Radical Sounds on the Air
College radio has a venerable tradition of radical sounds and off-beat shows. Going back to the 1960s, college radio was a place where young people could experiment with new sounds being ignored by the mainstream, and it's still that way today, only digital.
Many major area radio stations are college-based. WMUA in Massachusetts is associated with UMass (the University of Massachusetts) and WFUV in New York is the radio station of Fordham (the Jesuit University of New York). College radio is not-for-profit, and these major stations are no exception, but the real deal of college radio is found on the low-bandwidth, small stations heard only by a few. It's on these stations that college students take over, experimenting with music, spoken word, and sound in wild and unexpected mixes.
College radio stations may host shows that offer opinions on the news of the day, or on how that news effects the campus. You might, for example, hear a talk show—dialogue or one dj's opinion—about a controversial speaker who has visited or will visit the campus. Or you might hear live music performed in studio, or perhaps old vinyl records that a student found in his parents' basement. You might hear all three in the same day, which is why such stations: Purely amateur, and often not very good, can really get the adrenaline pumping. That kind of creativity is thrilling even when it fails!
photo credit: swanksalot
Where else will you be able to listen to Billie Holiday crooning her pain away, followed by Led Zeppelin screaming their way through the seventies, followed by Jay Z, and then a country song, and then a comedy clip, and then Frank Sinatra? Nowhere! And maybe it doesn't work, maybe it's too disjointed or disorienting, but it's bold and fun and it's not the same old same old.