As a long-time volunteer and DJ at Foothill College radio station KFJC-FM, I’m eagerly anticipating the station’s ambitious live remote broadcast from Liverpool, England, which begins today (within minutes of when I’m posting this article at 6:20AM Pacific time). On Friday, September 26th and Saturday, September, 27th, the station plans to broadcast up to 30 hours worth of performances and artist interviews from the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, starting early in the morning California-time.
Although the line-up and artist broadcast schedule is still being sorted out, it’s anticipated that KFJC will be broadcasting and videostreaming from as early as 5:00 am Pacific time until around 8:00 pm Pacific time on both days of the festival (of course, subject to change!). A crew of volunteers from KFJC flew to the UK in order to broadcast the festival.
This event is just another in a long string of KFJC’s live remote broadcasts from afar. Back in 1994, KFJC did its first live remote from out of state. A team trekked down to Austin, Texas for SXSW and set up camp in a hotel room. Using phone lines KFJC connected with radio station KUT and then tapped into NPR’s satellite system in order to do the broadcast. Many stations ended up simulcasting KFJC’s broadcast from Austin, including community, public, and college stations in the United States and Canada.
KFJC continued to do live remotes across the United States, including Terrastock Festivals in nearby San Francisco and from far away Providence, Rhode Island and from the UTech Music Festival (which also resulted in a KFJC compilation CD) in Milwaukee in 2011.
In 1996, KFJC did its first international live remote from Brixton, England using ISDN/Zephyr boxes. The next international broadcast was from New Zealand in 2000 from the Otago Festival of the Arts (here’s a glimpse of the line-up as presented on KFJC’s sold out compilation CD). Following that, KFJC traveled to Tokyo, Japan in 2008 to broadcast sets by a variety of Japanese underground bands. That event featured a live videostream as well.
KFJC volunteers get gear ready for broadcast from Liverpool. Photo: John Hight
For this year’s trip to England, KFJC volunteers will not only engineer the live broadcasts and HD video, but will also be recording some of the music sets for later broadcast since there are 3 different stages at the festival. Although we still don’t know which artists KFJC will be broadcasting, some of the bands on the bill include Woods, Goat, White Hills, POW!, Wolf People, Zombie Zombie, the Asteroid #4, and Klaus Johann Grobe.
In an interview with the Metro, KFJC’s General Manager Eric Johnson explained, “‘I think it’s kind of been a mission of college radio to be an alternative to mainstream…We’re looking to sort of satisfy folks who get a little tired of the formulated stuff out there. We’re looking to draw attention to bands that may not otherwise get attention.'”
I can’t wait to watch the festival from thousands of miles away! For San Francisco Bay Area residents, you can tune in at 89.7 FM and also listen online. The HD videostream can be accessed here.
