Matthew Lasar talks with Brian Edwards-Tiekert, host of KPFA’s Upfront to commemorate the Birthday of Pacifica Radio.
Tag Archives | KPFA
Podcast #237 – How Community & College Radio Can Deal with COVID-19
Community and college radio stations are unique in broadcasting because in addition to being important community services, many are also a community crossroads, hosting dozens or hundreds of people in their studios and spaces in any given week. That means the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic poses a specific challenge for these broadcasters. KPFA’s “UpFront” co-host […]
Four great pieces for a Sunday AM classical music community radio show
My friend Sherry Gendelman, who hosts a popular Sunday morning classical music show on KPFA in Berkeley, started her program last week with a piece for violin and orchestra. No sooner did the performance begin than the phones started ringing. ‘What is this?’ six listeners in a row immediately demanded. “I woke up to this […]
UbuWeb’s Treasure Trove of Avant-Garde Radio and Sound
What if I told you there’s an online archive of hundreds of avant-garde media works that exists with little regard for copyright, though it respects the wishes of artists and their estates? Would you believe it’s been there for 22 years, without fail? That archive is UbuWeb. I’m pretty sure I first learned about it […]
Podcast #141 – How Radio Isn’t Done, According To Negativland’s Don Joyce
Musician, DJ and radio artist Don Joyce passed away nearly three years ago, leaving behind a voluminous archive of his unparalelled collage radio program “Over the Edge.” The documentary “How Radio Isn’t Done” sheds light on this member of Negativland, his life and his work in recontextualizing the never-ending flow of media messages that flood […]
An Affectionate & Honest Filmic Portrait of Negativland’s Don Joyce
Musician, DJ and radio artist Don Joyce passed away nearly three years ago, on July 22, 2015. He left behind a voluminous archive of his KPFA radio program “Over the Edge,” which took off in new, chaotic and creative directions when he welcomed the participation of the experimental band Negativland in 1981, then joining the […]
Is post-World War I Stravinsky better for community radio?
I was listening to KPFA’s Sunday morning classical music show yesterday, and suddenly they played Igor Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat and I thought: maybe there are two kinds of Stravinsky for two kinds of public radio stations. For the big grand classical music stations like WQXR-FM in New York City, the pre-World War I ballets with […]
Message in a bottle, re: KPFA’s cancellation of Richard Dawkins
I had a feeling that this brouhaha over Richard Dawkins at KPFA would happen. My involvement with the station these days is pretty minimal, but a couple of Sundays ago I dropped by as a guest on my friend Sherry Gendelman’s wonderful classical music show Piano. As we entered the Berkeley, California signal’s building entrance, […]
Turn the lights on! What we can learn from KPFA’s Bill Mandel
William Mandel has died. Mandel broadcast over KPFA’s airwaves for almost half a century, offering commentaries on the now-defunct Soviet Union. He wrote books about the USSR, among them Soviet Women and Soviet but not Russian: the Other Peoples of the Soviet Union. He spoke at just about any public event at which someone would let him appear. He died […]
Did Donald Trump save Pacifica radio?
It is a blasphemous question, I know. But since I’ve already put it in the headline, I’ll also spell it out in this post’s opening paragraph. President Donald Trump: good news for Pacifica radio? My decisive answer is . . . maybe. At this point, the Pacifica Foundation and its five radio stations can only go in […]