music: none
I am usually about done putting down a Buffalo Dog and a Texas Ranger from Spike’s about this time every week. I am usually saying this phrase about this time every week: “It’s a little past ten-o’clock on a Tuesday night, and you are tuned into Live Live, the radio show that brings you all the best in live music every single week…” This is the first week in over two years that I’m not saying it. Live Live the radio program is no longer. While I have my Tuesday nights free again, I also am experiencing a large gaping hole in my life. Live Live has been a fixture almost as long as I’ve lived in Boston; this is the first Tuesday without it since January of 2002. I am sad.
Things wrapped up last week quite uneventfully. I came to the station and found the place empty and in various states of being moved to its new location on Brighton Ave. My co-host Andrew had said his goodbyes the week before and it was left to me to close things out for myself. I made a last minute decision to open things up with a live version of Pink Floyd’s The Show Must Go On and commenced to work my way through the motions one last time. I began a personal tradition when I was a camp counselor of playing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water” to open the final vseper of the session and subsequently chose to follow with that as a sort of invocation. Tim stopped by around 10:30 to pay his last respects (Live Live, after all, is half his creation) and went on-air for the first time since March of 2002. We played music. We talked a bit between some songs. Tim took off around 11:30 and left me to close out my little project. I was pretty choked up at the end of it all. I managed to squeak out some thanks, some final thoughts, and signed off around midnight leaving Michael Franti and Spearhead’s acoustic version of Yes I Will to close out Live Live’s tenure on the radio dial. After that faded out, I threw on the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a song I played very loudly once all my kids left at the end of each session and a song I now will only put on after I have finished something momentus. The complete playlists are posted on www.livelive.org, but that’s not the story that is to be told here Like so many concerts, the setlists tell you what happened, but not what it was like.
Live Live began as a social endeavour and an exercise in free speech. No, that’s not really true. Live Live actually began as a way for an unemployed and scraping David to support his music habit. I figured that if I were part of the media, then I would have access to media passes and wouldn’t have to pay to get into concerts. It worked fairly well, even better after I got a website up and running and printed off some letterhead. I also started receiving cds, about 2-4 new ones every week. It was a great way to familiarize myself with bands I wouldn’t know about otherwise, and to get such bands up, out, and into the homes and ears of Boston’s residents. Here, then, was the exercise in community. In helping the unsigned, independent, and local musicians get some airtime, I met some really interesting and colorful people. I value some of these people as good friends now. This, above all else made the project worthwhile.
The other aspect to Live Live that I really enjoyed was that in being broadcast on A-B Free it was an effort to open up the airwaves to underrepresented voices. I used the music industry as my playing field, but the principle applies (and is probably more important) in other of society’s venues. The FCC regulations that deal with who is and is not allowed to broadcast their voice using radio favors those with money and power. Radio, above all other media, is one that is readily available and sufficiently inexpensive to people from all parts of society. That is, radio has the best shot at levelling the playing field, and it is also one of the most regulated and corpoately controlled media in our society. Allston Brighton Free Radio’s fight, when seen from this perspective, is an enormously important one. It is David fighting against Goliath. It is the lone X-wing navigating the surface of the Death Star. It is struggling against all odds to make a scratch in the juggernaut media conglomerates that control the radio dial, and therefore control what sort of information is available to people.
The big problem is that Allston-Brighton Free Radio also was fighting itself. The station has an autoimmune disease that I would call selfishness and apathy. The biggest reason why I left the station is because I was no longer willing to fight against factions within the station, considering how little the station was impacting its surrounding community. Our broadcast was full of static, went in and out according to the weather, had big dead spots, stretched about a mile on a good day, and was located way, way, way up on the AM dial. In effect, nobody was listening. Andrew and I were talking to ourselves most weeks. The website, a separate medium of communication, made things more accessible and legitimate, and I came to realize that this had very little to do with any sort of radio broadcast that I may or may not be doing.
I think the final straw was that I realized I was not so invested in this so-called community that exists around live music as I once was. AJM is equally as fascinated by this community, but has chosen the academic approach as a way to sustain links to it. I chose the grassroots community organizer approach and burnt out on it. Starting to teach urban teenagers had a lot to do with it, I think. Since beginning my teaching, I have taken up a new cause that is much higher stakes: the fight to give poor urban (often minority) kids some power in this world. Celebrating the live music community, which is predominantly composed of middle-class (predominantly white) college-age students doesn’t seem as important, even though that is more or less where I socially locate myself.
So today, in many ways, is The Day The Music Died for me. The circle is broken. Live Live was never meant to be something permanent, nor was it meant to be the culminating role in music. I am turning now back to my guitar and drum kit, thinking more about creating my own music than anything else. And that gets me excited. Live Live is in the process of shifting and morphing into something different and new, still with ties to the music community, but I am no longer its lone captian, forging ahead just to see if I can, working with a group that hurts itself more than it progresses, pitching my voice into the continual electromagnetic bombardment. I stopped it while it was still fun; I accomplished everything I set out to do and then some. I can walk away, then, knowing that my work, in this venue at least, is done.
music: Aesop Rock- Float
There was an Allston-Brighton Free Radio meeting last night. Much was confirmed, in my mind at least. Time to move on. Live Live’s last show will be April 27th.
Much else to talk about but not now. It’s almost 65 degrees for the first time this year, and on top of that, a Friday. I’m out.
music: STS9- Live at Home
I attended a general meeting of Allston-Brighton Free Radio this evening. My first since last June. There were about 15 people present. Mostly the same faces. Same old story, athough this time the well has run dry and we put the issue of closing down for good on the table. Officially, present members voted to keep the station going after our lease runs out on May 1. When we turned to a conversation of how to ensure this, however, things fell apart. The short story is that we have been running a $400 deficit every month since the Allston Curmudgeon, founder of ABFree, handed the station over to us and took his leave, and our savings will be more than depleted after the bills are paid for April. The long story can be read in every painful detail here.
I have a lot to say on the issue as I sit here contemplating whether or not to put a May 1st cap on Live Live regardless of what happens to the station. If ABFree does survive, it will be at subsistence level, scraping by every month, barely keeping its head above water. I’m not interested in that sort of existence or that sort of pressure. Moreover, I’m no longer willing to put effort into the executive board there. And beyond that, Live Live is not accomplishing its intended goals in the current format on ABFree. There is not time nor resources available for it to do so. That, and I’m fairly sure that nobody listens.
This is exasperating. I’m tired. I have a lot to say on the issue, but not now. The following was a post I made to the members of the executive board ten days ago. Much, if not all, of it still holds.
breaking radio silence (as it were)…zoom out for a minute. humor me. i’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of doing a show, and by extrapolation, having a station. since i started grad school i’ve had less than no time for much else, and as you know my involvement with things diminished to me going into the station 2 hours a week and spinning cds. occasional guests, fine, but on the whole it was me, my cohost, some microphones, and a cd player. Not one phone call from anyone not on the board in all this time, and even those phone calls were to point out some technical problem. So I hit that point where I could still say that i had a radio show, but the entire purpose of doing it was lost.
what purpose? some are outlined in the charter. others are outlined in the music dept. stuff i wrote (none save steve and patrick clement have bothered reading that though, i think). that the station had the potential to be a powerful tool for change and action, a voice for community is still true, technically, but as of late i’ve called into question just how realistic fulfilling that mission will be. 21 active members. 14-18 of these pay their dues and do their show once a week and that’s it. from where i stand, this business of 21 of us having a radio show has become a highly individual and selfish enterprise. i’ll speak for myself: i do it now because it gets me off, because it is fun, because sometimes i get offered tickets to concerts. i don’t do it because i think people are listening, because the reality is that given our technological and legal constraints, virtually nobody is listening. this is not any sort of purpose worth sustaining. from this perspective, it is very hard to justify putting all this time, money, and effort into keeping the station going.
do i believe that abfree stands for something important? absolutely. do i acknowledge the potential that the station has for significance as far as alternative and progressive media? absolutely. do i think that this group of people, the “members” of abfree, are at any sort of place where this can be realized? absolutely not. as things stand now, this push to save the station, we are setting ourselves up to at best keep our heads just above water. and that we would accomplish even that is highly suspect. i doubt that we would be able to actually do anything with the station besides say it exists if we were to keep it going on a subsistence level. it would be a different story if we had good participation from a critical mass of station members but that is not the case and unless something about leadership and management changes that won’t be the case. member participation is virtually nonexistent-even if we convince people to get active to avert the immediate crisis in may we can more or less can count on them crawling back into the woodwork some time in july or august and the same handful of people will be left to deal with the nitty gritty. ask yourselves: are you ready to work very, very hard to keep the station going hand-to-mouth style? if you handful are willing to do this on the station’s behalf, then i say go forth and thank you emphatically. take that risk. but know that it’s only going to get harder once the savings run out for real.
moving to the allston mall is fraught with problems and i don’t see it as a viable solution. carting all that equipment back and forth will assuredly result in technical problems, and who among us is qualified to fix them? do we really think we can take it all down and set it all up again exactly how it was? or even close? who among our tech consultants can we really depend on? where will the antenna go? the lack of technical know-how among this group scares me, and amazes me that we’ve managed to stumble along this far without learning about transistors and capacitors. (took how long just to get the internet up?) never mind the issue of not being able to trust the landlord. we, being “part 15,” are not really in a position where we can not trust a landlord to some point. plus, my understanding is that we would be going into it with a tarnished relationship from the RFA days. yes, moving would mean less money for rent, but the current location affords us certain comforts and securities that i think we take for granted. my gut feeling is that moving to the allston mall would ease the burden of month-to-month survival if that is our goal. but to even reach the point where we are worried about month-to-month survival indicates to me that any real goal i’ve had for the station isn’t really possible anyway.
before finger-wagging begins, let me cast the first stone against myself. i’ve done nothing in terms of helping out since june. i know this. and sorry, i don’t plan on starting now. the station’s organization as it stands is not where i’m comfortable or enthusiastic getting back on board. the charter is as good as toilet paper. my impression is that djs don’t really care about the station just as long as they can keep doing their show. and i’m not going to say anything about the station as a social endeavour.
to be constructive for a minute: one suggestion i’ve made in the past is to charge by person instead of by show. that way we’d be getting double (or triple) the money from shows with more than one host. i’ll offer that up again. the idea of charging by time isn’t half bad either; i’d like to see it developed a little more before it is put into action, if at all. the last suggestion i’ll make is the one i made last time i posted here, late july of last year. it went something like (exactly like) this:
parting shot: the nail in the coffin will be your ability to organize and
motivate the human beings at the station. you can work until 3AM as many
nights as you like on graphic layout, computer troubleshooting,
underwriting, and whatever else, but if other people are not in on making
it happen, it will all be for nothing. make it a priority. apparently
people have already been leaving, reasons being that “it’s a thankless
job.” the kiss of death if ever there was one. recruit, empower and
motivate station members. everything else will follow.possibly too late for this, in the eleventh hour, but i think it is still the x-factor that will make the difference should push come to shove. and push is coming to shove.
as i’ve said before: if show dues increase, live live is out. that is just not a viable long-term solution to anything. it might buy the station a couple more months, but if we are thinking on that scale, who cares if we end in may or july? only about 10 people care, and those are the ones paying the increased dues. will dues increase until those 10 remaining are paying $100/month? additionally, if we move to the allston mall, live live is most likely out. so things aren’t looking too good. i’m saddened by it, but that’s where i see the situation at this point.
to those of you still set on saving the station, consider your purposes for keeping the station going. consider the long-term viability of such a project and what it will take from you to see that it happens. consider your goals for participating in this station in the first place, and consider whether or not abfree hand-to-mouth will be able to accomplish those goals. i pretty much have formed my answers. part of me hopes you all have come up with something different, but that same part of me thinks that if you have, you are lying to yourself.
somberly,
david
So that’s where things are. Not looking good. Not sitting pretty. The meeting tonight reminded me that ABFree as an entity and idea is something worthy of continuation, but given our current involvement and staffing, I have not a single problem walking away. Sadly.
music: Charles Mingus- Mingus Plays Piano
This past Tuesday was Live Live’s 100th radio show. Despite my incredibly busy and demanding schedule, I was determined to make something of the evening that was a little more than me and Andrew sitting around the studios playing our cds. I sent out an email invitation to everyone who had been on Live Live at one point or another, asking them to stop by the station for out 100th show. My expectations were very low; I really didn’t think that anyone would make it out. I got a call from Pete Pidgeon earlier in the week. Excellent. There would be at least one. I convinced M. to stop by, promising free beer. Two. It would be something more than normal, but by no means a blowout.
Maybe it was because my expectations were so low that I was so surprised when Ryan Montbleau and Colin from hi8us also dropped in on the show. Completely unexpected, completely unannounced, but completely welcome. It was great reinforcement for me. It was very affirming that I haven’t been blowing hot air about the live music community this and that for all these months, that this community that exists around music does exist and consists of some good people. And talented. It’s cool to see some of these folks, past guests and Live Live alumni, really getting places in their musical careers. Hi8us is about to embark on a national tour down the coast; Ryan sells out Harper’s on Saturday nights. It would be very easy for these folks to forget about a small radio show on a rinky-dink community radio station in Allston, but they didn’t. They showed up, and turned our 100th show into a modest celebration. If you build it, they will come.
I can’t say that the night made for good radio. I can’t say that things weren’t chaotic. But I can say that the night exceeded my every expectation. That it was a radio show was fine, that it had to do with music is a cool bonus, but that it brought people together was excellent. Again I am reminded that it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s about the people you meet. And again I am amazed at what I have created with this little radio show, what it has become, what it represents, and most of all, what it does for people other than myself. With the small congregation in our humble studios at 451 Cambridge Street, I can safely say that Live Live has accomplished everything I have intended. 100 shows is a milestone, but perhaps a more significant marker of success is the fact that it brings people together around such a wonderful thing as live music. For that, I can’t say enough.
music: Geoff Scott’s Altitude Music- 1/21/03
I’m proud to say that Live Live celebrated its second anniversary tonight.
(It’s pronounced “Liv Live,” by the way. Get it straight.)
music: “Up North” - The Northwoods Recording Sessions NYE 2004
(Posts are becoming more sparse. Must be some meta-awareness that people are actually paying attention…)
It was about two years ago a that tmo and I started making noises about doing a radio show. Talking hypothetically, of cousre, as tmo thrives in the realm of ideas. “We talk about music so much,” says he, “we should find a way to lend it some legitimacy.” The lightbulb then goes off that if I do have a radio show to call my own, I would then become a member of the fabled “media” and be able to reap the benefits that a member of the media enjoys, including free promotional cds and media passes to concerts. This was, of course, most appealing to me, being unemployed and having a serious music habit that needed feeding.
Two years later, steps have been taken. The radio show has become a staple in the weekly schedule. We are about to celebrate Live Live’s second anniversary at the end of the month, and our 100th show some time in February. And dozens of concerts and hundreds of cds later, I feel that my music habit has a certain degree of legitmacy.
There was a week last year where I ended up on the Yonder Mountain String Band and Sound Tribe Sector 9 tour buses within the span of one week. That was an achievement. I interviewed Michael Franti after he got offstage with Trey Anastasio. That was an achievement. But I think that legitimacy has reached its peak only now, even with the decreased amounts of time I have had to dedicate to the show. I found out this week that I will be the guest speaker in a course at the University of Colorado-Boulder. JOUR4871: Doing Media Research on the Music Industry. February 19th, 12:30pm. I’ll be talking about doing interviews.
All courtesy of the quick thinking of my colleague AJM, who is TA‘ing the course. He can’t believe he’s getting away with this. And at the same time, he’s really digging this music thing. A perfect symbiosis, I think. A resume-builder, he says. Legitimacy, I say. I’ll say more on the 19th of February in Boulder.
But music is not something to talk about and study exclusively. As the guest speaker, it is my role to do something, and the class’s role to analyze it. Fine. but that is not enough. This is not a spectator sport. The steps I’ve taken with music have been pointing towards production rather than consumption, authentic work rather than recycled reproductions. I started off consuming music like the majority of our lemming society, then moved towards a more intellecutal relationship with it. I played other people’s music at campfires during the summer and at scattered open mics throughout college. It was production, but not original production. With Live Live, I began producing something original, but it was still a step removed from the product itself. And as of this New Year’s vacation, I began to work through some original music with some friends. I’m listening to it now.
I spent a good chunk of time this weekend sifting through the Northwoods Recording Sessions and have distilled the best of our moments to fit on one CD, with room for some other goodies I’ve been working on over the past month or two. There are covers included, but there are also moments of pure creation. It is the first time I can point to original work and claim it as my own, or at least partially my own. And already I’m unsatisfied. There is more to do, a degree of quality to attain, places to go with this work. I need to continue to develop my own voice and style. I’m still not as fluent in the language as I would like to be, nor are my hands able to keep up with my head, but there are moments. There definitely are moments. It seems that making music captures the perfect balance of Love and Work, Freud’s two criteria for mental health.
I remember telling myself some time in high school that while music was fun for me, I never would want to pursue it in earnest. I think it was partially because I was scared to actually put something original out there for people to potentially reject. I wasn’t sure if I had the talent, if I had anything that other people would want to listen to. I still don’t know for sure. But the process of making this music and now having a very concrete resultant product was exhilirating. And now I have an 80-minute cd to show for it.
Perhaps i’ll indulge and give “Up North” some airplay on Tuesday.. Legitimacy.
All this in the middle of a torrent of demands from graduate school. I still have one monster of a Final hanging over my head, and there’s not enough time or relevance to teaching to be interested in it. Plus, my head is spinning with new song ideas. But all things considered, things are in relative balance. Love and work have found harmony. The music flows, and I feel good.
music: MMW 11/6/96, Cleveland, OH
It’s Tuesday Night (or as they say at Murph’s in the wee hours: TUESDAY NIGHT!!!) and that means I’m getting ready for Live Live and lookiing forward to a night with Jason, Geoff, and the Altitude Gang afterwards. It’s been like this close to two years; Tuesday night is my big night out during the week. Goes to show how much I get out these days.
Since I started grad school, my ivolvement in all things Live Live, and as an extention the greater Boston music scene, has been quite limited. I think that part of it is grad school and the time that it takes up, but I think that it’s also a function of me not being as interested in the music scene as I once was when I first moved here. I see this stemming from a couple sources. The first is that I just burned out on going to shows, and going to shows by myself. I used to do about 3 shows a week because I could, because I was getting in free on Live Live credentials, because I felt like an insider. The second is that I think I found what I was really looking for from the little Live Live project: a community. A social outlet. To this end, Live Live was extraordinarily successful. I can credit my radio show with being the catalyst in meeting a plentitude of quality individuals, many of whom I value as friends and whose company I enjoy regardless of if they play an instrument, regardless of if I’ve interviewed them. Finally, I realized that this fabled “Live Music Community” I was so intent on serving is a community generally composed of white upper-middle class college kids. This isn’t a bad thing by any means (myself being easily lumped into this savory demographic), but after starting up again with urban education in June, I’m just not as concerned about this community as I am about the lower-class minorities in the city. Sure, everyone has their problems and issues, but if one were to compare apples to oranges, one would conclude that urban education is a field in need of much more attention and effort.
That all being said, I’m about to head on out to the A-B Free studios for my two hours on-air as I’ve done almost every Tuesday since January, 2002. I thought about dropping the whole business, but as evidenced by the fact that I have not, I still am attached to Live Live to some extent. It’s a nice card to be able to play in certain circles. It’s a really cool answer to “So, what do you do?” It’s two hours every week that I can listen to music and not worry about anything else. It’s the reason why I am sent free cds every week and offered guestlist privileges to concerts. Not bad for $35/month DJ dues.
Live Live is no longer the well-oiled machine it once was. The website has been down more than it hasn’t recently, and I really haven’t done much about it (by way of nagging tmo). One of my favorite bands is playing Lupo’s on Thursday, and I didn’t even attempt a guestlist or interview situation. I’m not even going, although the my plans for Thursday night might be just as interesting in a different sort of way. I haven’t written a review since June. I haven’t solicited an interview since the summer either. Still, it’s nice to reserve the right to call on credentials to score media passes. It’s nice to help out up-and-coming bands who need the media exposure. It’s fun to romp around on tour buses. It’s cool to say, “yeah, I interviewed him. cool guy.” It’s nice to be a producer of content instead of solely a consumer. It’s nice to fight the fight against media conglomerates like ClearChannel in my own little way. But even if none of that were true, it’s enough to know that every Tuesday night I have a guaranteed two-hour window of uninterrupted music listening in a little garden level studio in Allston. As with any habit, Live Live is a hard one to give up.
music: Grateful Dead- Dick’s Picks 14
Breathe deep…in and out…school’s out for the summer.
I handed my last paper in yesterday, submitted my kids final grades, and save one program evaluation, everything is done. Thank goodness; I was beginning to (??) burn out. This morning I opted to sleep in and convalesce instead of going to my end-of-summer BUDA” tournament. Which is fine, playing four games of frisbee in this grossly humid weather would be a sure recipe for heat exhaustion. Especially considering my lack of physical exertion in the last week or two. Such is the way of things when papers are due, the bike’s in the shop, and ultimate games altrenate between getting rained out and me being too busy to play in them.
But there’s still much to do. There’s a list of errands that I should get into before too much time ticks away. The car needs new tires, I need to change banks, I should go to health services about migraines and bloody noses. Yadda Yadda. But the real work is to prepare myself for Berkfest next weekend.
I got word about a week ago that as a representative of Live Live, I was in fact going to receive press credentials to the festival. Excellent. But because of that pesky thing called grad school Live Live is in a sorry state of neglect and disrepair. Uh oh. So this week, I have some time to throw into fixing up that delapidated website, getting flyers together that can line up on both sides evenly, prepping my interview questions, etc etc. To be perfectly honest, I’m not as excited about the music itself as I am about the new role I’m finding myself in this year. The media, sure, but also I’ve navigated myself into a position of relative influence.
This couples with a proposal that C. from Gamelan shot to me last week: SafeVibes. What would I like to contribute to it? Woudl I like to run a session at Berkfest?
Would I? Do hippies have dreads?
So now, potentially, I have about an hour’s worth of time during Berkfest to facilitate/lead/run a sesison on SafeVibes. On building a positive community around the live music experience. And with all my energy and motivation to pull something like this off, what it all is boiling down to is my ability to make lesson plans using limited resources. Something I’ve had some practice in this summer.
Skills I’ve been learning as a student teacher (hardly an oxymoron, by the way) are now generalizing and applying across contexts. The caveat that all teaching is not done in the classroom has never been more true. My introduction to teaching took place among the woodlands and the rolling hillsides of Wisconsin, after all. No reason why some teaching and learning can’t take place at a big music festival.
The questions then are: what is the issue surrounding building a positive community at these festivals that is in need of the most attention, and how to execute a lesson on it in one hour? I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of this, just someone with a vested interest in the topic who has done some thinking about it. And now someone with some formal teaching experience. Although the general demographic of festivals like this (18-30 white middle class) is hardly the population of focus in an urban education program, many of the lessons and techniques are wholly applicable. My tendency is to get way too academic with the whole thing, and I really have to be careful of that should I lead the SafeVibes session. But other than the one formal session, this is a chance to “mobilize the troops,” gather some willing volunteers with some motivation and energy, and do something positive for a bunch of people who are looking for a cerrtain kind of experience. Creating a safe space for experimentation. Creating a coalition of concertgoers, concert organizers, musicians, and other people dedicated to making things as positive as they can be.
And more than that; because I’m in contatct with some of the people at Gamelan, I can honestly and truly implement some ideas for the festival, especially stuff concerning other-than-music activities. Creating a distinct festival culture. This all has a lot of potential, and given enough time and energy, it could turn out to be very positive. Now (as Berkfest is one week away and I have very little energy left), that time and energy will be the issue.
Unlike Live Live, should I decide to dive into this project, it will by definition and necessity include other people in its decision making process. This is absolutely about the community. Like Live Live, however, it appears that if I want it to happen I will have to be the driving force behind it. I have about a week to get something together for Berkfest. I’m tired, I’m a little sick, I’m a little short on ideas, and for the most part, I’m flying solo with something to prove. We shall see what comes of it soon enough.
music: STS9- 12/31/02
I’m determined to get into bed before midnight tonight. I’m on pace for 11:30, which is pretty exciting. 3 straight nights of 6 hours of sleep on this schedule is bound to wreck me quickly.
In Gaiman’s graphic epic The Sandman, one of the main lessons is that you must know when to heed your responsibilities, and you must know when to walk away. In the latter half of the series, it becomes apparent that clinging to one’s duties might result in personal disaster. It was Dream’s hubris. It was what destroyed him. His younger brother allowed himself to jump through the escape hatch. Lesson being: You can always walk away. There is always an escape hatch. Sometimes doing exactly this is what will save you.
Here I am faced with quite the dilemma: my role at Allston-Brighton Free Radio has become little more than a pain in the ass and a source of anxiety. The leadership is about to self-destruct, generally from poor people organizing from the highest ranks. My thoughts and recommendations are more often than not discounted, or left to gather dust. The station is at the point where progress means slowing the rate at which we lose money. It is a sinking ship, and has been for some time. I think that I have hung on too long as it is.
On top of that, ABFree is at its core a social endeavour, an exploration of community. And in those terms, it is a collosal disappointment.
There has been good, but all the good has been from Live Live, not the station as a whole. I like Live Live. On a selfish level, I like having two hours a week to play music. I like getting free tickets to concerts and free cds. I like interviewing so many interesting and talented people. But even within Live Live, is it accomplishing its primary goal? The building of a community tied together by live music? Doubtful. Maybe I’m so close to it that I can’t see it. But even so, ABFree isn’t giving Live Live the support it now needs. It just can’t. I think of it as a very self-serving hobbly more and more these days.
I don’t have time for bullshit and wasteful activities now that I’m putting the vast majority of my waking hours into grad school. With such budgeted time, it’s become apparent to me what is worthwhile and what is not. I’m beginning to think long and hard about whether continuing to have anything to do with ABFree, even continuing to do Live Live, is a worthwhile activity and good use of my time.
If there were more people active with Live Live, things would change a bit. But as it is, there are a few folks who dabble with the fringes of what it’s all about. I’m thankful for what they do, but it’s not enough to keep up the momentum that Live Live can sustain. In many ways, it’s just me, and as a social endeavour, it’s just not worth it. Again, I have to ask myself what else is positive about Live Live, whether it it’s worth it to continue.
Or to simplify, a lesson from camp: if you end it while it’s fun, you’ll always remember it as good. I know that there is a very short time limit that is placed on ABFree right now. I know that I’m not motivated to prolong its life. At this point, I’m saying: “just take the thing out back and shoot it, put it out of its misery.” My experience with ABFree (and perhaps Live Live too) has past its peak. I have one more pending obligation in Berkfest this August, and once that’s done I might think it wholly appropriate to hang up the headphones.
You can always walk away. The escape chute is always open. All you have to do is turn tail and run. It’s a liberating realization, but is it a good way to go about living your life? I have no answers currently. But the gears are definitely turning, and from here, for better or worse, it seems that the conclusion is inevitable.
music: The Grateful Dead- Reckoning
There are only so many hours in the day, and despite one’s best intentions, hopes, and wishes, one can only do so much.
How, then, to prioritize? An easy way is to decide which of your projects is the most important, which is the most fun, which needs the most help. Even using only these three measures, it wouldn’t be that simple. But there is not really a good way to quantify thinking related to this sort of decision making. There are many factors, all with ebb and flow independent of the others. It’s a complicated business, deciding where to direct one’s time, talent, and effort.
ABFree had a benefit concert tonight at O’Brien’s. A punk show, organized and booked by Patrick. He’s thrown in the towel, has had it with the station and its organization, most of all the executive board. Since it was a punk show, and I really couldn’t give a damn about punk, the event itself was of no interest to me. The crowd was a nice size; i’m sure the station made some money. Which is nice, but it’s not going to solve the chronic problems that this group of people is facing.
People want to look at money. It’s not money, and it is. Sure, the station needs to be financially viable. We recently raised dues again. Really a wonderful policy, especially when we aren’t collecting 100% from everybody. Projections place our time somewhere in between 3 and 5 months before we go into the red and have to shut down. So yes, money is an issue, and it’s not. It’s a symptom of the greater issue, which is the lack of community within the station. In all fairness and honesty, the station is being run by a bunch of hacks and idiots. I’m exasperated, just short of doing what Pat did and getting the hell out of there. Before, when Steve was at the helm, I had a lot more energy to put towards furthering the station. I cared a lot more, was willing to fight the good fight. Now that the new management is in place, a management I respect and trust less and less every day, my willingness to pitch in and put lots of energy and time into the station is quckly waning. It wasn’t that the issues have changed. It isn’t that our situation is less desperate (more desperate, if anything). It’s pretty much boiled down to the fact that I really don’t care to spend a great deal of time with a group of people who can’t get it together, and who (on the whole) I don’t care to associate with socially. And never mind the rest of the station, who can’t make it to mandatory meetings and have little interest in participating in the decision making that will shape this organization’s future. The ABFree community is past failing; it has been a failure. The leadership has succeeded in dividing more than uniting. Things fall apart.
And yes, I count myself among the board’s ranks. I am fully aware that I have not done as much as I could. It started out as me delegating and stepping back, trying to gague how much other people would do and take on. It turned out to be not much at all, which made want to contribute less and less. I’m now at the point where it’s all selfish: the only reason I’d want to work towards the continued viability of ABFree is that Live Live is on it. And even that, my own radio show, something into which I’ve been investing disproportionate time, is losing its appeal.
This all started out as a social endeavour, a way to connect with a community. And since it’s started, it has led me across the paths of some very positive people who I now value as my friends. And moreover, Live Live has served bands that have used it very well. In that light, perhaps it has served its purpose. If I am the only one putting forth effort on a regular basis, it really is tough to justify working at it. Live Live is currently in a stasis of sorts, not really being pushed to grow, and not degrading into history either. It’s a steady state of neither entropy or development, half a refuge from the rest of my world and half a nusiance. And its association with ABFree doesn’t help much…
Lots of thoughts I’ve been having about ABFree and my role there have been clarified and elucidated by going to the benefit tonight. I think it’s time to shop Live Live around and see if it can be picked up by a larger noncommercial station. ABFree as an ideal is still very imporant to me, but in practical application, ABFree is doing nothing but pissing me off.
I probably have grad school to thank for all this. Besides constricting my free time to next to nothing, it also has offered an alternative community rallied around a different (but no less important) cause. Psychologically, it serves the same need, and socially, it is much more inspiring, stimulating, and gratifying.
I told myself that ABFree, like Chowdahaus, was practice. An outlet. In that, it has more than served its purpose. Of course it isn’t over yet Of course I’m still the Music Director, but in many ways, in my own head, it died a while ago.
music: Geoff Scott’s Altitude Music- 5/28/02
We had a “mandatory” all-station meeting tonight for ABFree. What a joke.
The meeting was called primarily to break the news of the dues increase to the rest of the station, and to present the revised version of the ABFree Charter I have been advocating for so vehemently. The dues increase was presented, and the charter was neither revised or printed out. So once again nobody could sign off on the thing. It mattered not; besides members of the board there were only about 10 station members present. and they were of the dues-paying variety. The station DJs that are not paying up were not in attendance. Hardly surprising.
F., our General Manager, presented his ideas as if they had unanimous support from the Executive Board, which is certainly not the case. The dynamics of the Exec Board are interesting, to say the least, but they certainly do not yield a unanimous opinion. Not even close. For the most part, the Board generally excels at one thing: wasting my time. By my eye, every meeting we’ve had is horribly inefficient and often counter-productive. Much more gets solved in the email than in person. For the most part. It’s not that everyone has different ideas that causes the problems. This should be a stregth. Instead, it is that there is no cohesion between different members of the board, no common thread that places everyone on the same page, or even the same trajectory. We are plagued with miscommunications, misunderstandings, misinterperetaions, incorrect assumptions, and a distinct lack of effective coordination. As a result, there is a lot of bickering, tangential digressions, and aimless argument. I’m growing weary of it all very quickly.
It was a terrible meeting. I’m bitter.
Does this happen with any group of people? I would say from prior experience that the answer is NO. Perhaps I’ve been far too lucky in that the people with whom I have surrounded myself previously are highly intelligent and competent. Perhaps I have been far too fortunate in that the people I have worked with I respected a great deal, and not just because of their position, title, or rank. Maybe the group that shows up for ABFree meetings is much more representative of the general population than the groups in which I’ve been involved. I am mindboggled that as a group of people setting out to accomplish a common goal, we are clearly not all in agreement about the most basic of concepts and as a result have far too much trouble moving past the most rudimentary decisions. Despite the Charter, we are far from being on the same page. And the Charter remains unrevised, unsigned, and unagreed upon.
The issue, for the most part, seems to be a coordination of our efforts. The secondary issue seems to be stationwide motivation towards a common goal. Both these stem from ineffective leadership. While F. has the work ethic and good intentions, I do not believe in his leadership ability. He has a shit job, to be sure, and as it is set up such that there are many responsibilities and not a lot of freedom. Which is, invariably, a recipe for disaster. That is why I didn’t take it on when Steve decided to hand the station over to us. But F. is taking on all the responsibilities of his post as best he can, which is good. Someone’s gotta do it. He is sufficienty organized and dedicated, but the intangible x-factor of leadership just isn’t there. And since I really haven’t put myself in a situation where it was absent, I never realized how incredibly important it is.
The worst symptom of the Board’s shortcomings is a lack of motivation by the station body as a whole. The same eight or nine people are doing everything, which calls into question whether the endeavour is worth it. I’m beginning to think that it isn’t, that my time is better spent elsewhere. However, I haven’t been putting forth my all in recent weeks. Half out of other obligations (which will only increase in their demand), half out of curiosity to see what might happen if I step down with my involvement. The results are as I feared: the same seven or eight people try to take it all on, while the rest of the station tells us what they think should happen when we ask them.
Ask not what your country can do for you…
My involvement in the community of ABFree, above all, has been an eye-opener. Things have not been run well. The ship is sinking, at an alarming rate actually. Dues have been increased. This will only prolong the inevitable sinking of the ship. If (when) ABFree goes down, I will be sad. It is an organization that stands for something infinitely important in this age of Clear Channel and RIAA domination of the media. It is (still, I suppose) an opportunity for the street-level movement to prove that it can work, it can thrive in the face of the tyrannical machine of corporate America, and it’s for these reasons that I still have a shred of hope. It is more for the idea of ABFree than the actual incarnation of the station that I work towards supporting.
I have benefitted from being involved with ABFree in other ways. Live Live has flourished. Honestly, it has succeeded beyond my greatest expectations. It would not be possible without ABfree, so for that I give thanks and for that everything is very much worth it. But I’m entering a phase where free time is being cut down drastically and I won’t have much extra to put towards Live Live. The others involved don’t really act out of their own initiative, and as such Live Live might be mothballed for a little bit. It has some degree of momentum, but lack of attention is slowing it down. Again, the same question: in the end, is it worth pursuing this project if I am the one doing the vast majority of the work? This was all initiated as a social endeavour, after all.
I have to ask myself sometimes: Is it worth fighting for a very small “part-15” station broadcasting on the expanded AM band, whose webcast doesn’t work most of the time and whose listenership is practically 0? It certainly is not the social stimulation keeping me at ABFree. (There are some people I genuinely like, but that has little to do with the station.) Wouldn’t it be better for Live Live, which is my personal and original vision, to move elsewhere? Becoming a student has opened a door previously unavailable; now that I will be an enrolled student at Harvard, it might be time to shop Live Live to WHRB..
This is a sticky predicament, and as I think about it, I’m only getting more frustrated. Know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. Only a fool would stay on a sinking ship. I guess the question becomes how foolish I am going to let myself be, and for how long.