On Wednesday, I got the sweet chance to sit in on a CiTR show, UBC’s campus radio. Just walking into the CiTR clubroom is an adventure. The aura is one of a medieval pub, of which every person has a unique story. One of which a dragon was slain with the toenail shavings of several yaks. Another of which an evil wizard and a noble gladiator had a lute-off, ending in the establishment of Lute-apalooza. It was a pretty special vibe.
The hallway walls are decked with newspaper comics, everything from Calvin and Hobbes (the apex of smart humour) to Cathy (the other end of the spectrum). Long hair and jovial faces line the halls, a Christmas-like sensation of music, ghosts of Christmas Lennon, Cobain and Hendrix, always apparent. I ventured through the station to Val, the host of Folk Oasis, the show I’d be sitting in on. She was talking to Matt Masters, a country singer from Calgary who had come in to play on the air. He was such a swell guy, embodying the fun-loving country attitude of a well-off cattle rancher albeit brandishing a sharp comedian’s wit. I sat in the studio, about the size of a rez room, amazed at the computerized function of what we hear on the air. It’d be like drilling to the centre of the earth, fighting off the hellish layers of magma and molten metals, to get to a small control room where a guy in an Urban Outfitters shirt and slurpie in hand was deciding the fate of humanity.
I know I have this rational brain and all, but seeing how the radio process works is like finding out Santa doesn’t exist (sorry if this is how you found out). While you’re bummed at first, soon you feel this obligation to give others the magic, let others feel the warmth you felt. The analogy has flaws, I know. Santa doesn’t say,
“Yo, yo, yo, bringing it to you at *YEAH* 109.4, JINGLE JINGLE!!!”
It made me want to carry on and make radio a passion. And I think that’s what campus radio does for us. It’s not just a place for obscure local bands to be heard, like the 6th most popular alt-rock quintet, The Rolling Gallstones, or Vancouver’s only folk-metal comedy band, Rocky and Bullmetal. None of those bands exist by the way. I don’t want a request from some hardcore vinyl collector who “just needs to get his folk-metal comedy on.” Imagine John Cusack in High Fidelity. Or Jack Black in School in Rock. Or Harrison Ford in Star Wars, just because he’s awesome. Or Arnold Schwarzehnnnnegger, but just because I wanted to spell his name like that.
So I think I’ve found my niche. Others have Quidditch and others have football. And others people have bi-weekly goat herding conferences. Nobody I’ve met so far though. It’s not a subject people bring up a lot. But I’m a little more satisfied now, knowing I’ve been given a block of marble named CiTR, and I’ve just got to bring out the David in it.
To learn more about CiTR, simply go to http://www.citr.ca
To support CiTR, donate at http://www.citr.ca/index.php/fundrive or call 604-822-1242 (UBC-UNIT) to pledge.