A film about a radio revolution
Even though the subtitle is “The Story of College Radio”, we still occasionally have people asking us what the subject of “35000 Watts” is. For our very first video sneak peek, we thought we’d let a few of our interviewees explain, in their own words, what the film is all about.…
There are hundreds and hundreds of Christmas songs out there from beloved alternative and indie artists, but a lot of the time, they are covers of classics we’ve already heard a thousand times. While there are some amazing songs in that group, this list is restricted to artists who took that extra step to add a new, original Christmas song to the canon.…
“Five Songs” is a new series where we ask former and current college radio DJs to give us a list of five songs that they feel best represents the chosen topic. For this first post, Michael Millard, director of 35000 Watts: The Story of College Radio, chooses five songs that remind him of his first ever DJ shift at KTXT-FM, Texas Tech University.…
The debut album by The Police would hint at the mash-up of styles that would eventually become their trademark (reggae and pop, for example), but as a product of 1978, it was most heavily influenced by the burgeoning punk scene.…
Radio programming is one of those things that falls somewhere between art and science. While many college radio stations are “freeform” stations, meaning the DJs choose to play whatever music they want, many others (and almost all commercial stations) are “programmed”.…
Our final interview of the LA shoot was with Allison Wolfe, an original riot grrrl and member of a laundry list of bands, including Bratmobile and Cold Cold Hearts. Her experience starting an all-girl punk band in the Pacific Northwest was an entirely new perspective to explore, and our interview touched on a host of interesting topics.…
On day two of our LA shoot, we sat down with Jennifer Waits, a college radio historian and the co-founder of Radio Survivor, a website dedicated to documenting the importance of radio in the past, present and future. Jennifer is a seemingly endless source of college radio knowledge, and we really only scratched the surface in our one-hour discussion.…
One question that gets asked occasionally that I didn’t initially anticipate is “What exactly is college radio?”. This has been especially true when talking with people outside of the United States, but even in the U.S., a lot of people aren’t familiar with the different types of radio stations out there.…
Our second LA interview was our first trip to a working college radio station, and it was a real treat. Erica Tyron has been the adviser for KSPC for thirty years, so she has an amazing depth of knowledge that we really only scratched the surface of during our one-hour interview.…
When you are making a music-related documentary, one of the first questions many people will ask you is “what is your favorite music doc?”. And, of course, you can never give a short, simple answer because there are so many amazing documentaries out there and choosing just one is impossible.…