NONALIGNMENT PACT

I finally yanked the Nakamichi 200 CD player out of the home stereo line up. It just never ever gets used. Next to go is the dual cassette player. They are destined for the basement –although we are mumbling about possibly having a garage sale.

I did take the time to rip some of the cd’s. This led me to think about upgrading my mp3 player.

We recently came back from a two week road trip on which I used my Neuro 30HD digital music player extensively. It still works pretty well although I’ve gotten lazy about installing the sync software on the last few generations of computers laying around the house. So before the trip I just dumped a bunch of mp3′s on to the Neuro’s hard drive. You can still play music using the file browser. The thing keeps on ticking but it’s getting awfully hacky and Mad Max-ish.

I bought the Neuro probably over five years ago. It was a little less expensive than the iPod but it had some big bonuses. For starters, and the main reason I bought the thing, you can record analog straight into it with a 1/8″ stereo chord or using the built-in mic. That works pretty darn sweet. I used it to record all the performances on three separate little road trips when I was playing with THE LATEST and then churchbus. I used it for an art collaboration with my wife where we recorded a ridiculous amount of visual/sonic data on a 10,000 mile road trip across the entire Northern section of the US. In short, it’s served me well –though we got off to a very rocky start. I had to send it back for a replacement three times within the first two months of ownership. Neuro’s quality control was that shitty.

I remember really laying into the tech guy on one call, even though (being that I got into software development through the first-rung tech support gig myself) I’m usually pretty nice to tech people. I know how to hurt too. I wasn’t yelling or calling him names. Besides, with three returns in two months, I had a lot on my side. But the dude was so sincere. So bummed by my call. And so earnest about wanting to see his company succeed that he is probably the reason I stuck with it. Now many many years of abuse later, this Neuro is still going.

Not so sure about Neuro the company which is (or was) based in Chicago. They had a damn hard time competing with Apple. They dropped the mp3 game, started doing video stuff. Then Internet on TV stuff…then I’m not sure. Tough world; but I sure wish more local players could play in that sand box and survive. I’m so bored by Apple and all the stupid electronics that have to work on these ridiculous telephone networks.

That being said, we had a brown out last night and I was grateful for my cell phone in order that I could set an alarm for an early work meeting.

Anyway, maybe I won’t get the new mp3 player just yet after all.

Besides now that the 200 CD player is gone I can take all these cd’s out to the car in that big useless CD jacket we have.

The 5 cd player in our 2003 Ford doesn’t have a jack for mp3 players. That seems sucky for 2003. It also means I don’t really want to look around for another car stereo just so I can plug my new mp3 player into it. Because I would want to do that.

The Neuro has a built-in fm transmitter (another awesome thing that the iPod had not). It works great for road trips –and really that’s just about the only time I use the thing if I’m not using it as a recording device. It doesn’t work so great though for big city driving. If I got a new player, I’d want it to work in the car. That’s definitely gonna add to the cost.

We’ll take it slow.

In other updates to the state of my reference music access, my basement flooded. Not connected? Sure it is. This meant two boxes of old cassette tapes got wet even though they were in a big plastic box. That’s because something mysterious happens when stuff floats around in rooms not particularly arranged for floating stuff. Some how it got tipped over; filled with water that turned tan as tea; and sank.

These are old cassettes I recorded on. Old stuff I bought going back to high school. Demos. Goodies from ancient SXSW and CMJ conferences. Bootleg cassettes I bought in the Middle East. In other words junk.

But MY junk!

I put them out on the porch and let them dry for weeks. We had a BBQ party last weekend. I smoked some meat. Had lots of free time. So I stuck a cassette in the old jam box out on the porch which has sat out there for five years and hasn’t been played in almost as many. The cassette was the Police’s Ghost in the Machine. The ghost in the machine started to eat the tape. Pulled it out and tapped it on a healthy chunk of apple wood. Worked great after that.

That night I also played the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Junior Brown. However it was surprising how many cassettes I had no interest in even after all these years.

Nevertheless they have a new home on the porch next to the dusty jam box just waiting for some meats to get smoked.

We’ll take it slow.

How many people in a band is too many? To me, it is simply a question of how well you can pull it off live. Use as many instruments as you want within the recording process, but when you bring 10 people on the road, please make it rock.

So the music works better for Lambchop when there are more involved. But the energy is, well, probably what you’d expect from Lambchop.

Local band Jacob and the House of Fire put on a great show – and there are 10+ of them at any given time. They seem to have the idea of an intense and frenzied performance thought out quite well.

Did anyone else ever think “Wow, George Clinton and P-Funk are dull.” Talk about misuse of a cast of thousands.

If you’re going to bring more than 10 people with you, one way to keep people interested is to beat the shit out of anything in sight.

There’s no way this will come out as well as I want it to, but I feel like I should write something here about ktru because it’s pretty likely that if it weren’t for the seventeen years that I was a DJ, Ramon wouldn’t have thought of me when he was shopping around for people to dupe into a long-term writing commitment. Because, with the possible exception of Alley, I wouldn’t know most of you if it weren’t for ktru. Which makes sense, I guess. When you spend a long time in one place, most of the people you know are going to be associated with that place. If you spend seventeen years, those people become like family. True, I should probably get out more, but when Rice announced that it had decided to sell off part of my family, I was speechless.

I wasn’t a Rice student, but one of my college roommates was and one of his former roommates was the general manager of ktru in 1990. In the summer it’s hard for them to find DJs to fill their schedule because so many students leave town, so I found myself with a midday radio show on the 650 watt radio station that I couldn’t really pick up very well until I got right next to Rice campus.

I was so nervous that I couldn’t sit down for my first several shifts. I would have little panic attacks and walk around the console or look through the stacks of records to calm myself down. Fortunately, there were always people at the station and they were always friendly and helpful, so nothing ever went terribly wrong and my fears were mostly unfounded. I gradually started feeling more confortable with being on the air. Even the nausea went away. Mostly.

I was there when the transmitter power was increased to 50,000 watts. The station manager told us not to talk about it with anybody. If people called in to ask about ktru’s suddenly clearer signal, we were instructed to tell the caller that it was probably just the weather–or possibly sunspots. I fielded lots of phone calls from surprised listeners for the first few weeks before ktru finally made the official announcement. Houston Press ran an article about the transition and the photographer they sent to get pictures of the station happened to show up during my shift, resulting in a full page photo of me in the Press. People I hadn’t spoken to in years called me to ask me about it, as if I knew anything more than what they read in that article.

“Where did they get the resources for a 50,000 watt transmitter?”
“Won’t that make them a target?”
“Whose idea was the deal?”

“I don’t know. Sunspots, probably.”

I overcompensated for not being a student by doing more work at ktru than necessary. I helped plan concerts. I ran sound at those concerts. I had live bands on my radio show every week. I designed and maintained the application the DJs use to input their setlists into the computer. All for free. All because I wanted ktru to succeed. All because I wanted more people to have more access to see and hear how awesome ktru is.

Now when Rice’s president goes on about how the $9.5 million they are getting from the sale of ktru is going to benefit students with a new cafeteria, I want to send him an invoice for my years of work. Because, while the value of that FM license is really just an accident of being in a tight radio market where there is a shortage of radio frequencies to go around, you can’t just sit on the frequency doing nothing with it while hoping its value appreciates. The FCC requires that you serve the community where you are broadcasting and you have to produce content to do that. And that’s what DJs of all stripes did at ktru did for forty years.

Ktru is many things to many people, but importantly, as a DJ it is whatever you want it to be. This is also why so many people complain about not liking what they hear on ktru. Most people’s tastes don’t jibe. That’s okay. I don’t have to like everything I hear on ktru to like ktru. It’s worth it for the things I do like and sometimes I come around on the ones I don’t.

Won’t ktru be the same on the internet? In the short run, yes. In the long run, though, interest in the station will decline as it fights to compete with tens of thousands of other internet “radio” options, many with better access to resources than ktru has. It will lose its connection to the community because its primary focus will no longer be the few miles that it broadcasts to. And its music library will stagnate as fewer music labels send ktru promotional albums in the hope that they can get their music played over the airwaves in a major market. It will be a slow death, but death nonetheless.

That’s disappointing. It’s not disappointing because I won’t be able to hear ktru anymore–that is a sad thought, but I live in another city, so I don’t get a chance to listen much anyway–it’s disappointing because people won’t be able to get the kind of ktru experience that so many have gotten over the years. It’s the experience of having the autonomy to be able to create something valuable from nothing. That’s not the sort of thing you can get just anywhere and it makes you want to defend the place you got that experience when somebody threatens it.

When news of ktru’s sale got out, suddenly people from several generations of ktru, living all over the world materialized to speak out against it. Why is that? Put simply: ktru changes lives. How do you put a price on that?

One of my favorite Web tools for musicians hit the big time this week as Sufjan Stevens used it to launch his new EP and make his back catalog generally available for free online streaming and cheap downloading options. If there’s any justice, this will further propel Bandcamp into becoming the new Myspace. No, I don’t mean that it will be an inferior social network and spam enabler. Instead, it should become the default tool for musicians to share their work on the Web. It offers ridiculous value and a stellar set of features that make it the best way to post and share and sell your songs online. 

I am using Bandcamp to do just that with our new record. And here’s why:

• It’s the best way to stream your music online. You can stream everything you’ve ever recorded for free. No song limits. No streaming limits. High quality streams with great bandwidth (but it’s only 128k; sry Ghost).
• It’s the cheapest way to sell your stuff online. Bandcamp only recently started taking a cut from sales, and it’s still a modest 15%. Which is a better deal than anyone else offers. That rate drops to 10% once you sell more than $5,000 worth of music. We won’t reach that sales figure, but it’s still a very low barrier for a working musician to reach. Bandcamp isn’t like Tunecore or CD Baby. They don’t ship your music to iTunes or eMusic. They’re kinda the opposite of those sites. You control the price, and all the revenue (minus the 15%) goes to your PayPal account.
• It lets everyone try the Radiohead model. That is to say, you can allow your listeners to set the price. Even if that price is free. That’s how we’re going to sell our downloads. It’s free if you want them. Or pay more. If you want the vinyl, it’s $10. No exceptions.
• People can download music in any format they like. Not just MP3, but FLAC and freaking Ogg Vorbis. All for the same price.
• You can sell physical goods through Bandcamp, too. And you can use it to track your shipments. You can even do pre-orders.
• If you like, you can also print download cards that each come with their own unique code. These are great, whether you want to sell them, give them away, or insert them into your LP sleeves. The codes and album art are added automatically. Just print them on whatever card/poster stock you like. Other sites offer similar functionality, but you pay more, and you have to upload your music again.
• The sites look great. There’s some modest customization available, but it avoids the hideous excesses of Myspace.
• Lots of stats about downloading and streaming activity through your sites. With pretty graphs.
• You can use your own domain name (or subdomain). We do. And this option is free.
• You can embed single songs or entire albums. Anywhere. Like so:

I have to admit one of the reasons I like Bandcamp is that they align perfectly with how I feel about digital music and how music should be sold online. CDs are useless. But outlets like iTunes and eMusic charge too much when they sell your digital files. And they don’t give you options about how to present your music or how much to charge (if you charge anything at all). Bandcamp has figured this out and made it easy. So that any punk band or weekend duffers could figure it out. But Sufjan Stevens made it into the Billboard top 50 on his Bandcamp sales alone. So it’s not just a toy for ‘shitty local bands.’ It’s a flexible tool that presents your music pro-style, without a bunch of crappy ads or clutter.

One “drawback” is that Bandcamp forces you to stream your work for free. Don’t like it? Tough. Their interview with Sufjan’s label, Asthmatic Kitty, addressed this perfectly:

All of the tracks from this EP can be streamed in their entirety on Bandcamp – no 30 second snippets. Do you think you lost sales because of that?
No way. I think it really helped that people could stream the whole album. My personal theory is that people can stream anything in its entirety anyway; YouTube is essentially a giant on-demand playback setup ala Spotify these days. Type in a song and artist and bam – you’re streaming right away. The question for record labels and musicians is how far the buy button is from that stream.

That is indeed the question. Frankly, I think it might be crazy to try to sell streams or downloads at all. Everything is free now. And I’m tired of ending up with boxes full of unsold CDs. This time, you either get one of 250 vinyl copies or you get it online. I don’t know that it’s perfect, but it seems close enough.

Want more info about Bandcamp? Check out their FAQ. Or watch this video.

Or, Things I Would Rather Write About Than the New Record by The Sword

Or, I Can’t Fucking Take It Any More: In Which A Non-Alignment Pact Writer Talks About Something Other Than KTRU

Sorry guys, I need to talk about some actual music for a while in an attempt to regain my equilibrium.

Hey look at that, the Sword just released a new record on Tuesday. Normally this is the type of record I might review for 29-95.com, but I’m not going to do that because I just don’t like the Sword. I think their musicianship is weak, their riffs are dumb and all of their songs sound the same.

That’s right. I’m a hater. But one thing that I do not hold against The Sword is that they are a “hipster metal” band. Now, that’s not because I think that the tag is inaccurate. On the contrary, I think that it describes a real stylistic phenomenon in hard rock- music that has some superficial resemblance to metal, but actually has roots in some other kind of music. The “hipster metal” epithet emphasizes the “superficial” part of this formulation, implying that the music is intended for dilettantes who get their ideas about underground music from mainstream culture (i.e. think all metal is guys that look like KISS playing Sabbath songs) and basically don’t know actual heavy metal from a hole in the ground.

I don’t think this is necessarily the case, although music critics certainly have a tendency to turn into those idiots when they try to write about metal. I think that it’s possible to make non-metal music that sounds like metal for some reason, either intentional or unintentional, without having the end result be something that is itself superficial. Instead of “hipster metal,” call it “false metal.” Like a “false scorpion.” It’s not like those dudes are any worse at being arachnids because they look like something they ain’t.

Maybe we can get closer to some parameters if we look at some records that might fall into the category. Why yes, you clever donkey- this is an excuse to talk about bands I like better than the Sword.

ZZ Top, Tres Hombres (1973)

Top have wicked riffs and awesome solos and their music is heavy as shit, and Billy Gibbons’s singing voice isn’t much more polished than Lemmy’s. But I don’t think anybody would seriously call Top a metal band. For one thing, their records aren’t very loud. For another, their blues influences are too prominent. This is a heavy blues record, not a metal record, even though it shares some characteristics with metal.

Sleep, Holy Mountain (1993)

No record calls into question The Sword’s reason for existence more than this one. As far as I’m concerned, Sleep perfected heavy-ass 6/8 Sabbath worship to such an extent that nobody need have attempted it with a straight face afterwards.  Sleep is an interesting band, because while Holy Mountain, in its perverse, almost reactionary rejection of any of the speed-and-technique arms struggle that marked metal from around 1980 on, falls just on the false-metal side of the line, the visionary, monolithic Dopesmoker and Pike’s later band High On Fire step across it to rejoin metal proper, I think.

Cathedral, The Ethereal Mirror (1993)

What was that I said about a straight face? This record, which came out the same year as Holy Mountain, only sounds like lazy doom-rock. On closer examination, the subtle rhythmic and harmonic sophistication of the music, and especially the nutty solos, reveal the metal roots of the musicians. With former Napalm Death vocalist Lee Dorrian crowing rock catchphrases in a ridiculous voice over its crushing riffs, this record really is like a metal band doing a parody of false metal, and doing a pretty fucking kickass job of it too.

Probot (2004)

This record, a solo project by Dave Grohl, has a bona fide metal superstar singing on every track. So why is it on this list? Because the songs are simple, riffy, hi-fi rock songs like those Grohl’s been writing since 1993, just with crazy (or not-so-crazy) metal vocals on top. This is an absolute gem of an introduction to the pop potential of heavy music for people who like punk and hard rock but are confused by the extreme shit.

Jucifer- If Thine Enemy Hunger (2006)

Boris- Pink (2005)

These two bands share one of the Sword’s primary weaknesses, namely lack of technique- Atsuo of Boris is charismatic but really a laughable drummer at times-  but compensate with a penchant for experimentation drawn from Kraut-rock and Sonic Youth.

Jucifer is an incredibly loud live band that can knock you flat with a metal riff when they want to- check out “Superman” from their 1999 debut-  but their overall aesthetic is more like alt-rock, among other things because of their extensive use of the loud/quiet/loud technique. Metal bands do not sound like the Pixies. Hunger is one of Jucifer’s heaviest and, interestingly, most accessible records.

Boris, along with The Sword, are one of the bands most often tarred as “hipster metal.” To my mind, they really aren’t a metal band at all. Because they’re loud and raucous they bear the superficial resemblance to “metal” that qualifies them here, but their songwriting, to me, owes as much to garage rock and probably more to shoegaze. Pink isn’t my favorite Boris record, but it does exemplify what I’m talking about here very well: it’s loud, it’s heavy, it’s hard, but it’s not really metal.

Chopper- Born to Ride. . . or Die (2008)

One of my brother’s bands. Colin rarely does much of anything without a wink, but this whole record is like one big joke: a biker-themed speed metal band from three rock geeks who’ve probably never sat on a motorcycle in their lives. My brother used to play in the very un-metal indie band Deerhunter; guitarist George Asimakos used to be in one of the best math-rock bands of the ’00s, the Blame Game, and his playing here owes far more to Bob Mould than Tony Iommi. The gruff, unhinged vocals make this album heavy as shit, but the monster hooks and fuck-you sarcasm push it into the realm of punk rock.

Baroness- Blue Record (2009)

Marshall and I debated Baroness briefly a while back. I never was totally comfortable with them as a metal band, even though I have to agree they aren’t a hard rock band. This band is one of those weird hybrids you find in small towns where dudes who are into different things grow up together: the bass player in Baroness looks like an ’80s thrash dude, the drummer and the guitarist look like preps, and the frontman is a crazy, bearded metal guy.  And they play like this, too- the drumming on the Baroness record, in particular, is about as not-metal as you can get and still be in the neighborhood of Hard. The Blue Record is like a metal band trying to write a Wilco album, failing, and ending up with something else entirely.

Torche- Songs For Singles (2010)

This isn’t even out yet, but I’m not sure if there’s another record I’m looking forward to more right now. Oh wait. Well anyway, Torche is a heavy band, but there’s just too much joy and sunshine in their music to really call it metal. Meanderthal is just an impossibly fun rock record, and I can’t wait to hear more from them. I sure wish the new Torche record had come out this week instead of the Sword.

Final note for the rhetorically challenged members of our readership: please understand that the name “False Metal” implies no disrespect to these bands or to metal. It’s just a way to think about heavy music that isn’t particularly good as metal but might be perfectly fine as something else.

As a kid in Houston, like many of you I’m sure, I spent hours recording music off the radio. I would go up and down the dial, mostly between one of those Q stations that played the same Top 40 hits over and over and 101.1 KLOL. Sometimes I would switch over to AM because there was another Q station there.

I remember on what was I believe the ten year anniversary of the rock station 101.1 KLOL, they played back the entire first 24 hours of broadcast from 1970. The day started with the Who’s I’m Free.

Even in only ten years, the differences in KLOL’s production was striking. The early format was free-form. The dj layed back. Entire albums might get played and while the station was heavily rock; they also played jazz and blues and other formats if the dj liked it. There were no ridiculous Monster Truck Rally commercials. And no loud mouthed crass DJ shows. I remember thinking it was great –I wondered why there couldn’t be a (in my view) more sophisticated station like this. One for elitists like myself.

Then I rolled the dial to 91.7, a station I’m sure I’d rolled over many times before in my eternal search for new tunes. However back then 91.7 was only 600 WATTS, and though I lived only a few blocks away from Rice Campus where the station was broadcast, I rarely could get its signal. This time I did; good timing too because the dj lay into a deep playlist that went on for perhaps an hour and I still remember a lot of it to this day because I taped it and played it over and over again. Off the top of my head I remember:

1. Aztec Camera – Jump (the Van Halen song)
2. If I Didn’t Love You – Squeeze
3. Fire – Crazy World of Arthur Brown
4. Hard Rain – Bob Dylan

Excellent stuff that to me was a total mystery as to why it wasn’t played on “bigger” stations. From then on, when I rolled the dial I tried hard to pick up 91.7 and kept it there when I could get it.

Others here have eloquently described 91.7 KTRU as a window. I definitely agree. But back then, when the signal was weak, it felt like a shuttered window that I was peeking in to and perhaps wasn’t welcome. The talk between tracks was student oriented. This was part of campus life not city life.

Mind you, I was already quite familiar with Rice Campus. I lived just on the other side of the Rice Village. My first-cousins whose parents both attended Rice, lived even closer. I would ride bikes over to Rice all the time with one of my cousins. We would spend all day at the Rice Media Center playing Donkey Kong and eating Haribo Gummi Bears. We would figure out ways to climb on all the buildings; we were especially good at climbing the walls of the football stadium to sneak into games.

His older sister was attending Rice. She was pretty and young for a freshman –sixteen and very very smart. She took me around the campus and showed me the sorts of things only a student might know –like the farting wall outside one of the building where students some times stand waiting for the door to be unlocked. Somewhere in there I also learned the awesome informal frisbee golf course which I’ve played many times over the years.

So yes, I’m quite familiar with Rice but it’s still peeking in. It is of course a different experience to attend Rice University. Both my cousin who I played Donkey Kong with in the RMC and his older sister who showed me the farting wall as well as their younger brother all attended Rice and even though they grew up literally a block away, they all stayed on campus while students. A place like Rice is there to expand your mind yet there is a certain amount of shutting out involved too.

By the way, not one of my cousins ever showed any interest in 91.7 KTRU. None of them are in the slightest way musical either. There is a battle cry I’m hearing now about how important a station like 91.7 is to exposing people to the new, the unfamiliar etc. Yes, it did that for me but only because I was looking for it so I don’t put a lot of weight in that.

What I thought was nice about 91.7, most students and the administration might not find important –they might even find it problematic. Because it became a window two ways between the city and its rabble and my fellow elitists in their marbled towers. The shutting down of KTRU would sever the tie between the city’s more intellectual youth culture and Rice’s campus culture. I’m not sure who loses more. Many Rice students with a love of music flocked to KTRU and from there found there way into the city’s music life either by playing in bands or going to see them perform in city clubs. They themselves by affiliation with KTRU held a certain level of status within this music community. It empowered them to venture out beyond the hedges.

Elitists seekers such as myself will always seek so I’m not too concerned. Should I be? I’ve already said I don’t buy into this exposure thing. If I was to be concerned at all, it would be for the ones already seeking exposure. College campuses are getting ever more closed off from the cities that support them. Are the students getting ever more soft? We shall see. I must admit I do find it hard to imagine what gateway between these communities could now be introduced.

Could KTRU have been better and therefor in perhaps a less vulnerable position? What if they had a golden period perhaps with national influence? For instance, when the Jandek documentary came out I was disappointed to find that not one “expert” was Houston based, nobody from KTRU interviewed. And unfortunately no show from KTRU ever became a phenomenon. Just like music-writing in Houston, it’s not always about sucky bands (sometimes it’s about sucky writers and dj’s). Yes absolutely. Work harder folks.

Anyway as a musician, a seeker, a Rice campus wanderer and a cutter I’m a little sorry to see this link broken. As an elitist I say lift yourself up above the rabble and get on with it.

Dear President Leebron,

Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed letters responding to concerns over the sale of KTRU’s FM license and transmitter. Your letters provide some insight to the pressures you’ve been under and show the beginnings of what could be a productive dialogue between the students, alumni, the greater Houston public, and the Board of Governors.

I have some criticisms of your justifications for selling, of the tactics you used in the sale, and of your strategy for building Rice’s future as an educational institution devoted to freedoms of inquiry and expression.

In your announcement concerning the sale, you have failed to elucidate the circumstances which led to KTRU having a 50,000 watt transmitter and have misled people when you state that it is oversized and therefore underutilized. You have misused Arbitron ratings as a way to quantify value or demonstrate utility. You do not consider the fact that KTRU is unlikely to receive complimentary promotional recordings from music labels if it loses its unique position in the FM market and therefore either programming costs will increase dramatically or its quality will be compromised. You seek to distract people from the fact that you are reallocating resources from one constituency in a paternalistic attempt to define what the common good is. You have betrayed the trust of your students by working in secret (hiding behind the flatly patronizing excuse of ‘complicated negotiations’) instead of engaging in open debate and working through established channels of governance.

You have the opportunity to correct all of this and demonstrate true leadership.

As many alumni will recall, until about 1992 KTRU operated with a 650 watt transmitter that broke down frequently, leading to phone calls between student managers and engineers and periods of being “off the air.” The offer to upgrade the transmitter did not come from Rice University and it did not come in the form of a 5,000 watt transmitter. It came from KRTS¹ in the form of a 50,000 watt transmitter as required by the FCC because their introduction of a frequency next to 91.7 would have drowned out KTRU’s signal. At the time, the students were concerned that an upgrade might come loaded with conditions that would interfere with the students’ ability to make programming decision and keep operations student-run. While in comparison to “most college radio stations” KTRU’s wattage is large, it does not follow that it is underutilized and therefore should be sold off. The 50,000 wattage size was made necessary by the location of other transmitter-strengths next to our frequency.

Citing Arbitron ratings as a measure of value or utility is problematic on three fronts. First, it was never communicated to the students that achieving measurable Arbitron ratings would be important to the future of the station. Second, Arbitron ratings are based on probabilities with inaccurate methods of sample; they are only used as an estimate by commercial stations to sell advertising time. As a noncommercial, educational station, KTRU would have never paid attention to these ratings, and likewise Arbitron would not have paid attention to KTRU or its audience. Even supposing Arbitron could provide a measure of the public’s listening habits, there are a host of other values that it can not measure, such as: the educational value of the content, the development of a students’ skills in programming and working in a team, the freedom students have to explore and learn about music and the effect that exploration has on the listening public, the networks that are created through student culture, and the democratizing effect of the dissemination of diverse genres of music reflective of our nation’s history and culture (including, but not limited to classical and fine arts programming). Arbitron ratings do not measure the value of teaching students how to produce culture rather than merely consume it.

Taking away the FM license and transmitter would fundamentally disrupt the students’ ability to have a relationship with a local Houston audience. On the FM dial, KTRU is one of several options to Houston radio listeners. The Public Service Announcements, the interviews and live performances of local and touring artists, caller requests are all attuned to a local public. Yes, the internet has expanded the reach of KTRU, but it can not substitute for the FM signal. As an internet-only broadcaster KTRU would be one of thousands of options and available only to those with constant access to a computer. New music producers with limited budgets would be unlikely to supply KTRU with access to their music for free because KTRU would lack a unique position the market. Furthermore, Rice University would be the only nationally ranked university to have lost its FM license and transmitter.²

The reason for secrecy was to prevent dissent that would have prevented a sale from even being considered. KTRU is not a publicly traded company with stocks that could rise or fall based upon rumors of a merger or acquisition, so there is no commercial reason to have negotiated the deal in secrecy. If you continue in this manner, you risk encountering formal Petition to Deny the transfer of the license at the FCC (along with many informal objections), questions about your capability to govern a university effectively, and future scrutiny over sentences like “Going forward, students and others are entitled to hold us to our word that this is not a precedent.” However well-intentioned a statement like that may be, it does not redress the damage you’ve caused by acting secretly and disingenuously in connection with KTRU.

This sale should be viewed as an attempt to steal the FM license from the students. It was started as an independent station by the students, has always been paid for with undergraduate student blanket taxes, and has thrived because of its student volunteers. Going forward, the university should provide documentation delineating that it holds the license in trust for the students at KTRU. The only reason William Marsh Rice University is listed as the holder of the FCC license is because of student turnover and the fact that students should not be expected to handle all of the legal technicalities of holding an FM license. A new servery does not make up for this theft and it is a distraction. The university can finance a construction project and provide scholarships while valuing student culture in all of its forms.

Please cancel this sale and meet with the KTRU-Friendly Committee of the Faculty Senate. You should use this channel of communication if you want to discuss Arbitron ratings; paid internships for students to broadcast campus news, concerts or lectures; or increase classical music and news in the content of KTRU’s programming. I’m sure they would be open to your ideas and it would be a less risky allocation of resources for the public.

Sincerely yours,

Heidi Bullinga
Hanszen College
Bachelor of Arts 1993, Bachelor of Architecture 1995
KTRU General Manager 1992-1993

1.) KRTS was set up as a new commercial radio station at 92.1 by a member of a family that is a major benefactor to Rice University. This station was subsequently sold for $72.5 million in 2004.

2.) U.S. News and World Report’s nationally ranked universities and the FM call letters of their radio stations

Harvard University    WHRB
Princeton University    WPRB
Yale University    WYBC
Columbia University    WKCR
Stanford University    KZSU
University of Pennsylvania    WQHS
California Institute of Technology    W6UE
Massachusetts Institute of Technology    WMBR
Dartmouth College    WDCR
Duke University    WXDU
University of Chicago    WHPK
Northwestern University    WNUR
Johns Hopkins University    WJHU
Washington University in St. Louis    KWUR
Brown University    WELH
Cornell University    WVBR
Rice University    KTRU –for sale?!
Vanderbilt University     WRVU
University of Notre Dame    WVFI
Emory University    WMRE
Georgetown University    WGTB
University of California – Berkeley    KALX
Carnegie Mellon University    WRCT
University of Southern California    KSCR
University of California – Los Angeles    UCLARadio.com “UCLA’s student radio station was never officially licensed as an AM or FM station due to lack of support from university administration. Due to the difficulty of purchasing a band in Los Angeles’ overcrowded frequency spectrum, the station is not currently considering purchasing one.” -wikipedia