentially kicked the KKK out of South Carolina.
Ulysses s Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus that allowed the Klansman to be arrested. You know, I felt like her witness and her bravery, I had to do something with this information. And so when I reached out to the Black Simmerals and we decided to meet, when we did get together, we played the music of of Stacks. We played Booker t and the m g’s. You know, we played Motown.
We’re playing, you know, this really this these songs of freedom that really allowed us to get together and and and get to know each other and and live in the present, to connect in the present. And that all comes back from my time as a as a DJ in college radio. That is an amazing story. And I I think we’ve talked to people from various backgrounds who have stories about how music kind of intersected their life. And it’s the essence of music, and it’s the essence of being being a DJ and being in college radio because you have this kind of innate need to share music with other people.
Right? Like, that’s why you want to be a DJ. So I love that. And I love that you kinda came into the college radio world with that already. And then I think translated that into into a show and to to share that that love with with, you know, your listeners and and people all throughout Athens?
It was what we had fun. We had fun on air. Like, the the show was called The Players’ Picnic, and I came up with that. It was like a a scene in the movie, The Mac. It’s a it’s a blaxploitation film starring Max Julian.
And he tells this young woman who he’s smitten with that he’s gonna take her to the player’s ball, and even she’ll be his date at the player’s picnic. And they’re, like, playing softball, and there’s just food everywhere. And when we designed the artwork, we had ants were at the party with all this food, like this giant, piece of corn on the cob and biscuits, and they’re just sitting there, like, just like you know, this is this paradise, and they’re having this barbecue. And it’s the idea that everything we serve was all you can eat. It was just a limitless buffet.
Did you go in, to to your shows kinda with a with a plan, or was it pretty free form? How did you approach each show when you when you went into the booth? Well, I was inspired by Snoop Dogg’s album, when he would use a lot of, like, scenes from movies. So we would, like, sort of do, like, similar things, like, have those queued up. And we were intentional about the songs that we wanted to talk over.
And usually, like, 12 inch records were key for that. You know, you can’t play the, you know, 13 minute version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone on commercial radio. And you can at 90.5. And so just having, like, those, like, lush openings just allowed so much time for us to we wanted to create a vibe. Like, Garbelle and I were, like, obviously, like, close friends and became even closer, like, through the show.
And we just wanted to create something that people would would listen to and feel like they’re at a party. And, like, the music was there, like, with those 12 inch. I mean, we’re all about the all about the extended breaks. And, you know, with that, you could walk away from the music and have a little conversation and then come back to it. We had a lot of callers, and people would want to, you know, share stories.
I don’t know if we had the technology back then to actually bring people on the line, or if we did. I don’t know how how much we used that, but the phone was always ringing. And we our friends would come up and hang out, and we’d have food. And we would also do dance clubs together too, which is fun. But but this sort of allowed us to do it in a quiet space in the evening and and, and blast it out to the world.
Did you, enjoy getting the feedback from people? Did you kind of cultivate, like, you had your regulars who would call in and Oh, yeah. Start to get the sense that you were Oh, yeah. Oh, and we because we promoted it. We make posters, you know, with that ant, the player’s picnic.
You know, he had the the pimp hat tilted to the side with the with the feather. And, yeah. So, yeah, it was the Players Picnic. We had t shirts made. Yeah.
It was awesome. So you did Minority Matters. You did Players Picnic. Were there other shows that you did, or is that the kind of one without the one you guys kinda stuck with during the year? That was that was basically it.
The other the sort of the ace in the hole I had was I studied abroad my junior year at Oxford University. Oh, wow. And I came over. I delivered a lot of pizzas, so I had some cash when I came over. And, you know, I was just planning to have fun like any other college junior.
And I just turned 21, but, you know, the beer over there is so good. But the records, the CD compilations in England’s record stores, I stopped drinking when I was there and spent all my money on compilation CDs. It’s interesting to to see, like, American culture through European eyes. I’m sure, as you know, living in Spain. But over there, they had these CD compilations that were just unmatched, particularly, like, the one that that I bought.
I came back with 8 CDs. Each one of them had 72 minutes on it. So this is, like, 10 hours. It was called Blaxploitation Soul, Jazz, and Funk from the inner city. And all those movies, Superfly, Shaft, Dolomite, Little Caesar, it is all of them.
You know, they Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Roberta Flack, Donnie Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield. There’s, like, all that, like, they had put on. And it is just like we just like once we had those, we just I mean, it was just we were unstoppable. Like because back then, you would hear a song once, and then there was no Shazam. You have to like, that song is amazing.
And you hey. What song is that? And not everybody would know, like, what it was. I remember my friend at that time was a DJ, and he ended up, you know, end up traveling around the world, like, playing clubs. But he had just got his first turntable, and then he was trying to save up for a second technique turntable.
And then he had one copy of Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa. And so he was looking everywhere trying to get that second copy of Planet Rock so he could extend the break. I remember the day he came home with that second one, you know, and it was just, like, he was just ready ready to just to scratch and cut and remix it. And But, yeah, I I think kids are spoiled today to be able to just, you know, pull up any song anywhere, anytime, no matter how rare, no matter how obscure. Like you said, using Shazam to find a song.
I mean, the, yeah, the days of going into a record so I’ve been on both sides of this, going in a record store and then working in a record store and having people, like, a a melody to you and, you know, to try to, like, find that song. It just, Yeah. It was it was really incredible. Like, Arbelle, I told him what was up. And when I got back, we started planning that summer, you know, just getting it ready.
And the Players’ Picnic, it after I ended up going to grad school, which I’m grateful for. A part of me wishes that I had more work in professional media. Like, I’ve had some success as, like, an independent filmmaker and a podcast producer, you know, that I’ve sold now to corporate media. But I don’t know. Like, I think if you look back to the college radio time, it’s just the fact that there weren’t rules, there weren’t time restrictions, there wasn’t that profit motive.
It also encouraged me I think Arville told the story of how the Players’ Picnic ended up replacing the soul funk show that was already already on there. And, you know, I was like I just I just wasn’t totally satisfied with that show. And, you know, I was in a little bit of, a dilemma because I really liked the guy who was hosting it. And so I just tried to come up with an objective pitch on why what we were bringing I didn’t even say it could replace it. I was just like, this, you know, this should be it.
And they decided to maybe he maybe he he was tired. He was like, yeah. Like, let’s let these guys do it. Right. But, yeah, just, you know, showing it like you said, like, if you have an idea with the right backing, your own initiative can can be fruitful.
And I’ve always I think from that, I’ve some of the ideas that I’ve had I made this documentary about of Montreal. I went on tour with them in Europe for 2 weeks. And I just came up with that idea just on the spot to their manager. They needed somebody to sell t shirts on their European tour, and the plane tickets were, like, prohibitively expensive. And I was teaching at an art school over in Italy, and my little brother was gonna come, and participate in the program.
And so I said, well, my brother and I have plane tickets to Europe. Let me I had I had just bought 2 2 video cameras. Like, once you let me run these cameras I was just teaching myself how to make how to make films, with no I didn’t have any formal training. I was, like, once you let me run the cameras and my brother, he can sell the t shirts. And what I was thinking was that he would also help me with the filming, kinda like Mhmm.
The the the Maisel’s brothers. But he realized that he could meet a lot more girls selling t shirts at 21 than he could holding a video camera up in a club. So, man, so so I ended up getting all this stuff myself. Like, I’d have I actually ended up getting a 3rd camera. I had 1 camera on a tripod.
I would, like, fight in the pit for one position, and I have to find somebody who seemed trustworthy. You know? Like, maybe like you. You got the oh, yeah. I think this guy might know what to do with the camera.
Right. Right. And and so I did that every night at every single club, and it was a lot of fun. It was that that film was was screened in, like, 7 film festivals. That’s awesome.
Even of Montreal. I mean, that that band with Elephant 6 definitely came out of of Athens, Georgia. Kevin Barnes moved there because of reputation. 90.5 was a big promoter of their work, especially back back in back in the early days. What was it like to be in a in a town that just it just feels like when you’re in Athens, even to this day, but I’m sure back then, you know, in the eighties nineties, especially, it just feels like creativity was just kind of always bubbling over and brimming.
And and like you said, there’s there’s a club on every corner. And what was that like? Well, I think there’s one it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. And I think listeners may be familiar with Patton Oswalt saying, like, Athens, Georgia is this weird dream city of goodness.
That’s that’s what he calls it. But I think there’s one, like, phenomenon that I don’t I haven’t really heard too many people talk about, but I have a theory on. And it’s the mall. It’s this mall is like your typical abandoned mall today. It’s called Georgia Square Mall.
But when it was built in the late seventies, all of the businesses downtown relocated out to on the outskirts of town, like, 10 miles away. And so if you look at, like, archival video of Athens, there’s a lot more, like, diversity in types of businesses than there are today, because now it’s just bars, restaurants, and, like, these, like, luxury apartment apartment complexes. But but back in the forties, it was just the the local economy was was amazingly diverse. But then all the businesses left, so all the rent downtown was really, really, really cheap. And, also, the art school was in walking distance to downtown.
Mhmm. So, like, Michael Stipe was an art major. You know, a lot of those guys, like Michael, you know, from Pylon, like, all those guys are, like, in the in the art school, and they’re just it’s easy walk downtown. All the businesses are are cheap. And I remember, like, some places, it was almost like we’re I didn’t know if people were trying to make money.
It’s like they basically had this they had this store downtown so they could hang out. Like Right. Right. And they didn’t even really seem that there was really a profit motive at all. And those are always the best.
Oh, yeah. I mean, like, Orte was hanging out all the time. I don’t know if if y’all listeners know Orte. He was this he’s featured in Athens, Georgia Inside Out. He’s this really eclectic guy who carried around this legal pad full of, like, obscure records that he was listening to and just, like, writing down and the history of them.
And he would DJ on 90.5. I tried once to, like, recreate his playlist on Spotify, and he didn’t have a single song that you could listen to. It was all, like, these, like, just deep cuts. And so he’s there talking about it, and, Paul Thomas of the X-ray Cafe was there, and Michael Stipe is is just hanging out. And people also would give these these musicians, like, some space.
You know? Like, I used to make Michael Stipe’s cappuccino when he came into Jittery Joe’s. You know? And I would, like, smile at him and, you know, want him to feel comfortable. But, you know, like, he’d also come in there knowing that I’m not gonna get in this business.
You know? So that was that that was neat is just seeing all these creative types, very bohemian. Like, the rent was so cheap. Like, when I got my PhD, my buddy said, hey. He had an extra bedroom in his house.
It was a $125 a month. This is back in 2,2004. So I didn’t really even have to make that much money. I could work less and have more time. I don’t know.
Like, now as I get older, I don’t see time and money as opposites. I see more as compliments. But back then, the the living was so cheap that you could just have so much time to to pursue creative interest and which would inspired you, you know, knowing if I know that Michael’s doing it, then, you know, I can do it as well. There’s an element of ambition and, like, initiative that I think gets lost sometimes in stories like that too, where you have this idea of, oh, well, it was like this artistic community and people were cranking out art and and doing whatever. But there’s that’s rarely successful without the other side of that, which is the working hard, you know, the working 2 jobs and then doing that.
The wherewithal to put together a house party or to be put together a show or to do you know, those things don’t just happen. And I think sometimes it’s not. That’s another element of that recipe that we were talking about that that maybe gets overlooked is you can have all the other things. But if you don’t have a group of people who have the ambition and the initiative to actually make those things happen, then it all would just fall flat or it wouldn’t happen at all. Again, it’s amazing to to see a town like Athens and just see how all of those all of those things came into play and and make it what it is.
And and you end up getting artists who would normally not play, you know, a town as small as Athens, who go out of their way to play the 40 watt club or the Georgia theater or whatever just because they want to go there and play for those crowds. I I just think that’s they’re just so cool. It’s just such a great book. You should you should write a book based on college radio that’s more spatially located. You know?
And I I love your film. Everyone who’s listening, you’ve probably have have seen it or know of it. But I just think, like, maybe, like, something that was, like, in like, almost like a a case study here. Like, I’m watching your film. I’m learning a little bit about what it’s like in in Lubbock.
You know, that would be, I think, a a fun way for people to like, I’ve been to Seattle a couple times, but I don’t know anything about the college radio station there. One thing that drove me to to make the film to begin with is that pre Internet, you know, we have so you have 500 to 600 stations, depending on exactly how you count them, in the US, and they’re often operating inside of a bubble. You know, again, these days, kids are much better about connecting with each other and getting on you know, they put themselves on YouTube or TikTok or whatever. But even, you know, from, say, even 2,005 backwards, you often didn’t know what other stations were doing, and you didn’t connect with other kids who were in college radio. You didn’t know what was kind of outside.
So so I knew what we were doing in Lubbock, and I felt like we were doing some really cool, unique, special stuff, and sometimes we were. But when I made the film, what was fascinating and just blew my mind was how similar our our stories were to other people. Like, we were all kind of part of this bigger thing, but we didn’t even know it, which is amazing to me that that can is even possible. But yet the flip side of that is every station does have its unique story. They have the the the hurdles that they had to overcome to stay on the air.
They have the story of the time that the tornado knocked the radio tower down, and they had to go do a fundraiser to put you know what I mean? Like, there’s all these different stories. And so we have talked a lot about as we kind of extend 35,000 watts beyond the film, the podcast being the first part of that, of going and doing short films about different stations and and telling their stories. Like you said, they are there are hundreds of those stories, and they’re all very interesting to me. We were only able to just barely we didn’t even really get to tell the story of Athens, you know, in any in any real detail.
You did a you did a great job. I mean, no. Like, you you talked to the right people. I mean, I was like I was like looking at you, I was like, maybe I saw him at a house party sometime. He looks familiar.
I man, I I would love to say that I had ever been to a house party in Athens because that would have been my that would have been my my college age dream and and kind of my adult dream too, honestly. Like, I mean, that’s the reason we went there was there’s, you know, I’ve I’ve been an REM fan for most of my life, and I just I think being in a town like Lubbock where we really were extremely isolated and we didn’t have kind of these this thing that we’re talking about, this recipe where things were really exploding and people were really being creative, that that really I don’t wanna say it didn’t happen in Lubbock because obviously there were bands that came out of Lubbock. There was, you know, people that were making the shows on the college radio station. But I think I I often wished I was in a town like Athens where I had more of maybe that support or more of that that kind of thing around me that would have allowed me to to achieve more. And and maybe my mindset should have been, how do I achieve this in Lubbock, not I wish I could be in another place.
But, that was what brought me there, and it was really fun to to walk around and meet people and talk to people and go to Wexbury and to walk into the 40 watt club. And and, yeah. I’m always jealous of people who had that experience. We’re starting to wind down on time. We’ve talked a little bit about this, but I do wanna give you a chance to kinda talk about how college radio set you up for your for your life after college and and the things you learned in college radio that you took with you and how you took that experience in college radio and and how it informed your your adult life even to this day.
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, like, while I was I only walked away from college radio because I went to grad school, in in American literature. And it was also a relief when one of my friends ended up picking like, hosting the players picnic while while Arvell and I were gone. So, like, you know, I felt like I’d created something that had lived beyond me. Yeah.
And he came with all this passion, and he was this is, like, in in sort of, like, the Napster days. So he was like he just had an amazing collection of songs, and he had definitely done his his homework and his research. But one of the things that, like, as a teacher, is that people can always turn the channel at any time. At any time, whenever you whatever it is you’re doing, people can find another station. And maybe what it maybe they even have it programmed to scan, so they’re only gonna be on your you and your show for 10 seconds.
So as an educator, I have to make the content interesting enough that people are gonna stay with me and not because it’s something that they have to, but it’s something that they want to actually experience, you know, as in a in a shared community. That and also just the ability to always pitch ideas, even to make up the concepts as as you go. And, sure, not all of them are gonna stick, but, you know, like, I think success breeds success. And, you know, definitely, minority matters led to the players picnic, led to my PhD, led to my of Montreal documentary, led to my Audible podcast, you know, TED talk. I’m not trying to give a resume here, but I I do think that, like, it really was incubated in the presence of Arvelle Poe and other people at WUG 90.5.
Some of my dearest friends today are from that radio station. And they’re they’re doing really cool things in in media, you know, like, with, like, CNN, and, you know, we’re still going to their bands. And I think some of the greatest music produced, I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to quit their day jobs, maybe. But, you know, we’re all still chasing down a dream in some form or another. And, you know, I love teaching.
I’m teaching, at a boys’ school right now. I’m teaching them the classics. We’re just finishing up the The Great Gatsby. We’re gonna go into Shakespeare next. Like, I never, like, thought that I would be here, but, you know, this is still it it’s we’re still living a dream, like, in its own like, your your dream, like, evolves.
I love that you hit on 2 really important things about college radio that I that I hope aren’t lost on people. 1 is and I’m glad you you kinda did give your resume because it speaks to the fact that college radio isn’t about just learning how to be a DJ, and it’s not just about training you to work in radio. The skills you learn in college radio can be applied across a wide spectrum of of things, whether it’s media adjacent things, filmmaking, podcasting, but also educating and other people that have just gone into the business world or whatever. And they’re like, I I didn’t DJ after I left college radio, but I use those communication skills that I learned, or I use the ability to think on my feet, or I or like you said, I learned the ability to capture people’s attention and hold their attention and find ways to to to communicate that way. And I also like that you touched on the fact, and this was universal.
Every single person I talked to in college radio said, the friends I made in college radio are the ones that I had for life. There was not an exception to that of any of the people that I’ve talked to. The and that is where when people talk about because the last question I wanna talk about with you is kind of the future of college radio. That’s where I think college radio still holds so much importance is as a a place, a community of people that come together to work together and to achieve a goal, which is you know, sometimes it’s just keeping the station on the air, you know, keeping the music flowing, keeping keeping things going, but also just what happens when you get a group of people that are working towards a common goal and and they form a community together. That’s important.
That’s still happening. Students at this very moment are still doing that. I wonder if, you know, if you’ve gone back to Athens, maybe you visited WUOG or maybe you’ve heard other college stations, kinda how you feel about, like, the current state of college radio and and the future of college radio moving forward. I think it’s essential to to preserve it, especially in these times of, homogenized media, you know, to have there needs to be at least one station on the dial where you don’t know what you’re gonna get, you know, when I mean, even, like, there’s some, like there’s even a format that I think Clear Channel does now. Like, usually, like, Dave FM or to get some dude’s name, and they put FM next to it.
And they’re Right. Yeah. And, you know, and they’re gonna go from, like, Eminem to Journey to, you know, this weird sort of genre across, but it’s just not the same. You know? It’s not the same to, like, truly have no idea, like, what the next song is is gonna be, what the next show is gonna be.
And to have to give young people the power to curate, to decide what’s cool, Like, I’m really only listening to rap these days through my 8 year old son, who’s become, like, an Eminem and Kendrick Lamar fan, like, from from the bus. And, so I I so, like, you know, like, just give young to empower young people to become the curators and to, like, let us know what they think is cool. And that’s essential for creativity and and just, you know, keeping the keeping the vibes. We’ve been talking today with Spencer Simrill. This has been an excellent conversation.
We could I feel like we’re gonna have to have you and Arvel on together sometime. Oh, I love it. 3 chat. I think that would be a blast. Before I let you go, I know you’ve got a lot of projects that people probably could access, and find.
Is there there’s some things that you can tell people about where they can see I know you have a you have a TEDx talk, I think, that’s on YouTube. The how do people find that? Can they find your docs? Can they find your podcast? Where where can they find out more value?
Well, I I need to build my website, which, I don’t know. I’ve that’s there’s she should be able to find it at spencer simrill.com. But if you just Google my name, spencersimrill, you’ll find the TED talk. The my podcast is on Audible. It’s called Once Removed, an American Family Reunion, and it features an original soundtrack produced by T Bone Burnett.
The Montreal documentary is on YouTube. Hopefully, I’ve, you know, I’m trying to leave somewhat of a trace bread breadcrumbs. And I I’m podcasting is is a fun world. I I like the on demand quality of it. I’ve been able to have some success with my students who’ve won some competitions, with the New York Times.
3 times, we’ve won best best best podcast award. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s been that that’s been a lot of fun.
And, you know, I just think that as people, we have to be both, dream catchers and and dream incubators, in ourselves and and in others. That’s what we want. That is exactly what we want. And that was that was kind of the point of the film. If you haven’t seen the film, I’ll go ahead and mention it right now.
It’s 35,000 Watts, The Story of College Radio. It’s available for download right now at 35,000 watts.com. And and that was our goal is if you don’t know about college radio, you can learn a little bit about it. If you love college radio, it’ll take you on a little bit of a journey through the history and some of the bands and music of college radio. And and, you know, I personally lost touch with college radio for a while.
I think a lot of people who maybe have. And it’s important to remember, there’s there’s stations that are probably in your town or your area that need your support, that need your help. Some of them under threat of having their license pulled or maybe being shut down. That’s always kind of hanging over most stations heads these days. So get involved.
Let your stations and let the colleges know that that you love college radio. And, yeah, tune in to the podcast again. We’ll see you, back here on 35,000 Watts, the podcast.