Wednesday, July 17, 2002 5:55 PM

Modulate whose frequency?

Thirty years ago I became involved with a listener sponsored radio station here in the Pittsburgh area. Call letters: WYEP-FM. It is on the air to this day at 91.3 FM instead of 91.5 FM on your radio dial. It is quite a different station. Not passing judgment. The trade off was that the station must sound more acceptable. Simply survival. People are more prone to pay during the pledge drives. It is far, however, less dangerous to listen.

Don't get me wrong here. In the early days even I had a hard time listening. Our politics were boorish. We thought we were revolutionary. Our social message, then deadly serious, now, still serious, seems quainter, like watching in all its embarrassing retrospect, Woodstock, the Movie. Our programming skills amateurish. I am certain that in the halls of "professional" broadcasting the high “pros” laughed at us. More probably ignored or were unaware entirely of our existence.

Eventually, in a move that still puzzles me, I was appointed (hired I guess) Program Director of the station. This came with some very serious disabilities, not the least of which was a drastic non-living wage. The most of which was ultimate responsibility for the duties of the job with very little authority to carry them out. Sound like a political position? You bet! I abhor politics on almost every level. Instead of a system developed to preserve rights in a social context, real politic serves as a wedge for most abusers to pry their own ideas and ways with whatever tools or power available. If it doesn’t work hit it with a hammer. Do I sound bitter? Perhaps! I hope I will never be in such a position again.

BUT

when it worked you never heard the like.

Two grade school on friends (they became my friends as well) one a newly discharged Vietnam Vet, the other a clever musician with a genius for finding and playing appropriate music, produced an impromptu show each morning, 10 AM to Noon. Audio snippets of historical and current events mixed with musical snippets, classical hep, nostalgic rare and topical music in as tasteful a montage as I have ever heard. The very juxtaposition filled the air with meaning and depth. That radio program was lived in that time for that moment. If you were not there to hear it, you missed something significant.
There were black shows, gay shows, feminist shows, political shows; ethnic shows one following the other. Mostly saying the same old thing in the same old way, but all capable of rising above the thrall and all definitely exposing a voice that had all but been cashiered out of the broadcast band. As you can tell, the thrust of WYEP was mostly to the far left of center. Which makes it even odder that I became the leader of the air. I eschew, close to disdain, all political messages. I consider definite purpose in the art of radio as pornography. (James Joyce makes such a claim about the nature of pornography and what it serves in The Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man. I subscribe to it.)

I believe in the Art of Radio. In those days I could feel it strumming through me. The Tribal Tom Tom. You bet! I envisioned the radio dial as a geography, swoop from peak to gorge as you glide from low AM or FM to higher frequencies. It is a constantly moving landscape. Not only did it move as you moved in space from city to city but it changed in texture with time. I wanted WYEP to both fit into and disrupt that geography. I wanted it to explode mountains and then rebuild them, cause gorges to fill with torrents of water, move with sometimes swift violence and sometimes gentle determination.

My tools were the people who sat in the control room. It was my style to set them in place and then let them create as they would. I demanded only that creation. The problem was that I could not remove the poseurs. The Board of the radio station was all powerful, it consisted of listening subscribers, working members, staff and some community wonks. It met almost weekly. It made decisions with a socially cautious group mind. It left the staff powerless and ineffectual. "What gives you the right to throw me off the air?" one of the untalented who got the crook of my thumb would ask. I'd explain my criteria. Reach through your Brother Love DJ image. It is indistinguishable from the music that blares out 8 Track machines from the candy apple red Mustang at the corner of Forbes and Craig, out of record players in placed in the windows of college dorms. Forget the soft midnight DJ voice and use your own. Over and over I’d make the points, thinking that someone was listening to what I was saying or what the station was playing. And then without mercy, without thought, I would be overruled. I simply made it harder to get on the air. I worked the system, learned to buck it and eventually I left. Not in a hail of protest but in a whimper when a new General Manager was hired. We agreed. A Dios!

The station languished. Some people stayed and put forth tireless and thankless effort. It is out of Oakland on the South Side and prosperous. On the air. Plays a lot of alternative rock. I guess I was wrong about the 8 Track college dorm thing. WYEP sounds to me pretty much like everything else. There are a few charming exceptions.

There is no more landscape on the radio dial. Owners like Clear Channel Sound have brought a sound to radio across the board that is close to what the universe will sound like near the ultimate increase of entropy. Undistinguished, undifferentiated, no signs of struggling life or intelligence.

I can't wait for the cycle end. I want to see Rebirth. In a roaring flashing Big Bang!