Top Menu

College Radio Read: Kill the Music

Kill the Music

Kill the Music

I love reading stories about radio and every time I run across a college radio mention in a book, my interest in piqued. In the months to come I’m going to work on compiling a list of college radio “must reads,” from the academic to the autobiographic. My first pick: Kill the Music.

Kill the Music: The Chronicle of a College Radio Idealist’s Rock and Roll Rebellion in an Era of Intrusive Morality and Censorship is a new book by Michael Plumides that in part looks back at his time in South Carolina in the late 1980s and early 1990s when he was a DJ at college radio station WUSC-FM.

In the book he gives an interesting glimpse of the student radio scene (including staff member drama) at a particular point in history.

The focus of the story also hinges on his time as the owner of the 4808 club, the site of an infamous incident at a GWAR show involving accusations of obscenity on the one hand and censorship on the other. I recently interviewed Michael about the book and about his time in college radio and here’s a choice excerpt from our chat in which he talks about the first college radio station where he worked:

Jennifer Waits: Tell me a bit about the first station where you DJ’d and when you were there?

Michael Plumides: The WLOZ-FM station, originally broadcast from UNCW on 91.3 (now public radio WHQR’s frequency) before being shut down by administrators in 1983 because of a drug scandal. Supposedly, the student broadcasters called out to their dope smoking customers on-air, using code language to indicate that certain packages had arrived. The death knell came when a deejay took a bong hit while broadcasting.

In the mid-eighties, WLOZ returned as “cable radio station,” requiring a special hookup to your cable TV. You had to go to Radio Shack and buy this coaxial antennae device to rig to your receiver. Needless to say, we had a deeply disturbed following. I was in on the “Cable FM” incarnation (90.9) in 1985 and 1986, where I acquired my first FCC license, and then I transferred back to USC. For a time in the late ’90s, WLOZ broadcast an extremely weak signal on 89.1 FM that could more or less only be heard on campus. That station ceased functioning in 2001. I understand they’re now a net broadcast.

In future posts I’ll share some books about college radio history and another personal narrative about college radio in the 1990s.

Support from readers like you make content like this possible. Please take a moment to support Radio Survivor on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
Share

, , , , , , , ,

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes