The sleek silver transmitter that Free Radio Berkeley had donated to Rebel Radio needed help. Although not firing on all cylinders (so to speak), it was accurate, and didn't drift off bandwidth. That was the last thing we wanted, to interfere with any commercial broadcast. You might as well send the Feds an invitation to come to your door. But new transmitter parts would afford us a further, more consistent range rather than broadcasting only for the student ghetto and random anarcho-punks who happened to remember to tune in each Tuesday evening, if at all.
To raise funds, someone suggested a benefit show. Some local bands thought the station was kinda cool although they knew we didn't have much reach. We couldn't promise them any commercial exposure to speak of since barely anyone knew Rebel Radio existed in the first place. But that was changing a little.
The Weekly Alibi did a pretty decent cover feature with typical avast and ahoy ye matey fanfare and was generally supportive. Even the intolerant punker-than-thou Maximum Rock and Roll ran an interview with Racer X, Betty Crocker (Punk Rocker) and myself by Ron Sakolsky. It was intended for his book, Seizing the Airwaves, but Rebel Radio didn't make the cut. I think overall we weren't serious enough, sort of like the clownish Abbie Hoffman of pirate radio, unlike all those other solemn Dave Dellinger and Malcolm X stations.
Even David Barsamian, of syndicated Alternative Radio fame, took us to task for not playing tapes he'd provided us in proper sequence during the correct week each episode was airing nationwide on Pacifica and NPR stations. Along with our free speech mission, we wanted stupid fun (the regularly featured anything-goes late night Drunk and Stoned Hour anyone?). What little money we had went to beer and records and maybe a new power strip when absolutely necessary.
So when the benefit idea was proposed, we were all for it. Somehow, we shanghaied the Basement Films Collective into jumping aboard and projecting found footage during the show. It became a joint benefit but as I recall, the Basement folk let us have most if not all of the cash. That was pretty cool of them.
We corralled a studio artspace/ burnt-out-bunker down on Broadway, rounded up bands, pasted flyers and transmitted from an open loft ten feet above the fray.
Yeah, smart. Advertise the show with address and time then set up an illegal broadcast right on location. What we lacked in caution we made up in audacity. And stupidity.
Pawn Drive, Selsun Blue, the Impatients, Anchorman and Apricot Jam were recruited. A few of us were bummed there wasn't more punkn'roll on the bill but the ah music committee thought it best to appeal to a wider range of audience, sort of like how KUNM went after yuppie jazz snobs.
This UNM station is everything we avoided and worse since they try to project an air of free-thinking non-conformity. Horsefeathers. A college station, yes, but a student station? Not at all. When the same dee jays run the same specialty music shows for twenty-five years, things become as stale as cigarette butts in backwash beer bottles.
Down at NMSU in Las Cruces KRUX, on the other hand, things get pretty free-wheeling because the kids run the station and mostly bring their own music to spin. KUNM wouldn't touch something like that in a million years. They're like the old guy that gets pierced to "fit in" with the young crowd but looks like what he actually is: an old guy with an earring.
The benefit went well but since most of the crowd were pirates, Basement people and band personnel, the station netted only about sixty bucks or something.
As I recall though, the transmitter never got the complete overhaul. It was fine-tuned somewhat though and performed better but what we really needed a new rig and that was financially out of reach.
Meanwhile, the show must go on.
One now-razed landmark in the student ghetto was The Graffiti House. Every square foot of the place, walls inside and out, roof, chimney, even the trees in the yard: covered in eye-popping script that was as indecipherable to the average human as old Haight-Ashbury psychedelic concert posters.
The little kids who lived there with their mom (and painted the place) had a rough time of it. She was rumored to be everything from a meth-tweak hooker to a drug dealer to a misunderstood free-wheeling mom. It was said the kids, aged like eight to eleven or so, witnessed some guy get his brains blown out in the kitchen. In any case, they weren't candidates for future high school valedictorian or class president.
The Graffiti House siphoned electricity off their neighbor when their own power was shut off. That much I know was true because their neighbor was an old friend my own age.
As that next-door homeowner, she was disrespected by the kids and had a running feud with their mother. I invited her to a broadcast at my house so she and her boyfriend could check it out for themselves as well as meet the younger punkrock riff-raff I was hanging out with these days.
That same show, Sunshine happened to invite the Graffiti kids too since she was on good terms with their mom. The kids dug it: here was something cool (against the law too!) but probably one of the more constructive things they'd seen.
Funny thing though. When the kids saw my friend there-- the neighbor who they'd been feuding with-- they didn't say anything to her, just cavorted gleefully during the broadcast. But she later told me they had changed their attitude completely. No more graffiti on her house and they treated her with a newfound respect, all because she took part in an illegal activity.
Rebel Radio wanted to bring the community together but this was quite the twist!
By now, best-store-on-the-planet Mind Over Matter (RIP) was our drop-off point for music, mail, taped public service announcements, death threats, whatever anyone wanted to toss our way. Not being involved with the on-air activity, they were a safe neutral zone. We even left a questionnaire on the counter to see who was listening and what they wanted. Not that we listened to them though. Not that way at any rate.
See, Rebel Radio was always in search of new participants. It was marvelous to have a core group of people who could be counted on each week but by now we knew each others music collections and politico-rants too well.
Our motto was , "If we suck, its your fault" meaning if you don't like what we do, come join us and do it yourself. Most new people were introduced by current radio pirates but a few answered the anonymous call.
There was the high school girl who said she was waiting out her senior year so she could get pierced and tattooed; she lasted a couple of months before disappearing but later surfaced in the over-21 club scene. She's moved away but to this day appears at shows when she's back passing through town.
A Greek language major who went by the pirate name of Dave Blood did man-on-the-street interviews, tape recorder in hand about activist issues like anti-aggression pacts or sustainable agriculture or social justice. He was relentless until finals and graduation.
Another studious double major guy (classical music and chemical engineering) showed up one night, spun some symphonies and cleared the room of all the so-called "open-minded" radicals. Except for hardcore deejay and bassist I.M. Fukt who stuck around, listened to some Wagner and exclaimed, "This is metal!".
Some people got involved and disappeared after a few weeks. Others-- like an techno-industrial gal who worked on computers for a living-- came for one broadcast and never left. She not only showed up each and every week for over a year but kept the momentum going when everyone else was flagging. There were times when she or I were the only ones running the broadcast for hours at a time. What such an excess amount of time on our hands implied, well, I'll let that pass.
Still, though, I think more people had heard of Rebel Radio than actually heard us on air. But there were a few people who'd heard about us that we never counted on. They were from Denver…