Posted by chicagomedia.org on May 05, 2009 at 13:13:26:
Radio free Northwestern
The multiple personalities of WNUR spin hipster jams and rare blues cuts, dividing a station's identity
Katherine Bernot
Issue date: 5/5/09 Section: The Weekly
"We're not all just a bunch of Western-shirt, hipster-glasses wearing assholes."
As Doug Kaplan, a sophomore Rock Show deejay, says this, two of the guys in the WNUR 89.3 studio are wearing plaid shirts and three wear dark, square-rim glasses. The group, a mix of Rock Show deejays and musicians, discuss "meta" performance art, obscure German bands and their upcoming trip to a Wilco concert. Nearly all of them are squeezed in skinny jeans.
This is the stereotypical college radio show: High Fidelity, Northwestern style. But when the students hang up their headphones and pack up their iPods, WNUR becomes a completely different kind of radio station.
The non-student community deejays take over the switchboards and the vibe in the control room completely changes. Their iPods are swapped for vinyl records, black band t-shirts traded for polos and button-downs, skinny jeans switched for dad jeans. The broadcast from the booth changes too - blues, jazz, political talk radio, world music, house and industrial replace the Rock Show, which is the student-run show that encompasses the typical indie rock cuts you might expect to hear on a college radio station.
Between 100 and 150 people deejay for WNUR, many of them students, but only about 40 of them are involved with the Rock Show, says General Manager Taylor Dearr. The community deejays are responsible for much of the recognition that WNUR receives outside of NU, but few people on campus know who they are. Despite their low profile, these community deejays are the station's anchors. They provide what WNUR sometimes lacks: stability, experience and old-fashioned dedication.
Regardless of their distance from each other, both the student and community deejays share in WNUR's success. With the slogan "Chicago's Sound Experiment," WNUR has been commended for playing underrepresented, independent and otherwise unplayed music. In 2008, NewCity named WNUR the best college radio station in Chicago. While technically a college station run by college students, they're not always the ones giving WNUR its heart and soul.
Students cycle in and out of WNUR. Deejays move on, executive boards graduate and some people just stop caring, says one of the station's producers. This year's Phoneathon, WNUR's largest annual fundraiser, was hampered not only by a difficult economy, but by general student apathy. This year's Phoneathon raised about $30,000, short of the station's $36,000 goal. A stack of unmailed receipts from the fundraiser still sat in the station's office weeks later.
"That's why stuff doesn't work here. There's no devotion," says Laura Mayer, one of the student producers of WNUR's crown jewel, This is Hell, a talk show broadcast on Saturday mornings. All WNUR staff is expected to volunteer during the fundraiser, but this is laughably idealistic compared to what actually happens.
"You're lucky if one person shows up for each Phoneathon shift," says freshman Rock Show deejay Mike Sugarman. "Exec board tries to make you go, but that doesn't really happen."
Relatively oblivious to exec board changes, student Phoneathon apathy and internal bickering, the community deejays stick around year after year. Though most have full-time jobs, families and longer commutes to the station, they take their responsibilities at the station seriously. Some of them live in Evanston; one, Mike Baum, commutes all the way from Homewood-Flossmoor, which is south of Chicago city limits. Clearly, to the deejays, the job is worth the effort.
"A lot of kids get involved in college radio to hear their friends listen to them. But after a while, their friends stop listening, and the novelty wears off. If you're going to do this year in and year out, you've got to live the music outside of radio, too. You need to be involved in the music scene and the larger community," says Al Finley, 48, a computer specialist who hosts the weekend blues show.
Involvement in the Chicago music scene is crucial to community deejays, who bring this experience and knowledge to their WNUR shows. The Streetbeat deejays, responsible for the station's dance music show, spin records in Chicago clubs on the weekends, while some folk and blues deejays can be found in classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music locations in Lincoln Park and Lincoln Square.
This connection to the larger Chicago music scene adds depth and knowledge to the community deejays' shows. Al Finley begins his blues shows with a tribute to Chicago musicians who have died recently, adding his own anecdotes about the performers or sharing his memories of their live shows.
Finley doesn't have a playlist for his shows, though it's clear he prepares for hours before each one. During his entire show two weeks ago, he played only one song from the station's archives, beginning with a tribute to recently deceased Chicago bluesman Eddie Bo. The rest were from his own album collection, as he transitioned to songs by Mad Dog Lester Davenport and Willie King, two more recently deceased blues players. His playlist is decidedly not trendy, compared to what might be heard from the student deejays.
"I prefer not to come in the studio with a playlist," Finley says. "I think it keeps the show fresh this way. I like to have a theme to the show, though, or some emotional connection between the songs. I play music on air the way I would listen to it at home."
During Finley's blues show, an older man in green sweatpants, white Nikes and huge, silver Bose headphones moves quietly through the WNUR stacks. He pulls records off the shelves, bobs his head slightly and takes notes. This is how Marv Goldscher, 71, a jazz deejay, gets ready for his shows.
"I prepare meticulously for my shows," Goldscher says. "I'm probably over-prepared, actually. I do lots of research on the music to find an interesting anecdote to tell on air. Just reading a playlist seems generic, so I prepare some information to add flavor."
He estimates that he spends two hours in the stacks and another two hours at home preparing for each of his two weekly shows.
"I'm probably compulsive or anal or whatever," he says. "The listeners don't realize how much planning goes into my shows."
Finley and Goldscher say they would mentor a young apprentice deejay, though neither currently has a student on board. Though some community-led shows have a student apprentice, they are the exception. There is still a large divide between the student and non-student WNUR circles.
Whether it's because they don't want to wake up early on weekends or because they would rather host a Rock Show, students haven't expressed much interest in bridging this divide.
"We always go to WNUR meetings to try to recruit students," Finley says. "We had one student express interest in apprenticing at the blues show, but then he never showed up.
"I think our community deejays give the station a lot of grounding. Roots, blues, and R&B music is where current music springs from, and it's important that students understand the music's history."