35,000 WATTS: THE STORY OF COLLEGE RADIO (B+) - One of my more reliable memories is of my first week of college, at the University of Illinois-Chicago, in September 1981, and learning that the radio station was being shuttered. I had considered pursuing a radio gig at WUIC someday. That dream died quickly. I ended up in print journalism.
Like many people of my vintage, coming into adulthood in the 1980s, I was a fan of college radio. Another vivid memory jumps ahead a little over a decade. I'm driving to work at the Chicago Sun-Times, listening to the shaky signal from WNUR, Northwestern University's station at 89.3 FM, which sometimes seeped through from up north, surviving the skyscrapers. I'm hearing music that feels primeval, as if it were being transmitted while I was vibing in my mother's womb. I pull into the covered parking garage and find a spot, praying that the signal won't fade. I need to make it to the station break to find out the name of the artist. The signal cuts in and out and fades and swells. The DJ comes on. He identifies that block of music as being from the mysterious indie band Guided by Voices. The rest is history.
"35,000 Watts" (I add the comma gratis) is a valentine to the history of college radio, mostly its heyday back then. It was made by Michael Millard, who worked at KTXT at Texas Tech in Lubbock in the early '90s. He gathers some of his former colleagues, along with a bunch of alums from WUOG, in Athens, Ga. (U of G), which was ground zero for the defining modern era, the emergence of R.E.M., along with Pylon, Let's Active, Love Tractor and others circa 1981. (The B-52s had emerged from there a few years earlier.)
Like those and other college stations, Millard's documentary is low-budget and seat-of-the-pants. He cobbles together archival photos and snippets of songs that transport you back to the pre-internet dark ages, when you could curate your own music only by making cassette mixes and had to rely instead on dope-smoking 19-year-olds to hip you up to the now sounds. At that time, indie meant independent and alternative was truly the alternative.
Millard's DIY ethic fits the subject here. He gathers a decent collection of talking heads in addition to the DJ alums, including Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, and two R.E.M.-adjacent characters, Mitch Easter (their early producer and the frontman of Let's Active) and the band's lawyer/manager Bertis Downs. (The cassette of R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" is widely considered to be Ground Zero of modern college radio as we know it.)
The true stars are the former DJs, from a smattering of stations scattered across the country, including one diehard veteran still toiling away at KSPC (Claremont Colleges in California). The alums have some specific memories -- the smell of vinyl in the station's library, legendary stories of the infamous ratty couch that saw far too much activity.
Millard takes a detour to provide added context -- the origins of college radio going back into mid-20th century, including its role in covering sports. But it's that heyday which holds the most charm. Needles drop on the Pixies (repped here by Joey Santiago), Violent Femmes, Bratmobile, the rise of rap. It's a heady mix. We could go on and on ...
BONUS TRACKS
R.E.M. contemporaries Love Tractor could jangle with the best of them. Here is their self-titled 1982 album, kicked off by "Buy Me a Million Dollars":
Big-hair alert! It's Mitch Easter leading Let's Active, with Sara Romweber on drums, on their hit "Every Word Means No":
"35,000 Watts" celebrates the diversity of college radio and name checks this early rap entry, Sugarhill Gang's take on the surf standby "Apache (Jump On It)":
"Radio Free Europe":
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