The Central Intelligence Agency has digitally released 930,000 documents previously available only at the National Archives in Maryland. Of course I went straight to the search engine and started rummaging around for community radio stuff. So far, the CIA’s Pacifica radio files aren’t especially earth shattering, but there are some cute items, like this one: (more…)
The last days of August, 1968 were probably the most tumultuous of the 1960s. Tens of thousands of protesters had arrived in Chicago, Illinois to protest the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention. By August 27, the city’s police department had, over the previous two nights, relentlessly attacked demonstrators, reporters, and newspaper photographers. The nation’s most […]
In case you are looking for some excellent half-century old Australian underground rock, all digitized and ready to download, here it is: You can thank Aussie community radio station 3CR for this 2004 anthology, titled Wild About You: Tales from the Australian Rock Underground. That was the name of a book, blurbed as such: “Bloodied […]
In case you want to relive some of the glory days of The Meat Puppets, here’s one way. Check out this 1984 appearance by that hallowed punk band at The Mason Jar in Phoenix, Arizona, rebroadcast by Tucson community station KXCI-FM. The show is accessible via one of my favorite things in the whole universe, […]
William Mandel has died. Mandel broadcast over KPFA’s airwaves for almost half a century, offering commentaries on the now-defunct Soviet Union. He wrote books about the USSR, among them Soviet Women and Soviet but not Russian: the Other Peoples of the Soviet Union. He spoke at just about any public event at which someone would let him appear. He died […]
It is a blasphemous question, I know. But since I’ve already put it in the headline, I’ll also spell it out in this post’s opening paragraph. President Donald Trump: good news for Pacifica radio? My decisive answer is . . . maybe. At this point, the Pacifica Foundation and its five radio stations can only go in […]
Over the weekend I posted some concerns about the future of La Jungala community radio, which until last month served a now dismantled refugee camp in Calais, France, known as “The Jungle.” I also emailed the operation to get an update on its status. Do you still exist? I asked. Today I receive a reply: […]
The New York Times reports that a huge refugee camp in Calais, France is “finally” gone. “The Jungle,” as its residents called the site, offered shelter to thousands of North African and Middle Eastern migrants. It was a great big ramshackle humanitarian crisis, and now authorities have cleared it out. Al Jazeera says that some of these […]
This post notes the continued existence of two interesting online community radio venues: n10.as in Montreal and The Lot Radio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It celebrates their persistence because, given recent events, I no longer take any local radio station for granted anymore. I know that some of you disagreed with my support of Triple A formatted KUSP-FM in Santa […]
The New York Times has a nice feature story on the latest wave of Low Power FM radio stations sweeping the country, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s licensing spree of 2014 through this year. Authored by Brett Sokol, it surveys LPFMs from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. The piece even quotes little old me saying something. To […]
