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KFJC

                           July 27, 1992


89.7 FM, The Foothills Junior College station:
The best radio station in the area, maybe in the world. 
                                                 
Many a college station plays interesting,
cutting edge stuff on occasion, but usually
they have to vary the mix to the point that 
they can't develop an audience.  The Serbo-Croatian   
Folk Hour comes on after the Baroque period show,
and it's followed by Metal Death and then the 
Progressive Art Rock Memory Ring.  Realistically,
when you can't predict what's going to be on, 
you just don't listen.
                      
But at Foothill, somehow control
has been maintained by a clique of
the insiders, the alternative
college radio crowd, the punks and
the post-punks.
                                      
Which is not to say that there aren't
variations.  Mike Destiny's big guitar
show is a far cry from Beladonna who
comes on Wednesday nights, from 10PM to
2AM, with her "Disco Dirge and Death"
show.  Moody, droning industrial music
with a little bit of techno thrown in
at midnight.  Strictly no human     
drummers allowed.                              BELADONNA
                            
Friday (really Sat) at 2PM, The Crimson
Retrospect does a similar thing, but
later in the morning, Robert Emmett
comes on with the "Norman Bates
Memorial Sountrack Show", listening to
which is an odd experience ("I know
I've heard this before.  Is it the
theme to "I Dream of Jeanne" or "The
Time Machine"?).  Sometimes I can't
really tell if Emmett cares whether the
music is any *good* or not.  In a way
it's almost irrelevant. 
    
And then there's Hawkeye Joe with the
"Lose Your Breakfast Club"... at 8AM
there's a feature where he reads
several headlines and gets people to
call up and vote on which news story
they want him to read.  "Remember: here
at KFJC, *You* *Choose* *The* *News*."... 
but at 9AM there's the infamous "Sick
pick": a top-40 hit from the 70s that
you can't imagine anyone ever having
wanted to listen to.  But you *do* listen:
and in fact the rest of the music he plays
seems to be not much better at times...
a crazy mix of anything he feels like
picking up.  Once again, being *good*
isn't exactly the criteria.  
        
It's like there's a series of stages:
(1) Oh my god, this is really awful,
annoying, repetitious...
(2) This is so awful it's funny.
(3) Hm, but this and that is interesting
in spite of (maybe *because*?) it's so 
annoying...                                 PUNK
(4) An appreciation of the subtlties of         
arrangement of the annoying.               
        
And still later: a disgust at trite imitations
of the pioneers of this particular form of 
annoyance.  
                                   
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