This episode of Hippie Love Turbo, on KUCR 88.3 FM, we looked back at some of my favorite songs from the last 150 episodes. Over the course of the show, I've played more than 3,000 unique songs and if you were to listen to every episode back to back it'd take over 6 days straight to finish them all. It's been a ton of fun listening and curating songs from the obscure and recently rediscovered to well-known hits and everything in between. Cheers to another 150 episodes and, as always, the playlist is at the bottom!
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| An old flyer from when I first started my show Deliberate Discord |
Way back in 2010, when I was first getting settled as a transfer student at UCR, I contacted the station by hounding the staff during concerts at The Barn and by visiting their booth during "nooner" events at the Bell Tower. Eventually, I wore them down and became part of the staff which kick started my journey in radio. My show at the time was named Deliberate Dischord (because misspelling stuff is cool) and featured noisier music in the vein of punk, indie, and experimental artists. I continued my show for a few years before taking a break while figuring out life. Eventually the pandemic hit and I floated the idea of starting another show which is what became Hippie Love Turbo.
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| Left: My first day of training Right: Hanging out during my old nighttime slot |
If I go even further back, I discovered my love for radio as a kid, after visiting a local country music station to pick up tickets my mother had won through a contest. I was amazed by the simplicity of the building. In my head I imagined a huge skyscraper lined with walls of TVs and a bustling staff of fashionable 20-somethings zooming around with CDs and tapes, listening booths, and high-tech computers. Instead, the station sat inside an unassuming strip mall office with a lobby that looked like my pediatrician's. After the veil was lifted, I began calling into radio stations, hamming up my little kid voice, knowing that some DJs would air recordings of my requests. Somewhere I still have tapes of me and my friends speaking in phony southern accents, asking the DJ to play Dwight Yoakam.
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| An old schedule showing my 2 hour block. Found in The Highlander. |
Flash forward to my high school days when I started consuming music through the internet as opposed to whatever I found in the discount bin at The Warehouse or Sam Goody. I mainly listened to web streams that I found through Real Player and Winamp. In particular I remember listening to a lot of KUCI, specifically a "goth" show that had a very patient DJ that tolerated my calls and AIM messages.
Towards the end of my senior year in high school, I started streaming my own internet radio show using Shoutcast and Winamp. My audience hardly ever reached more than 4 or 5 listeners at a given time. It was fun but took a lot of effort for little reward. I remember my most popular stream was a Smiths special that was inspired by one of my favorite teachers and I was psyched that 14 or 15 people were listening.
Nowadays, my main goal with Hippie Love Turbo is to provide the same feeling of discovery I had during my youth. Nothing beats finding a DJ or radio station that has its own story that has existed long before you became aware of it.
Eventually, I would like to expand my blog to cover more of the local history of garage and psych music in Riverside so if you happen to have been around the rock scene in the IE during the '60s, feel free to contact me! A lot of our local music history isn't well documented online so I suggest you go out and bug your family for those old photos, recordings, and newspaper clippings.
Anywho, that's it for this episode's rundown! Thanks for reading the blog and be sure to listen over the air on KUCR 88.3FM on Saturdays at 9pm PST or listen to an archived version of the show here. You can also listen through KUCR.org, Radio Garden, or Tune-In.
Check out this week's playlist below:
