Feast of Wire

Things have been busy down at KXCI and the Rialto these past two weeks, primarily because of the Festival en el Barrio Viejo. The festival was a benefit concert for KXCI Community Radio (91.3 FM) featuring some of the best musicians/bands in Tucson, with the local heroes Calexico headlining. During the lead up to the event I had a chance to interview/talk to Joey Burns of Calexico and while it was certainly interesting to discuss music and the festival, I will note that I discovered that Europe really has nothing comparable to the FCC or Clear Channel. This is important for many up and coming bands/artists because in the States they can't get any air play due to the monopoly on many media outlets, who focus on a small list of safe, established artists to cover. This is a major reason why many bands will go tour throughout Europe because DJs will go to their shows and then play the band's music on their shows later. Also, many countries in Europe really don't have many restrictions on what you can or can't play on air during a radio broadcast, so there's fewer restrictions on what DJs can play, ie songs with certain curse words. On a final note, I've also discovered that in Arizona, religious radio stations still have the highest priority over college, community and corporate radio stations. This comes in to play when a station like KXCI is trying to acquire a booster, a device that would pick up KXCI's signal and relay it so people in Oro Valley/Marana could listen in. That said, KXCI's low priority with Arizona is only a part of the booster issue, but still it's an interesting point.

Other than that, I'm reading these papers on Network Theory/Society by Manuel Castells, which will help me to explain the "everything is connected" phenomena I've noticed working at KXCI and the Rialto. It's really dense reading, but very informative and will certainly help with my presentation. I plan on making a network diagram to show how immense and connected the Tucson/Arizona/US music world really is.

Finally, I have decided to enroll at Reed College. They not only have a great Political Science department, but they also gave me a fantastic financial aid package. It looks like we're going to have a big BASIS contingency in the NW with all the BASIS kids going up there soon and all the ones already there.