TS: For the Chicagoans WHPK vs WNUR vs WLUW

how so?

WNUR's Airplay has great bands.

All three stations have very, very intelligent people affiliated with them. If you look at top 30s, WHPK and WNUR consistently produce some of the most out-there, awesome playlists in the country - up there with WFMU and KFJC.

my life would have been different had i not listened to airplay and other wnur shows when i was in high school. i am not given to making statements like this.

re. whpk, i hear it so seldom, and the things i hear are so disparate, that i feel a bit like i'm in the cast of the story about the blind men and the elephant. i have no sense of what the whole is like, only isolated impressions of stray shows over 15 odd years. i actually know more about from reading about its funding problems than from listening.

wluw seems like a good college station, with a few quirks. i enjoy tuning in on occasion--it's a mild nostalgia trip as it reminds me of my college radio days.

question: what ever happened to wzrd (the wizard)?

wzrd was the northeastern university station yes? or at least housed there?

which is the college of du page station? is that the one that plays old 1940s radio comedies (etc.) on saturdays?

are there other college/nonprofit stations i'm unaware of?

i've moved back and forth from chicago so often over the past 10 years. each return seems to be accompanied by major changes on the radio. i have trouble piecing it all together.

marginal-radio-station history is one of my hidden passions.

i find there is so little institutional memory at college stations, which i find haunting.

But then, I'm biased. I was music director there for a couple years, and worked there on and off for, shit ... I guess about 10 years. Until I moved out of Hyde Park, essentially. And yeah, call letters stand for Hyde Park - Kenwood.

I really do think that WHPK is the better overall station. But I never really got into the WNUR rivalry thing. I liked 'NUR a whole bunch too, and would listen whenever found myself on the north side. And they beat us in some critical areas: their jazz programming was a lot better. It was more progressive, in any case. But that was also a function of the differing philosophies of the two stations: WHPK was truly a community radio station, not a run-of-the-mill "college" station. I think at most times at least a good third of the DJs are non-students. And a large portion of the non-students were in the jazz department. ANd they tended to be oldsters who liked to play a lot of the bop and hard-bop classics. BUT it still kicked the living shit of WBEZ for exciting listening. And we still have some guys playing the free/out stuff. I think even John Litweiler is back at the station again, after an absence. Then again, he might be off again -- I can't always get it up where I live. Which sucks. But anyway, I loved all those older jazz DJs, so who cares how progressive they were? They were entertaining and knowledgable as fuck. A lot of them have passed away since I started though. It's kinda sad.

Another way WNUR beat us was in the live programming. THeir "Airplay" show got some big big coups over the years, no doubt about it. But the WHPK show, "Pure Hype" has its fair share of pretty kick-ass performances over the years. A few of which have even been used by the bands on official releases. But yeah, WNUR was always able to leverage their location and their greater signal to lure in some of the bigger bands that swung through town. So props to them for that.

But man, our hip-hop programming is SO much better. JP Chill's Friday night show is a freakin' EVENT on the South Side, make no mistake about it. I mean, did WNUR ever get a shout out in a Common Sense rap?? (what Common was originally called, for all you new jacks) David Waldman's ongoing Monday night blues showcase -- been going ever since I arrived, almost 15 years ago -- is amazing, he is second only to Steve Cushing as far as blues scholars I know.

John Corbett, pretty much the best critic around, did an amazing show called "Radio Dada" for the first 8 years or so of the 90s. Just mind-blowing on a weekly basis. And the people he could bring in .. live performances from guys like Mats Gustafsson and Phill Niblock, live radio plays by Gregory Whitehead (I still have one of these on two 90 minutes cassette tapes - fucking AMAZING) .. playing all kinds of obscurities from his MASSIVE collection. It blew my mind.

THen you got Rick W0jcik, the guy who started DustyGroove.com together with JP CHill, the germ of the store/site was his weekly "Dusties Party" show on Thursday nights. I would tape it and have my mind blown recognizing all these samples from hip-hop songs -- this was before the days of "the-breaks.com", folks. I'd always have to call Rick and ask him what a certain cut was cuz he would never back announce the good ones, the cheeky bastard.

The Baffler magazine as it's known today pretty much coalesced around the station at the time. Tom Frank had started the journal earlier when he was an undergrad, but it wasn't until he came to the U of C for grad school that the thing kind of vitalized. He had a great political talk show for a while with one of the other editors, Diamonds Dave.

Fuck, we had dancehall shows on Friday and Saturday afternoon -- real popular, and again, featuring non-students and professional DJs like this guy Field Marshall, whose show was amazing. And of course there is Arkansas Red, another community member and one of the last of the old-school DJs. Basically, as Steve Cushing : Dave Waldman, Pervis Spann : Arkansas Red. His FIVE hour show on Saturday nights is another long-running -- well over the 15 years I've been around -- South Side tradition. A good half of the show is given over to taking calls from people, and frequent listeners to the show quickly come to learn the names of all the regular callers. It's great stuff, real entertaining and a real sense of South Side bonding going on. Oh, when he's not talking to listeners he's probably playing some great Bobby Blue Bland or Lattimore or Tyrone Davis or Ruby Andrews cut -- usually the new stuff too, the sides those oldsters keep cranking out for labels like Malaco and the like. ANd god bless them for it.

There were a lot of other great knowledgable people that worked there. Bundy Br0wn did a show after me shortly after I started there. Grubbs used to fill in from time to time, too; he did Corbett's show on a few different occasions. Bundy joined Bastro after Grubbs came to the U of C for school, then Gastr mutated out of that. Bunch of other people. Rockin' Johnny, who records for Delmark records now, I'll never forget -- one of the first guys I met there. Nicest guy in the world. He shoved a copy of a Slovenly record and the Boredoms Soul Discharge into my hands and told me to check 'em out. ok I'm getting all misty-eyed and rambling so I'll shut up.

to be fair, there were a number of prominent non-student (indeed, non-northwestern-affiliated) dj's at wnur. the main reggae dj, whose name i forgot, is an example. one thing i like about wnur's reggae programming, which other people may not like, is that they play a lot of really laid-back lovers rock, which have long had a very soft spot for. (the wesu reggae dj's played much lovers rock as well, so maybe it's a spot of nostalgia as well.)

i wish i could have heard more whpk. do you know what their signal strength is? do they stream on the internet now? not that i can listen to streams now (i only have dialup), but for future reference.

And yeah, to be fair, I think I knew that WNUR had non-students (in fact the aforementioned Rick W. and Corbett both did shows there as well), but it's waaaay more prominent on WHPK. THere's a real sense that the station is attempting to properly represent the WHOLE COMMUNITY, you know what I mean? Rock is basically relegated to the midnight-and-after time period. Jazz and Blues and Rap and Dusties are in prime-time. And like I say, that Arkansas Red call-in/blues show is on for a prime five hours on Saturday nights - 7 pm to midnight (oooh, too, I forgot to mention one of Red's greatest quirks -- his propensity to sing over the records. I know it sounds like it could be horrible but trust me, it's great.)

No streaming. Which totally sucks. They tried it on an experimental basis for a while; a student (actually, this guy) set up a webstream to test bandwidth levels. But the administration nixed it because they said it would use too many resources. WTF??? Dumbasses.

you really are making me wish i could get whpk.

levels. But the administration nixed it because they said it would use too many resources. WTF??? Dumbasses.

that's too bad. i guess whpk doesn't have resources to set up a streaming server on its own?

i imagine one problem with the low signal strength is that whpk has more limited opportunities for fundraising than wnur. also, wnur gets a lot of money from medill (meaning we all have to suffer through those student news spots every few hours). their studios are really nice. what are whpk's studios like?

Well, they're concerned about bandwidth consumption, not computational power (hope I'm not stating the obvious); so, their position is, the station can't use the pipe. And the only other option would be to set up a third party T-1 connection or whatever, and there's just no way the administration would let the station get some sub-contractor to come in and lay down cable.

The studios are OK, not exactly in pristine condition at all times - let's put it that way. You can pretty much be guaranteed that there will be SOME at-least minor problem with a turntable or CD player each week. Without fail. They have an engineer who is on-call, but his primary responsibility is a couple of commercial stations he does contracting work for. They always take precedence over poor little WHPK. But he's good once he's able to finally get free and come down.

And yeah, you're spot-on about the funding. WHPK does this perfunctory fund-raising drive once per year, but it's sort of a joke. I mean, without revealing numbers let's say that they're lucky to get maybe a 15th of what I hear WNUR can raise. So yeah, there's a certain amount of guaranteed University funding, but also lots of sponsorships, some grants, and pretty much catch-as-catch-can.

(btw, this is all sort of "last I knew"; i.e. a couple years ago. For all I know things have gotten better. I'm prepared for a current DJ lurker to come along and school me.)

WNUR I want to like a lot more, but I'm sort of with frankE on the pretentiousness. Then again, if I were more into avant-garde/experimental in general, maybe I'd like it. Sometimes I just wonder if all the DJs there really ARE into Stockhausen and Nurse with Wound and all that, or if it's just inculcated in all freshmen who volunteer at the station. WNUR is GREAT, however, for late-night electronic stuff. I used to have band practice in Oak Park, and I'd sometimes drive home on Lake Shore Drive with the windows rolled down and drum-n-bass on the car radio, and it was awesome.

I probably listen to WLUW most often, but frankE is also right about the public-affairs programming. I mean, the two times I listen to the radio most often are between 9-10 am and between 6-7 pm (driving to and from work), and there's hardly any music during these hours; it's all like Pacifica news or interviews with Rogers Park community activists.

But when they are playing music, it's not too bad, if you don't mind college/indie rock. (I think I first heard Dismemberment Plan and Grandaddy on WLUW, back when my tastes were more exclusively indie.) Lately, when I've caught it, I've enjoyed Think Pink, the gay/lesbian music show, which is pretty genre-flexible, apart from its main focus. And they do a pretty good job of pimping the local scene.

WZRD is still around, and I listen every now and then. I sort of like that it's so free-form -- I once heard like 20 minutes of uninterrupted David Cross stand-up one night -- but it also seems like the kind of place that plays a lot of live Frank Zappa, if you know what I mean. Or maybe that's just after having played live in the studio there, where these long-haired, middle-aged "sound engineers" hang out with, like, prog-rock-loving theatre-techie students and talk about libertarianism in what's practically a dungeon.

the studio there, where these long-haired, middle-aged "sound engineers" hang out with, like, prog-rock-loving theatre-techie students and talk about libertarianism in what's practically a dungeon.

this is pretty much how i pictured the wzrd studios.

i've heard the haitian show on whpk. i've also watched a haitian show on local community access tv. haitian french is really hard for me to understand sometimes, but it's an interesting challenge. and some of the music performances they snow snippets of on the tv show are amazing.

maybe it's just that i had the same kind of life-changing experience with WHPK that the amateur!!!st had with WNUR. The first new year's eve after my family moved to Chicago, I literally had no friends. So it was either curl up with the folks in the rec room watching the ball drop in Times Square or sit in my room alone. Being 14, I naturally chose the latter. Having left behind Univ. of Pittsburgh's WPTS, I scanned the left side of the dial for someone to tell me when midnight hit. I stumbled on a bunch of HPK dj's throwing a party that happened to be on air. I rolled the cassette and caught the station's top 30 of 1985. It seemed like the coolest fucking thing on the planet. I so with I had that tape still. From what I remember Billy Bragg, the Three Johns, Big Black, the Redskins all made it. Damn if I can remember the rest. But it was one of those nights where I just sat in front of the stereo for three hours straight listening to a bunch of kids get drunk. Resplendent.

i know wnur most from 92-95 and then 01-04. i think i might have missed the "nabisco era."

There was no Nabisco era, thankfully; I got roped into doing stuff because I happened to be standing there when someone else didn't show up, and I don't think I did more than 10 shows total. I played major-label indie-rock, umm, just to be different.

actually i do remember hearing plenty of pastels & beat happening & vaguely similar-sounding midwest bands. i feel like 92-95 was sort of my preconscious phase of music listening, so i probably heard a lot of stuff i couldn't name now. i mostly remember staying up past my bedtime listening to whatever show it was that played a lot of hawkwind and krautrock.