I always appreciate when people utilize relevant song lyrics to reinforce a point they are making. Hence I enjoyed, during Saturday's heated Saving College Stations panel discussion on the last day of the NFCB's (National Federation of Community Broadcasters) 36th Annual Community Radio Conference in the Fillmore suite of the Parc 55 hotel in downtown San Francisco, when panelist Dorothy Kidd, quoted and gave props to Joni Mithcell's 1970 song "Big Yellow Taxi." "You don't know what you got til its gone," said the Save KUSF advocate & University of San Francisco (USF) media studies professor quoting the song's famous lyrics in reference to how she, as a listener/fan of the beloved SF college radio station, felt in the weeks and months since January 18th when  90.3FM got the plug pulled on it by her bosses at USF. 

"We don't need  technocrats to come in and control our station," continued the articulate and ever vigilant Kidd, who as a panelist at last month's SF Music Tech Summit similarly spoke out against the actions of the USF administrators. At Saturday's panel however she was directing her comments at fellow panelist (and seeming target of the entire discussion) Marc Hand of PRC (Public Radio Capital) out of Denver, CO whose company was instrumental in brokering the deal that paved the way for KUSF FM's demise.
 
Another panelist was WFMU New Jersey station manager Ken Freedman, one of the Save KUSF organization's biggest allies, who point blankly asked Hand how he could broker such a deal which he knew in his heart was just plain wrong and detrimental to the community's needs. Freedman was referring to the demise of KUSF and such other stations as KTRU FM - the Rice University radio station in Houston, TX that two months ago similarly had the plug pulled on it following a PRC brokered deal.  Panelist Duane Bradley, of Pacifica station KPFT, Houston, spoke on behalf of KTRU and noted that how Rice University's lame excuse for getting rid of the popular Houston college station after 40 years on the air was that they "needed the space to build a new cafeteria." Bradley also made the excellent point of how, when a volunteer run college or community radio station like KTRU or KUSF goes away for good, so too does the combined pool of irreplaceable resources of music programmers who are extremely knowledgeable of and passionate for the music they specialize in - so much so that they do it all for free.

of local, community radio - that some new pointers on how to get KUSF back on the FM dial might arise. Or at the very least that there will be a show of solidarity towards the unfairly ousted KUSF programmers from their fellow left of the dial broadcasters of the NFCB whose tag is, "We are local. We are global. We are independent, connected, and engaged." 

Since KUSF was abruptly pulled off the FM dial on January 18th, when the University of San Francisco (USF) management secretly worked out a deal with Public Radio Capital (PRC) replacing 90.3FM with an out of town programmed classical station, the ripples have been felt across the country by other college & small non-commercial radio stations who, particularly in this time of federal & state funding cutbacks and universities clamoring for ways to generate money, wonder if they might be next to get the plug pulled on them. The move by USF was not an isolated one but rather part of an increasing trend by budget challenged colleges across the country. While tomorrow's panel will focus on the events that went down at KUSF and KTRU (another radio station that got kicked off the air) its message of what to do when your station faces the chopping block is as much, if not more so, directed at those college/student stations that are still on air but could soon face a similar fate.

       

If the response to the trash-talking, dank smoking, young white, Bay Area female rapper Kreayshawn's hotly buzzed, self-directed & edited music video above for her latest catchy track "Gucci Gucci," which has racked up over 1.1 million views since it was uploaded on YouTube eleven days ago, is anything to go by then the video maker turned rapper's White Girl Mob show tonight (with Lil Debbie & V Nasty) at the modest sized SF  SOM Bar on 16th Street will certainly be a sold-out affair.

But for all the accolades that Kreayshawn, who counts Diplo, Das Racist, and Soulja Boy as among her biggest fans, has accumulated during her relatively short rise to fame, the diminutive but far from meek white female artist has also been attracting a lot of hate. An awful lot of hate in fact. "LOL ignorant ass hood rat bitch turned ignorant hipster hood rat bitch. What is hip-hop nowadays?" wrote one non-fan in response to one of her online video interviews, while another wrote, in response to the "Gucci Gucci" video, "Jesus Christ this is atrocious."

As for the haters out there, Kreayshawn appears to be taking it all in her stride; even with a seemingly mischievous sense of delight. It's almost like she knows how to press peoples' buttons (especially older hip-hop heads) and gets a real kick out of it. She is to staid rigid hip-hop ("the four elements man" school of thought) what the Sex Pistols were to established 70's rock. In one interview she rightfully ranks herself in the don't-give-a-fuck new school of rap alongside such other young buzz-worthy acts of this digital age as Odd Future (who she's "homies with") and Lil B (who she's produced videos for). But with each interview she gives and with each music video she unveils Kreayshawn manages to simultaneously win new fans and alienate many hip-hop heads.