Going with the flow and not captioning this one.
(Source: rodawfoe, via hewhocannotbenamed)
Rawr.
(via thepumpkinpatch)
Fountains Of Wayne @ Tulip Fest (Taken with instagram)
WCDB is great. It’s afforded so many students the opportunity to exist on the same plane as radio stations with commercial interests and pockets deeper than SUNYA’s sub-basement offices. Ya I’m talking about the halls with red painted floors! You been there? Do some homework and make it happen.
Anyway. Eight students were caught smoking dope at the station shortly before 4am last week. One was a DJ, the other seven were not. Those were always the people I detested as an undergrad, the ones who would hang around the station all day, eat meals in the CD library (or worse still, the on-air studio,) take CDs, wax about how much more alt this band was than that one… Yet they never contributed anything to the station. Why? They were not members. They didn’t have a show. They would just leech off the fountain of indie that sprawled daily from room 315B, a place they could frolic and enjoy without being expected to give back. Proto-hipsters if you will. I think we were calling them “Scene” back then. I stayed quiet about these people, opting not to alienate but instead to engage them in conversation brightly, making sure every talk about sophomore efforts led to asking when they were going to start training, or review a CD, or show up to a station meeting. They sensed I was not one of them. As Program Director especially, I successfully crafted an Uncool Dad image for them, someone who was in charge of the programming schedule, always around, and wanted them to contribute somehow.
Sort of like the poly fake owls one mounts in a suburban backyard, these alt-pests eventually backed off. Dealing with 18-24s in a quasi-administrative position is a slippery slope, so my underlying attitude was always: pick a realistic place to dig your heels in and DIG IN. There was not to be any alcohol or dope at the station ever, and after midnight no extra guests. Hip-Hop shows tend to be a magnet for dialogue and extra company that comes with it, so I made sure to pop in once a month just to say hello. I made my presence known, all was good, and no trouble was to be had. I didn’t micromanage by digging in at the top of the hill; nor was I an absent father to the programming, digging in at the base of it. I found a nice center section where everyone could have fun, use discretion, and get what they were after. I digress.
So these eight people were caught, and by a cursory search of the SUNYA UPD incident log for 4/14/2012;
http://police.albany.edu/CandISearch.shtml
Only one or two were arrested for possession. I just read something on Twitter that insinuates that all eight were busted and that all eight were DJs. This is my exigency for writing this post.
Last year, there was an in-house problem at WCDB; the sports department had signed on a contract without consulting with the elected board to an extensive basketball schedule that would monopolize prime time broadcasting something like four days a week. Everyone “got their panties in a bunch” if I may dust off that chestnut. There was even a post about it on All over Albany, or Keep Albany Boring, or both local blogs, highlighting the issue, and it caused a massive out pour from everyone who bothered to switch tabs off Facebook for a few seconds. The Internet caused a typing frenzy and it was only a matter of time before the E-torches were lit and everyone burned down Dr. Frankenstein’s house. Remember that novel? It is one of my favs. Especially because Frankenstein’s monster was, in a great realisation of Voltaire’s ideal, inherently good + slowly corrupted as his rotating stock of myopic antagonists break him down.
The sports department went about things wrong administratively, but this contract was a big deal for them. They were demonized by uninformed, pissed hipsters. I always supported the News, Talk and Sports departments at WCDB, perhaps even gave them special consideration, because it was all so rich, so salient - In the 21st century, It was an opportunity for students to get the most out of WCDB and get a real head start on a career they would love. I’ve seen presenters from these departments accomplish so much right out of the starting gate. In fact, my then-News Director now presents news on Albany’s NPR affiliate.
This is not a slight to those who curate music on the station - That is really the meat and potatoes of what WCDB offers sonically - But what does commercial radio have to offer them? $8 an hour without benefits, pre-programmed playlists, and the insistence of your bosses to speak an ad every fifteen minutes - It makes me sick really - the idea that those mindless automatons, the proles of the Capital District, might be more likely to buy something if the familiar voice that identified whether you just heard Pink Floyd’s “Time” or “Money” this hour says it. Not like you’d ever hear anything else from their Totally Slammin’ discography. Clear Channel and Albany Broadcasting treats radio like an invisible newspaper. If you talk News or Sports, you are engaging the listener in a way that cannot be replaced by a program. I digress again, though. These students were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and now SUNYA has made the arrogant abrupt decision to simply cut all daily programming between 2AM and 7AM.
This is not an in-house problem. This is, now that UPD, Student Affairs, the SA, and the University president are involved, a very big deal. College radio stations that follow the rules are being silenced across the country, and this fiasco ameliorated by the wild, acrimonious at best, snarky at worst, backlash by those who think they have something to say about it, are going to be the death of WCDB. With no faculty oversight whatsoever, it is truly a Bible-style miracle that they’ve gotten on for so long without being denied overnight DJ hours. Without mandatory daytime programming to champion the university. Without syndicating NPR or classical music some portion of the day. Without having the broadcast itself unceremoniously cut and being forced to broadcast to a weekly Internet audience of fifteen.
The school can do this. Other schools have done worse. WCDB had plenty of run-ins with SUNYA’s administration while I was a student - While Twitter didn’t exist, while you could only have one picture on Facebook. No one built up these invisible armies of idle hatred, because you couldn’t. Instead, the five to ten people at the station who had a vested interest crossed their fingers, kept their noses clean, and in three to six months there was something else for administration to concern themselves with. It all blew over and we went on doing what we did: broadcast literally whatever we wanted to broadcast, 24/7. Wow. What a privilege.
Students at SUNYA don’t know what they’ve got. And if this protest gains enough steam, pretty soon the administration will get wise to what so many other schools have done, and begin the process of attrition that has silenced independent radio outlets across the country for years.
My advice to WCDB and its members is to absolutely and completely shut the entire fuck up immediately. To those who make the rules, your compassion is not flattering. Full stop. My advice to SUNYA is to invest in the station, opting to treat it like an aural connection to the student, alumni, and residential community that exists in conjunction with the university… rather than treating it like an undesired, somehow tolerated, left-of-center tenant. The opportunity for administration transparency is immeasurable here. Let’s punish those who possessed and used illegal drugs, and those who consented to it, then move on and continue to offer WCDB to the world, a pearl in the oyster that is SUNY.
Cheers
Leon Ferri
As seen on my website http://www.leonferri.com/
(Source: akissinthecornfields, via stoner-witch)
(Source: jdmandtherest, via cadillacsoul)
Tame Impala playing in the woods.
If I could go back in time, I would meet up with Tame Impala, take them back in time and CHANGE MUSIC. George Martin status. Listen to these guys!! I’ll link to a great song I played on my show recently.
(via stoner-witch)
Geological Waves
Don and Tom