I wasn’t a KTRU dj but at least half of closest friends were. I appreciated what the radio station brought to the community and how my own musical tastes were kept fresh and evolving through my connections with KTRU and KTRU djs. After being in Chicago for 9 years, I’m moving back to Houston. I’m terribly scared about moving back there (the heat, living near my parents as an adult, new jobs). However– at the top of my list of positive things about moving back is: listening to KTRU on the car radio. Thanks to all of the djs and helpers who are trying to save KTRU so that I can experience this reality.

Sheila (Herman) Hall, Jones 2001

As with many alumni here, KTRU was a major part of my life while at Rice. As undergrad and grad student, I DJed for 8.5 years (1987-1995), and acted as Jazz Director 1990-95. I think most know or can imagine how involving a period that was, so I won’t spend time with anecdotes. I want to note instead how important KTRU was to me in a later endeavor of presenting concerts of jazz and experimental music.

After leaving Rice and moving to DC, I immediately missed the personal music advocacy that was the crux, I think, of the KTRU experience. That advocacy was perpetual with any KTRU shift, and for me peaked with helping produce the KTRU Avant-Jazz Fest in 1993. In DC I hooked up with a few people that likewise lamented the lack of adventurous improvised music in town and started Transparent Productions in 1997, a volunteer and unfunded organization dedicated to presenting musicians and giving them 100% of all proceeds, working on a zero budget.

Over the years I was personally involved in presenting over a hundred concerts, with every ticket dollar going to the artists, totaling probably close to $50,000 going straight into musicians’ pockets. That bottom line would not have happened without my KTRU experience, I’m sure of that.

Vincent Kargatis

Sid Rich 1989 / Space Physics & Astronomy 1996

My first day of Freshman Week in 1982, I met my advisors and the first thing I asked them was, “How do I get to the radio station?” Computer science was the “official” reason I selected Rice, the academic reason, but deep down I have to admit KTRU was the thing that really sucked me in.

I still remember my first training session, with a sophomore named Ray Isle. Ray would later become a close friend and roommate, and these days he gets paid to drink wine on national TV at six in the morning, but back then he was exactly what I wanted to be: a KTRU DJ. He showed me how the board worked, how to play a cart, how to cue up a record. Then he gave me a turn to sit in the chair and try it out and asked if I had any requests. “Joy Division,” I said. “‘Love Will Tear Us Apart'”. I knew all about Joy Division since I was a voracious reader of music magazines, but I’d never actually heard them. He dug out the 7″ single and I put on the headphones, dropped the needle on and then spun the record backward til I found the beginning of the song, just like he showed me. He made a little small talk while we waited; I mostly sat there terrified, and then when the last song faded out, I pushed the levels up and pushed the green PROGRAM button, and the little Joy Division record began to spin and that thumping bass line came through the headphones and I grinned.

“That wasn’t too terrible,” Ray said, but I wasn’t listening.

This. Right here. This was it. Not the student paper. Not the band. Not soccer, or softball, or yearbook, or theatre, or politics.

This. This cramped, grotty little cluster of tacky wood-paneled rooms in the basement of the RMC, with the ancient analog equipment and the falling-apart headphones and the squeaky chair and the weird graffiti. And the music library. The enormous, glorious music library. I fell into those stacks like Augustus Gloop falling into Willy Wonka’s lake of chocolate. Cool, the Cramps! Look, the Velvet Underground! Wow, Mission of Burma, what’s that, are they good?

I was finally home.

KTRU was the driving force that would eventually propel me through six years and two college degrees. My best lifelong friends are all people I met at KTRU. And together we learned about music, about business, about media and promotions and organization and scheduling and budgeting. We learned how to deal with people, how to compromise and reach consensus. Sometimes we didn’t learn as well as we should have, but goddammit, we learned.

And somewhere in all that craziness, all those late nights drinking beer and listening to records and arguing about music, we accidentally participated in a movement. A movement that would permanently change the face of the music industry forever.

Michael Azerrad’s landmark book _Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991_, documents the rise of American punk and indie rock during the 1980’s, a musical movement that burst into the mainstream in 1992 with Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. In its formative years, this movement, made up of a loose network of small record labels, innovative musicians, small press fanzines, and college and non-commercial radio stations, provided the breeding ground and the DIY ethic for a revolution in music that dominates the music industry to this day.  In the last four decades only the rise of hip-hop has had anything close to the same effect.

And KTRU was there. Rice students, using their own talents, their own sweat equity, helped make it happen. KTRU was invaluable in helping this musical culture flourish in Texas.

Somewhere out there, in the heads of a bunch of passionate music-minded middle schooler and high schooler and undergrad kids’ heads, is the next musical revolution. And KTRU can still be on the leading edge of this innovation and progress, but only if they are still around to do so.

My great fear is that if KTRU’s 91.7FM frequency and broadcasting tower are stolen out from under them, it will result in the eventual slow death of the station. For many reasons already well-documented elsewhere on this site, an Internet-only radio station simply does not have the influence and resources necessary to survive as a self-perpetuating ecosystem. The loss of the frequency will essentially gut the station’s programming. And it breaks my heart that my two brilliant, talented, music-loving teenagers, both of whom up until last week were considering Rice as a possible college destination, may not get to experience what I experienced.

Not at Rice, anyway. If they want what I had (and they do), and if Rice continues on this ill-advised course of action, they’ll have to go to Stanford, or MIT, or Berkeley, or Tulane, or Carnegie-Mellon. And I intend to encourage them to do so.

Ray Shea
Sid Richardson 1986/88

“KTRU was the driving force that would eventually propel me through six years and two college degrees. My best lifelong friends are all people I met at KTRU. And together we learned about music, about business, about media and promotions and organization and scheduling and budgeting. We learned how to deal with people, how to compromise and reach consensus.”

Read the full post here >

Working at KTRU was by far one of the most exciting parts of my latter two years as a Rice undergrad. I applied to be a DJ almost on a whim, and, not knowing much about ‘weird’ music, I was slightly surprised to be offered a slot. KTRU truly expanded my idea of what music programming can be; why not play a song with cats meowing, followed by local punk, followed by classic jazz, followed by Rajasthani wedding music…ad infinitum. In this era of Clear Channel and converging media, it is incredible that there is a terrestrial radio station playing Japanese avant-garde classical music and cicadas chirping, local singer-songwriters and French MCs, guitars from Chad and drums from Martel. One of KTRU’s most impressive facets is its lovingly-built collection of reviews for DJs to refer to– every single record or CD is annotated by a current or previous DJ. Through this system, DJs can experiment and educate by playing music they may not be familiar with. If KTRU becomes online-only, artists and labels will stop sending material to the station, and the impressive, ever-evolving library will become frozen in August 2010.

KTRU has also had a profound effect on my life as a musician (though perhaps that word should be in quotes). It was their Battle of the Bands that inspired two friends and I to finally pick up our instruments and make some music. Much to our surprise (and to the surprise of many listening, no doubt) we won the contest, and got to play KTRU’s outdoor show before hundreds of Houstonians, still one of the most exihilarating moments of my young life. We recorded a CD and it got played on KTRU. I am hard-pressed to think of another radio station that would have played our homespun, heartfelt, but thoroughly unpolished music, but that’s what KTRU does– endlessly supports the community around it. I had the chance to participate in the Battle of the Bands the year after that, too, and both years I was amazed by the diversity and passion expressed through the music other Rice students had to offer. A diminished KTRU would mean that these opportunities would be diminished.

KTRU gave me the ability to feel empowered through music both as a purveyor and a creator, and I know it’s done the same for countless other students. I live in Boston now– a city with a stronger cultural reputation than Houston– and there is nonetheless no radio station here that even comes close to the eclecticism of KTRU. Losing KTRU is a loss for students and the non-student DJs who contribute so much to the station, a stark loss for the people of Houston, and even a loss for society at large, where so few comparable institutions exist.

KTRU has always stood by Rice, so let’s show that Rice stands by KTRU. To KTRU be true.

Josh Levin, Will Rice College ’09
KTRU dj ’08-09

I am an alumnus of Rice and as a former KTRU staff member. I graduated from Rice in 1987 with two degrees, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. in Mathematical  Science.

KTRU is more than an economic asset. It is a part of Rice.

Steve Phillips, ’87

Random, if imperfect, memories of exhilaration from 1980-85 at KTRU:

Midnight, April Fools Day, 1984: For about an hour KTRU became Tru 92 and went “commercial,” aping the format of top-40 station KKBQ 93Q. We practically made up the whole thing as we went, including drafting copy for the bogus adverts.

Another April Fools moment: Jonathan Sadow feigning dyslexia and parodying his own long-winded sports reports.

Laurie Anderson dropping in, before her show at Hamman Hall, for an interview, causing the temperature and the lighting to get just a bit warmer.

Getting a little B & D from the S & M show during my Friday evening Calendar broadcast: Shawn (or was it Hope?) and Marilyn found some patch cables and started binding me to the chair with them.

Fall 1980: After two weeks off the air, KTRU got a boost from 340 to a screaming 650 watts, and President Norman Hackerman read the sign-on.

The Butthole Surfers interview, which I did not conduct: “We used to be the 7-Foot Worms That Generate Their Own Food. Before that, we were the 9-Foot Worms That Generate Their Own Food.”

Interviewing John Cage and Allen Ginsberg in the same week.

Interviewing Roky Erickson without really knowing how to interview Roky Erickson.

Interviewing John Cale without knowing what a nasty drunk he could be. Months later, after a shift at KPFT, I would find myself drinking with Cale’s friend & fellow Velvet Underground alumnus, Professor Sterling Morrison.

Interviewing Congressman Ron Paul and 1980 Libertarian presidential nominee Ed Clarke, as well as driving around on Election Night to get interviews with winners and losers.

The Judy’s playing the RMC Grand Hall.

The Dishes playing the RMC Grand Hall.

Producing a short-lived sketch comedy show “Buffoons for Non-Majors,” much of the material for which I later discovered was adapted from other comedy shows.

Experimental summer replacement show “MusicAztlan,” my first swing of the bat as program director.

Ray Shea: “You can say ‘suck’ on the air; you just can’t say ‘blow job’.”

The first “Treasure of the Sixties” broadcasts, discovering great rock & roll that KILT would have played only after my bedtime when I was a kid.

Reggae, women’s music, ’50s music, hardcore punk and a few other specialties got their own shows; “Chicken Skin Music” had a few years under its belt already.

Discovering what KTRU’s music meant to young gays & lesbians in Houston, and that many of those ’80s bands (especially the British bands) featured gay & lesbian musicians.

Using KTRU as home base for a summer electronics project, wherein some buddies and I built & programmed a drum machine consisting of a sequencer built from Radio Shack parts, a Korg MS-20 synthesizer, and a couple of reel-to-reel tape decks.

Theme sets that could have lasted hours but for having to work in a quota of playlist tracks.

The Eclectic playlist.

Celebrating the end of the calendar year by playing the 40 most overplayed tracks of the year, all of which would then be placed on the Overplayed list and thus off limits for a week.

Martha & the Muffins: Best Canadian band you’ve never heard of.

Hearing King Crimson’s “Discipline” and Peter Gabriel’s “Security” for the first time on those bitchin’ Klipsch speakers.

Playing New Age music before anybody called it that.

And that’s only about half of it.

David Collins

Lovett 1984

I attended Rice University from 2003-2007 and was a KTRU DJ for that entire time, barring O-week.  As many have already written in, I arrived at Rice a little shy – like many of my peers.  I have a pretty bad stutter, which normally prevents me from speaking in public.  Many of you know me and have heard me talk, so you know what I’m talking about.  During O-week, I saw posters around to join KTRU.  Radio has a very specific draw for new students – the mysterious “DJ Booth” that transports your voice, your music, your feelings out to a vast audience.  It’s really an incredible thing.  The internet is a great thing, but the radio is like magic.  I applied, interviewed, and lucked out.  I got a 4-7 am spot on Tuesday night – those first few nights in the DJ booth were nervewracking for me.  I knew how bad my stutter was, and it was worse when I got nervous.  Yet I played music I had never heard before, and at 4 in the morning I got calls from weirdos, other students, random Houstonians telling me “good job” for stuttering through my performance.  They admired my gumption to get on the air regardless. I spoke to other stutterers who offered advice, too.  Those first few morning shifts cemented my love of KTRU.  KTRU was where I went for friendship, company, and the quiet refuge of the ears of millions of Houstonians.

Many people have spoken about how KTRU has expanded their musical tastes.  This is true.  I never would have gone to a Polysics concert, and heard a tiny japanese man perform “my sharona” in a garage in a suburb of Houston while screaming into a vocoder.  But, in all honesty, the music was secondary.  A radio station – an FM radio station, not an internet station – has real responsibility.  There are FCC regulations to follow, you gotta follow some rules, bend others, and do so with the knowledge that your good, your bad, and your everything is being beamed into space at the speed of light.  I kept DJing, and I loved the friends I made and I loved how confident I felt at the DJ booth.  I loved coming on the air just to say “K-T-R-U Houston” every hour on the hour.  I became Sultan of Stick just to get involved, and wound up becoming Program Director and eventually Station Manager.  Being station manager of KTRU put me at the helm of a ship with over 100 crew members.  We had Will R as our astrolabe, a man whose dedication to college radio is unquestionable but who let us lead and make our own mistakes and successes, which I will forever thank him for.  But our crew made the ship.  Imagine how crazy it is for me, a 20-something year old student, to be the ostensible “Boss” of some of the DJs who have been at KTRU longer than I’ve been alive!  But that responsibility – to keep the station running, on the airwaves, to keep the DJs happy, to put on the best shows and the best music – is huge.  It feels huge.  And it feels huge because it is radio.  Real consequences.  Internet radio just doesn’t have the same responsibility, but dead air? God forbid.  I had some real lessons in leadership in that job.  But to think that the stammering gentle giant that had walked through the Sallyport could be where I was? I wouldn’t have believed you.

I have to thank Matt W for organizing the Outdoor show that year with Ratatat.  He did a lot of legwork, and we all did a lot of work on that show, but for me to stand in front of a massive crowd, next to one of my favorite bands, and blast their eardrums out will forever be etched in my memory as my crowning accomplishment (even though Matt and a lot of other people deserve way more credit) at Rice.  From my experience in the student leadership at KTRU I later got a job wherein my interviewer specifically cited my “previous management experience.”

What I’m trying to get at here is that KTRU made me who I am today, and that isn’t an exaggeration.  Without that experience, I’m not sure if I could speak in public.  But when I put those headphones on, and say those magic words “K-T-R-U Houston, 91.7 FM”…it’s f@#$#@^% awesome.  KTRU is so much my Rice experience.  I would never have believed that we could be sold up the creek like we have, and as a result I have suspended all future donations to the school, as many others have.  That really hurts me – I met my fiancee at Rice, I’m getting married at Rice, so many of my friends are at Rice.  I love that school but I love it because it promotes “Uncommon Wisdom.” But when that wisdom becomes common cynical bartering, I’m through. Even though I’m not in Houston at the moment, my dream is to return and get on the air again.  Save me a spot on that chair that says “NICE ASS KTRU”.

Love to you all,
Aaron Reese
Sid Rich class of 2007

I began listening to KTRU while a senior in high school, and became a DJ during freshman week the next year, a few days before matriculation.

That year I became assistant sports director at KTRU, which quickly led to becoming the first freshman sports editor of the Rice Thresher.

I also published Rice Radio Folio during my freshman year at Rice. It was a lesson in humility and teamwork taught to a former high school BMOC by a staff that begrudgingly accepted a loud-mouthed, arrogant freshman into the station.

I had a regular radio shift, Mondays 4-7, but I took on any shift that I could when someone needed a co-worker to fill in. On my usual shift I played mostly punk, new wave, and reggae, but I also covered jazz, classical, women’s music, and even chicken skin shifts.

My two fondest memories of being a KTRU DJ follow. One night I was covering a late Friday night shift, and playing lots of fast music, not going on mic except at the top of the hour, as required by the FCC. After going on mic at midnight, I started the next hour with music from the playlist, as required by station policy. It was slower than what I had been playing.

The phone rang. The guy on the other end was breathing heavily. It took him at least a minute to say, “Why … did … you … stop?” Eventually he explained there was a huge party at his house, and they were all dancing to the music I was playing. The endorphins were flying off the walls.

On May 11, 1981, I volunteered to cover the 10 pm to 1 am shift for a DJ who had a hot date. That day, Bob Marley died. I decided to break station policy, and at midnight, to play a full hour of Marley. The Music Director popped into the control room around 11 pm, and told me he was getting lots of phone calls asking for a tribute to Marley, maybe play two or three songs.

I told him, “Jim, the whole hour from midnight to one is going to be Marley.”

KTRU was the only radio station in Houston to recognize the passing of Bob Marley. Today, Marley is on juke boxes and karaoke lists in every bar. In 1981, only one station in Houston would play Bob Marley: 91.7 fm KTRU Rice Radio Houston.

Steven Bailey

WRC 83

KTRU 79-82

Thresher 80-82

I’ve donated to Rice regularly since I graduated in 2002, and I’m currently a RAVA admissions interviewer.  I loved my time at Rice and am quick to tell people what a great school it is.

It is because I love Rice that I am extremely disappointed by the sale of KTRU’s broadcast capabilities.  As a student at Rice and a Houston resident for two years after I graduated, I was a regular KTRU listener.  Although some of the music played on KTRU isn’t to my taste, much of what is played is really fantastic and completely inaccessible through other media outlets. I was always heartened that there was a radio station that had the freedom to play things that I (and others in Houston) would never have had access to otherwise. I was especially proud that KTRU was a Rice institution, and that students I knew in college and funded through my scholarship donations had the opportunity to be involved in such an amazing endeavor.

Rice attracts talented and energetic students and provides them with tools and experiences that shape the course of their lives.  I do not want it to become an institution focused only on producing graduates with sound job prospects, but also graduates with an interest and enthusiasm for community involvement, service, and the arts.  KTRU provided a rare opportunity to engage with the larger Houston community, and its relegation to the internet (which is only accessed by a select group of music listeners) will be a great loss to Rice students and Houstonians.

Thank you for your time,
Dana Rowan
Baker ’02

I am a Rice grad, biochemistry Jones ’80.  I was not a KTRU radio announcer, did not hold a job there or know anybody on staff at the radio station when I was there years ago.  I did listen to KTRU when I was an undergrad…to support the arts.  I enjoyed it to stay in touch with the Rice community, to hear about issues and to enjoy the music.  Supporting the arts and being involved in my community have always had great importance to me, which I attribute in part to my undergraduate education at Rice.    I have always been glad to have KTRU in the Houston community, as a means to communicate with the surrounding radio public audience about Rice.

This debate is not about the type of music which KTRU currently plays or the quality of their DJ announcers.  KTRU serves both the surrounding radio audience in the Houston area and the Rice community itself.  The impending sale of this priceless commodity is short-sighted in my opinion, and does not resonate with my idea of the Rice community.   I am very proud of my undergraduate education at Rice, and I am sickened by this decision.

Susan (Lopez) Mulligan MD

Jones ‘80

Dear Save KTRU,

My name is Judith Yunis (Jones College, 2006).  My memories of KTRU stretch back to when I was a little kid.  My dad has been a professor at Rice since 1987.  KTRU has been a part of our family since then.  My dad was never directly involved at KTRU and I wasn’t either when I attended Rice.  But when I think of home, of growing up, KTRU is often playing in the background.  KTRU was on when my dad was grilled steak on Sunday nights (usually the baseball game).  It was often on in the car when my mom picked me up from school.  When the student DJ’s came on, sounding so serious and independent and ironic I remember getting excited about attending Rice one day myself.

Please do not sell KTRU.  KTRU is Rice.  KTRU is a quintessential Rice institution.  It is quirky and smart and weird and interesting.  I am proud to be a Rice alum and I know my dad is proud to work for an institution that is almost always serious about maintaining its integrity and making meaningful contributions to the world.  Selling KTRU– particularly in the underhanded, secretive way negotiations have thus far been conducted– silences a voice of the students and of the Rice community.  Rice needs to consider whether shutting down KTRU– a medium for the Rice community and Houston at large to freely express and exchange ideas– is really worth $9.5 million.

Sincerely,

Judith Yunis

“As an internet-only broadcaster KTRU would be one of thousands of options and available only to those with constant access to a computer. New music producers with limited budgets would be unlikely to supply KTRU with access to their music for free because KTRU would lack a unique position the market.”

Read the full post here >

“Tears were shed by several speakers before the statue of William Marsh Rice at Sunday afternoon’s KTRU rally. Drawing several hundred supporters, the event featured the words of KTRU djs, Rice University professors and community organizers. The mix of speakers underlined the radio station’s diverse listenership, and shed light on the personal connections people of various backgrounds share with KTRU.”

Read the full article here >