Franklin / Professor Grindstein / Dollar Country
Early morning rotation DJ
Malicious Intent Host
2004-2010ish
I posted this last year on my instagram and I figured I’d share it here.
I saw @kjhk90_7 turned 45 this week. For those unfamiliar KJHK is the student run radio of the University Of Kansas in Lawrence. I was there from around 2004-2010 (I think). Here’s a bit about my time there and my time around it.
If you’re not from Lawrence it’s kind of hard to say how important this particular radio stations was to everyone, although if you’re in a college town with a college radio station than maybe you had something similar. KJ has been a part of my life since I can remember. In jr high and high school I listened to it when the other radio stations all switched to top 40, and the metal show was one of the only places back then to hear actual metal on the radio outside of Metallica. The first shows I ever played at an actual venue when I was in HS were set up by the Malicious Intent DJ who put together local metal shows. Once I started going to KU, actually before I was a student, I started being on KJ. At first I would go up for a 4-6 am shift a couple friends had and hang out and talk with them while they played rock rotation. After I became a KU student I started getting my own shows. Although, like I do just about everything, my time at KJ was very loosely managed and by the seat of my pants. I never actually applied for a show, I would just wait until the first or second week of each new semester and send an email to the station manager asking to fill in if need be. There was inevitably one or two DJs who signed up for a 2-4 or 4-6 am shift that couldn’t do it and dropped out, so I’d always end up with some godawful early morning shift, but it was worth it to me. If I didn’t play rock rotation I didn’t get hassled, and I loved the idea that no matter what KJ was on 24/7 365. I think it’s not like that anymore which is a bummer, but I understand. Having to spend 8 hours on Christmas at the shack because no one else signed up sucked for the program managers back then, but those tales were heroic to me. Radio no matter what, give the people something to listen to, KJHK is always here for you.
I remember biking up the hill to the shack at 3:45 am with two bags full of vinyl (because I was too stubborn to play CDs or digital), getting in just drenched in sweat and sitting around for 2 hours playing music. More than once the person who was supposed to be in at 6 didn’t show up and I ended up doing Jazz in the Morning. It was just one of those things, if someone didn’t show up you covered them, and getting to do Jazz in the morning meant that I got to learn more about music by searching the jazz stacks. We were a bunch of 18-25 year olds who were in charge of a radio station, sometimes things didn’t go to plan.
Also while I was at KU I became the “host” of Malicious Intent, the metal radio show I’d listened to in high school. I say “host” because I was officially on the paperwork but really my friends did most of the hosting as it was their passion more than mine. We all had metal names, Wulf, Judge Dredd, The Inverted Cross-Examiner, and I was Professor Grindstein. KJHK had a culture, it’s DJs were friends and did things together. It was like joining a club where your common love was music and that’s kind of all that mattered. My final semester there was when the station moved from the shack to the student union. I know I’m just being a curmudgeon at this point, but it still doesn’t feel right to me. I loved the amateur broken down feeling of the shack, how there was just graffiti everywhere, the show flyers on nearly every surface. The shack was off the beaten path so you could get away with stuff, the student union was a place where you were always seen. The idea that radio is a aural medium and isn’t seen is something I like about it. My show is hidden in my basement, hell, a lot of shows are hidden in their basements. I love going into a collectors house and seeing the mess, the loose organization, the piles of stuff. When KJ moved it lost some of that for me, but all things change and the product is still pretty good.
After I stopped being a KU student KJ stayed a big part of my life. I worked at the local record store @lovegardensounds and we were closely connected to KJ. Tons of the DJs shopped there and tons of the employees had worked at KJ over the years, there was a pretty solid pipeline connecting the two. Even more once I was in a band we played at KJHK live, were interviewed on air a couple times, played in their sponsored battle of the bands, Farmer’s Ball (and won it!), and just general were cheered on by them. KJ is a jewel of the community in so many ways, more than I can describe. They’ve positively touched so many lives in Lawrence and beyond that their influence would truly be impossible to compute. And I could wax philosophical about the importance of radio in our lives for 20 pages, but I won’t. I’ll just say that sometimes it’s really important to have someone else pick out some music for you.