Upon hearing the news earlier this week of the recent passing in Finland of Kim Brown of the incredibly talented and way underrated Birmingham, England formed garage rock or "freakbeat punk" rock band The Renegades (as seen in video above doing their raw & inspired version of Bill Haley & The Comets' "Thirteen Women" - which has long been a favorite of my man Evan "Funk" Davies on WFMU) I've been going back and listening to that wonderful 1960's North American rock subegenre, that borrowed from the British blues rock bands who ironically in turn had borrowed from American blues artists, of garage rock which at the time wasn't even considered a separate form of rock. That happened after the fact in the seventies when it got dubbed "garage rock" or "60s garage" as well as such later tags as "beat," "psychedelic" or "psych," and "freakbeat" or "freakbeat punk" as in the above Renegades clip.

It was also in retrospect that I first came upon this wonderful music that many consider a precursor to punk because of its raw amateurish, albeit impassioned, adrenaline fueled basic rock energy/presentation with lots of distorted sounds and typically screamed, aggressive lyrics - just like punk rock. Like many other music fans, I first got introduced to garage rock courtesy of the wonderful Nuggets compilation (available at Amoeba) and the series it spawned (over a dozen Nuggets collections in all). Over the years there have been countless other garage compilations released such as the recent year release Who Needs Tomorrow? American 60s Garage Bands: 20 Rare Gems Compiled by The Bevis Frond which has a lot of unheard of under the radar gems from the 60's.  Like rap or soul or punk of bygone decades, garage rock was a prolific sub-genre that featured more talented bands that never made the charts than ones who did get some type of mainstream attention - if only fleetingly. Hence a lot of the music fell way under the radar (good because it never got watered down for mainstream acceptance) which is why there are not too many film/video clips available of most of this music.

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.

Last Friday afternoon's Save KUSF themed KUSF In Exile Amoeba Music San Francisco instore featured half-hour sets by six popular DJs from the recently ousted, much beloved San Francisco radio station. It was a history making event in which fourteen non-commercial radio stations across the nation all simulcast the WFMU New Jersey remote broadcast live. The event was also streamed on KUSFarchives.org with a live video stream on yowie.com. As DJs Schmeejay, Irwin, Harry D, Jantine B, Carolyn, and Stereo Steve spun vinyl sets, dropping in classic KUSF IDs in between songs, with myself and WFMU co-host Gaylord Fields MC'ing the event, California radio stations in the Bay Area, Davis, and LA, in tandem with radio stations in seven other states across the US simultaneously carried the broadcast both terrestrially and via their respective online streams. These stations included many left of the dial college stations fearful of a similar fate in this current economic climate in which universities have been selling off their FM stations for a quick cash fix with no regard to the importance of the role that their stations play in their respective communities.

In an act of solidarity with the Save KUSF movement and the legions of KUSF 90.3FM supporters still in shock over the sudden silencing last month of San Francisco's beloved freeform radio station, Amoeba Music San Francisco will join forces with New Jersey's WFMU radio tnd several other radio stations this Friday, February 18th, to host an all KUSF DJ live remote broadcast that will be on WFMU airwaves back east as well as streaming online on WFMU.org. KUSF DJs spinning music sets during the 3 hour instore that begins at noon sharp will include Irwin (Sleeves on Hearts), Carolyn, Stereo Steve, Jantine B, Harry D (In The Soul Kitchen), and DJ Schmeejay, who was in the middle of his popular Tuesday morning show, Radiodrome, on the morning of January 18th when the plug (literally) was pulled on the 90.3FM transmitter. 

The other radio stations who will be broadcasting the Save KUSF Amoeba instore include KXLU Los Angeles who broadcast on 88.9FM, WXYC Chapel Hill, North Carolina who broadcast on 89.3FM, KFJC 89.7FM, WCBN Ann Arbor, KVRX Austin, KALX 90.7FM Berkeley, WITC Cazenovia NY, WREK Atlanta, KRFP Moscow, Idaho and KZSU Stanford who, as any Bay Area radio fan already knows, are at 90.1FM. Each station will broadcast both terrestrially and on their online streams.