2/14/2011

KUSF radio station 90.3 FM



KUSF 90.3 FM is an independent radio station based in San Francisco. If you spent any time in SF the past thirty years you are probably familiar with it. I have spent half my life in SF and my dad and my grandmother both lived and died there. My dad also went to Hollywood High, and went to gigs in SF at the Fillmore back during the summer of love. KUSF has a relationship to a city like no other radio station. It was the main station we listened to in the 1980s and 1990s before the internet, when you had to rely on radio as a major source for new bands.

KUSF is very similar to KXLU in LA. It is connected to a college. The DJs are both students and music aficionados. But the LA area has KROQ, KCRW, and plenty of interesting college radio stations who will play bands like No Age and Best Coast. SF only has the one station KUSF. There is some KROQ station there: it's cool if you like in Stockton. There are some college radio stations but you can't hear their signal in SF. San Francisco has a big radio vacuum.

When I moved back to SF in 1989, I worked several jobs. I lived a bohemian existence on barely any money at all. It was nice to hear a station like KUSF and win free tickets to shows in town. In the beginning of 1991, I lived on Divisadero Street, not far from the University of SF campus and the KUSF station. I would stay up late at night listen to the radio and winning tickets at 3 in the morning. I won tickets to see Superchunk, Nirvana, Psychic TV, and Soundgarden. I won a bunch of free records. The station definitely helped me.

I moved away in 1996, but a friend of mine became a DJ on KUSF. His name is DJ Stevil. I would listen to his show and look at his playlists, and there was a lot of interesting music being played on that station in the past ten years.

Recently KUSF sold it's signal to a classical radio station based in LA. If you have driven around the USA the past few years, you realize how the same corporations own all the stations and play the same middlebrow, consensual music. It's dire out there. The radio world ressembles the most monoculture envisioned by Stalin. No worthwhile bands like Arcade Fire or Smith Westerns are getting played in that scenario.

I write this all to say: I love the old KUSF. I wish that they keep the old quirky and funky format of unique voices.

--Alexander Laurence

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