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Twenty years ago I joined the staff of my college radio station. By the next year I was in the music department, and before I left the place I had been the music director and program director.
College radio in the early to mid 1980s was an aftershock of the FM radio revolution. Most stations were format-free, and the DJs played what they liked. Since punk rock had been through and smashed up genres pretty thoroughly, us 19-year-old music freaks spun a mess of different things: punk, new wave, electronic, reggae, metal, rap, folk, etc. Since most of us were middle-class white kids, there was a lot of guitar pop, but the term “alternative radio” was not a joke; it really was a format-free alternative to commercial radio and the new and frightening MTV.
( How'd you fuck that up, Conrad? )
College radio in the early to mid 1980s was an aftershock of the FM radio revolution. Most stations were format-free, and the DJs played what they liked. Since punk rock had been through and smashed up genres pretty thoroughly, us 19-year-old music freaks spun a mess of different things: punk, new wave, electronic, reggae, metal, rap, folk, etc. Since most of us were middle-class white kids, there was a lot of guitar pop, but the term “alternative radio” was not a joke; it really was a format-free alternative to commercial radio and the new and frightening MTV.
( How'd you fuck that up, Conrad? )
