Dr. J Gonzo Forges On

(continued from page 5)

20% of music played on cam-
pus stations should come
from sub categories other
than “Pop, Rock and Dance”,
with at least another 5%
derived from the area of
Traditional and Special
Interest Music.

Needless to say, (aww but
hell why not ??7?) long before
EARS was ever conceived,
many had already expressed
concern over the CRTC’s
music categories and their
definitions. In particular, what
has commonly been called
into question is the extent to
which the limitation on music
from Subcategory 21 (Pop,
Rock, and Dance) truly helps
to ensure campus stations
achieve a wide range of musi-
cal diversity. The fact is some
of this music actually does
add a lot to the campus
broadcasting system, thereby
fulfilling the spirit of its gener-
al mandate.

From Top 40 “HITS” to music
in genres not often played (if
in fact ever) by our more
commonly commercial sta-
tions, Subcategory 21
encompasses a variety of
expression. As enough of it
offers a refreshing alternative
to most of the material more
often heard elsewhere, strict-
ly limiting the amount of
music from Subcategory 21 is
in itself hardly an effective
means of ensuring that cam-
pus stations will in the end
manage to serve up a healthy
mix of genuine cultural diver-
sity. Perhaps even the best
label for a lot of this kind of
material would be your good
ol’ standard crossover.

So, where then does this
leave us 7??? Well, unlike the
more popular heavy rotation
“HITS” format found on most
commercial stations, an outfit
like EARS is expected not to
repeat any non Canadian
musical selection more than
10 times ina
broadcast week. According
to CRTC. guidelines, the level
of weekly “HITS” should in
fact not exceed 10 or well
now, who's
actually counting 7??? 15% of
all musical selections. While
once again this all seems

quite reasonable, how “HITS”
are actually

defined depends on who you
talk to. While on the one
hand there are some station
members who understand
this to apply only

to those tunes which have
been Top 40 since 1980, oth-
ers prefer a much broader
interpretation, thereby
severely restricting

the selection of our on-air
material .

Here, “HITS” are more
essentially construed as any-
thing which has ever been
even the slightest bit popular.
Reducto ad
Absurdum, this would stand
to effectively silence not only
the Beatles, Bob Dylan,
Chuck Berry, and now likely
most of the
Tragically Hip, but of course (
just to be fair ) Beethoven,
Mozart, Wagner, the multi-
million best selling rock group
Neanderthal, as well as any-
thing even slightly inspired by
the originally popular ooze of
our universally common cos-
mick artistic
ancestry. Hardly surprising,
an initiative was in recent
years put forward aimed at
simplifying the rules and reg-
ulations
governing campus _ radio.
Given our limited resources,
would we not then at least be
better able to focus on getting
past the
personal & instead apply
these general changes to the
overall improved production &
broadcast of higher quality
alternatives
22?

Having said this, i also won-
der how Gonzo we should
reckon EARS can in the end
really afford to become ???
Does a
show like Johnny Canuck’s
proposed Canadian,
Classics, the Blues & Beyond
stand to entirely undermine
the CRTC’s
circumscribed set of basic
boundaries ??? Hmmmm...
it hardly sounds all that sub-
versive. Still, judging from a
series of
events which were broadcast
this past Friday, a lot would

still really seem to depend.
While for certain on-air per-
sonalities

f&*k this & f&*k that appar-
ently warrants nothing more
than a little occasional fun
loving pee-pee whacking, the
pair of

sad-assed DJ’s who followed
this circus show were after lit-
tle more than 20 minutes or
so shut down & promptly
expelled from

the studio for freely express-
ing their views in opposition
to overly zealous content lim-
its & censorship,

As i listened to the DJ's
streaming on-line string of
entertaining tunes including
Jeff Healey, Peter Tosh,
Sepultura, Bruce
Springsteen & even an old
Motown number suddenly
dissolve into a large uncom-
fortable & empty bloc of dead
air, i found it
all not only very ironic but
truthfully quite sad. Ironic in
that the CRTC encourages
campus broadcast of “soap
box” or
“listener reaction” segments
whereby YOU the audience
can comment on views

expressed in station
programming. Sad
given

how EARS’ recent por-
trayal as a groovy group
of peace loving, wife
swapping atheists, one
would clearly expect

ii

greater
tolerance, freedom, & |
flexibility. Well then, |
maybe not.

So, here we go again.
How “alternative” exact-
ly MUST all program-
ming be ??? While
one of the great things
about voices
such as EARS is that it
offers an excellent
forum for little known
Canadian, independent,
up & coming, under-
ground, grassroots
or otherwise undiscov-
ered talent, what hap-
pens when because of
limited freedom DJ’s
become bound, essen-
tially prisoners of
both conscience & cul-

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tural expression 7??? Must
EARS only offer material so
entirely obscure that for most
people listening it'll

be the first & in all chances
likely last time they'll ever
even hear it??? What of
spontaneous on-air commen-
tary or otherwise divinely
inspired dialogue??? How
esoteric, inoffensive and
vague, or for all intents and
purposes “PC” does the
directorship actually expect a
good DJ to be???

Gazing now as | am deep into
my crystal Gonzo ball, | fear
the looming spectre of a dark
if even ever so subtle content
dictatorship. So you wanna
have a show on the air???
Figure the listening public
might have a yen for blues,
folk, electronica, jazz,
grunge, metal, rock, classical,
world beat, or hip hop???
Well kids, I’d first be prepared
to submit a formal playlist.
Carefully scrutinized, watch-
ful eyes may soon screen,
either crunch (or if it can in
any way be construed as
transcending the officially
entrenched EARS interpreta-

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March 26, 2001

(and on, and on)

tion of CRTC/NCRA guide-
lines), fudge, reject, creative-
ly classify, scorn or for that
matter, simply abandon out-
right the spirit of percentile
approximations as their musi-
cal definitions offer.
Censorship or bias, call it
what you will. Most of course
simply boils down to a matter
of either interpretation or
application. While for their
part overly zealous gatekeep-
ers are all too commonly
found slithering among the
ranks of big corporate media,
lacking a more truly inclusive
spirit, soon EARS too could
itself end up policing campus
airwaves to a point where the
students’ collective voice
more often ends up being
mistaken for the JAM that
never really was.

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