Backwash

Join me now in a little creative visualization, won't you?

It's the not-so-distant future, and that digital dial in your self-cleaning car is pumping in nothing but corporate radio 24-7. Megalithic corporations like Clear Channel and AM/FM have succeeded in acquiring all of the nation's FM and AM stations. Aided by Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen, Congress has passed legislation to ensure that micro-radio forever remains an illegal operation. AOL chair Steve Case and his Time Warner pals control Internet radio media, and free MP3s have been completely banished from the Web. (The good news is that the children of Everclear frontman Art Alexakis are spared the life of poverty threatened by at least five unauthorized downloads of "Heroin Girl" in 2000.) You hear nothing but shit: fake rap, fake pop, fake rock and the Call's "I Still Believe" (which somehow manages to maintain regular rotation on all major stations).

You can relax now, little camper. Because even if such a scenario were to take place (to a large extent, it already has), chances are the operators of KVCU-AM/Radio 1190 -- the student-run, University of Colorado at Boulder-affiliated station -- would refuse to go down without a nasty fight. They are, after all, leading a virtual mutiny against corporate radio -- a stance they've maintained during the tender years of their broadcast life and the "AM revolution." Radio 1190 shows up in these pages quite a bit, but rest assured, Backwash is not on the Radio 1190 payroll (as if there were such a thing). Nope, the all-volunteer station gets perennial props for the simple reason that it rocks -- not just as a conduit of new, underground music, but also as a champion of this area's artists.

Consider Andrew Murphy. About a year ago, the nineteen-year-old history student founded Local Shakedown (4 to 6 p.m. Fridays), a specialty show devoted to playing music from local bands of all genres and exposing students to a scene that is often out of reach for the underage set. Last November, Murphy took the show out of the booth and into the Bluebird Theater with the first in the Local Shakedown all-ages live series, a two-night affair that paired familiar names like Munly with then less-well-known acts like Sarina Simoom; a second followed in January, and Murphy is planning another for July that tentatively features the Czars, the Apples, Tanger, the Breezy Porticos and Eiffel. And just what has young Master Murphy -- who also works at Boulder's Wax Trax and local publicity firm Fanatic Promotions -- been up to in his spare time?

For one thing, he's kind of been stalking Jello Biafra.

After all, Murphy knew that it might be a good idea to get the Dead Kennedys/Alternative Tentacles guru, who was born and raised in Boulder (possibly the coolest thing about that town -- second only to Mork and Mindy), involved in the Local Shakedown CD project he was then in the midst of compiling.

"I knew that he was in town visiting his parents over Christmas," says Murphy somewhat slyly. "I knew his real last name, and I went through the phone book and found him. He said he might be into it and that he would come to the January Bluebird show, because he likes the LaDonnas and Hemi Cuda. So I waited outside all night for him to show up, and when he did, he agreed to record something."

What Biafra recorded -- upstairs in the Bluebird office, with Murphy holding the mike and hoping the noise from the stage and an oddly whirring Coke machine wouldn't interfere too much with the sound -- was an extemporaneous litany on the Boulder/Denver music scene back in his day. "All there was was Firefall and people who wanted to be Firefall...We'd get parasitic scientologists like Chick Corea or Al DiMeola or some other jazz-fusion dweeb," Biafra says. "Local music? Forget it. They all just wanted to be signed to major labels so they could hang out with Firefall." The screed ends with praise for Radio 1190 in particular and a reminder of the importance of tuning in to local artists.

The two-disc, 45-track set then proceeds to demonstrate just why people should heed Biafra's call.