As I mentioned before, this semester I took a documentary animation class at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (ya know, the George Lucas school). We each told a true personal story, and then we voted...
The 2012 KDVS Fundraiser is this week, with DJs doing crazy things on their shows so that you’ll donate money and we can stay on the air. So far, one of my favorite moments of the week has been...
I met Aloe Blacc today. He spoke at USC for an outdoor listening party of Marvin Gaye’s politically, socially charged 1971 concept album, What’s Going On. Since Aloe Blacc is sometimes ce...
My buddy Solomon runs a low-power radio station in Chinatown called KChung Radio, named after its origin on Chung King Road. It started out broadcasting just one evening a week, but since the fall it...
I met the GZA today. My music professor at USC also teaches an undergraduate hip-hop class, and she hired the Wu-Tang Clan spiritual leader to speak today as part of his university lecture series. Sh...
The best part about the Specialized Journalism for the Arts graduate program at USC is we get to take half our classes in other arts schools on campus: public and fine arts, cinema, architecture, mus...
Do you get stuck in music ruts too? When you listen to the same bands over and over and see the same bands live again and again? But then out of the blue someone brand new pops up and you’re li...
WordPress does an excellent job of filtering out spam, which is almost too bad because they’re pretty fun to read. Mostly they are really bizarre ads with broken links and strange syntax, and s...
Last week I sat down to read a book for class, appropriately Music Cultures in the United States, near this couple who I thought were singing songs in Korean. After a few minutes, it was clear they w...
I dug up another episode of “Analog Oatmeal” from 2009, featuring an hour and 15 minutes of the cutest and raddest Japanese twee and electro pop I could find. Download here! EDIT: Dr. Kel...
Boss the Big Bit was the shit. One of my first acts as the “Live in Studio A” booker at KDVS was recruiting them for the 2006 fundraiser show. Teddy, Andrew and Gonzalo, all KDVS DJs at t...
The University of Southern California campus is eerily clean. There’s no graffiti, no stencils, no chalking, no writing on bathroom walls. There’s not too much trash lying around either, ...
This was originally a supplement for my final feature story last semester: When there’s a shaggy dragon spirit dancing on stage, reflecting like a disco ball across the theater, it doesn’t matter if ...
The CalArts Balinese gamelan performance ensemble, Burat Wangi, let me sit in on a couple rehearsals last semester for the first part of my thesis project (to be slowly revealed through future posts,...
Stephen Steinbrink a.k.a. French Quarter from Tempe, Arizona, just put out two albums, neither of which I’ve been able to listen to on my stereo until I figure out some tape deck wizardry. But ...
My alma mater radio station, KDVS 90.3 FM in Davis, has been trying to get a new broadcast tower for 15 years. The “tower project” has gone through multiple general managers, city council...
I was about to record over this cassette tape, most likely rummaged from a giveaway box at Records on Broadway years ago, to make a mix. Before hitting record, I checked if there was already somethin...
Thanks to KUCI, we won tickets to see K Records freak-folk queen Kimya Dawson at The Echo on Friday! Your Heart Breaks opened the show, and then after a full set’s worth of children’s son...
If I had to pick the single raddest thing I’ve been introduced to since moving to Los Angeles almost four months ago, it would be dublab. This collective hosts a ton of live music and DJ events...
I’ve been going through my old radio shows from KDVS — a mixture of nostalgia and thirst for more musical exposure, I suppose. I did a whole series of “Analog Oatmeal Abroad” episod...
I tend to peg Calvin Johnson as such a writer of love songs and producer of rad records that I forget he’s also a pretty political guy. At The Smell on Sunday night, he described his experience...
I went to Occupy Los Angeles at City Hall on Sunday and met this guy Kyle. He’s been camping out on and off for five weeks, when his work schedule allows him to, playing music and soaking in th...
One of my earliest vivid memories is riding in the backseat of my family’s apple green 1979 Volvo 240 on the way to Vancouver, B.C., with my brother, interviewing all our stuffed animals on a F...
My first quarter after graduating from UC Davis, I audited a Technocultural Studies class called History of Sound in the Arts. I took a lot of notes like this. Prof. Doug Kahn covered everything from...
Now that I have access to real video-editing software, I finally compiled all these random bits and pieces of footage from Okinawa into a music video for Moe Meguro, my cousin Jojo’s band inspi...
I need a break from just straight audio. In March 2006, DJ Mucky invited any and all KDVS DJs down to the studio during his show for a 2.5-hour freeform free-for-all. Instruments included Adventurela...
Today marks the beginning of the Uchinanchu Festival in Okinawa, Japan, when thousands of people from all over the world return to the tiny southern island. The four-day festival happens every five y...
When K Records founder Calvin Johnson played in Davis in July, he said some nice things about KDVS — and in the world of college radio, Calvin is Indie King. So for all us KDVS DJs and volunteers in ...
I hosted my first L.A. house show a couple weeks ago, starring Jordan O’Jordan and Dane Terry, who also played the last show I hosted at my Davis house before I moved two years ago. Simple coin...
My first Los Angeles news story just got published on Intersections South LA, USC’s community journalism site focusing on South Central L.A. I got to cover the Watts Towers Day of the Drum and ...
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