Let’s see…it must have a lot of accordions in it, or cowboys singing drunken love songs to their trucks, right? Just to blow your minds, my colleague with esoteric musical taste, Nic McPhee, is getting interviewed tonight, and he’ll be playing some of his favorite songs on the radio. This is our local university radio station, which has a limited license and can’t play anything that has cracked the top 40 in the last 10 or 20 years, but I don’t think Nic’s taste will conflict at all with the station rules.
So tune in to KUMM, 89.7FM, at 6:00pm Central and have those rural Minnesotan stereotypes broken. If you live farther away than Starbuck, Minnesota, you can also listen to the internet stream.
Seriously, KUMM?
Are there any, uh, jokes involving the call letters?
[there got that bit out of the way]
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Goddamnit, Glen.. D:
LOL. What Azkyroth said. :p
The station had a T-shirt with a slogan consisting of the station’s call letters followed by the phrase “in your ear.”
Best. Call sign. Ever.
Steve Tibbetts is from Minnesota, so so much for the “drunken love songs” theory.
@Azkyroth #2
“Goddamnit, Glen.. D:”
In Glen’s defense, that was the first thing that crossed my mind too. (I LOL’d in fact)
IT’S POLKA BITCH!
I saw that on an accordion case. Laughed my ass off, I did.
Speaking of funny call letters, I heard a local radio broadcast that said that in Honolulu a new TV station was created with the call letters KUNT.
I’ve already heard The Prairie Home Companion.
“and can’t play anything that has cracked the top 40 in the last 10 or 20 years”
Oh gee, what a terrible loss.
Anyway, that’s not what you listen to college radio for. College radio is for jazz, classical, or boring droney stuff spun by DJs who sound like they just got out of bed, no matter what time of day it is.
My college station always played blues. They had a jazz hour, but that turned into blues/jazz hour. Then, they actually had an hour devoted to “alternative blues,” and “hard blues” and it was pretty freakin’ awesome.
Given the demographics of Minnesota I would have thought there might be a strong presence in the playlist by that famed 80’s Norwegian band, A-ha… oh hang on I think they only had one song, might be a short playlist.
@jj, #9:
Back in 1982, when North Texas State University changed its name to the University of North Texas, the running gag on campus was to question whether the school radio station would have to change its call letters from KNTU to reflect the new name — which, of course, always brought snickers of derision. It boggles the mind that an actual TV station, of all things, should have actually gone and adopted that unfortunate set of letters!
~David D.G.
Yes, them’s some interesting call letters there.
Waseca, Minnesota has a station which the call letters KOWZ which is what you’d expect in a dairy state.
Surely that’s sodomy.
How long ’till UM is squished by a meteor?
I doubt the FCC would allow KUNT to be assigned as call letters. If they get all excited about a tit exposed on nationable T&V, they’re unlikely to let an actual obscenity be used.
It’s like George Carlin’s W-I-N-O Wonderful Wino.
Really? I thought that’s what the CBC was for. I thought college radio was for metal, ethic, fusion, experimental anything, bad radio plays and all in short segments back to back in such a mix as to call mental whiplash.
nowt wrong with accordions.
What’s the definition of a gentleman?
Someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.
What’s the difference between an accordion and an onion?
Nobody cries when they cut up an accordion.
What’s the difference between an accordion and a trampoline?
You take your shoes off when you jump on a trampoline?
If you throw an accordion and a lawyer from the top of the Empire State Building, which one will hit the ground first?
Who cares?
I prefer opera singers rapping about cowboys, thanks.
Lynnai:
In the immortal words of Strong Bad:
“Then, there’s the utter misery that is college radio. Where they apparently just let any bewildered freshman wander in to the booth and try to run a radio station. College radio can pretty much be summed up in 5 words: ‘Dead air, um, dead air.'”
The chicken dance.
OT: I’d like to say this is a joke, but I don’t think so: Sarah Palin credits her election to governor to an African preacher who got his start as a witch-hunter. Seriously.
Funny, college radio around here is pretty good. A lot of bands you have never heard of, and probably won’t ever hear of again for very good reasons, plus some Stompin’ Tom to see if anyone is paying attention.
For whatever was weird and new I’d listen to CBC’s late and lamented “Brave New Waves”. First time I heard a DJ say “Fuck” on the public airwaves was CBC….
wow, that had the tone of a great back-handed compliment!
http://us-p.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/Sam-Clements/Plushies/squidgallery.jpg
Not related to anything, except I thought you might appreciate this. I rather favor the green fake fur.
“Don’t touch that dial! There’s KUMM on the radio!”
So tune in to KUMM…you can also listen to the internet stream.
Too… many… jokes… must… RESIST!!
On a recent episode of Spicks and Specks – an Australian tv music game show, sort of like Never Mind the Buzzcocks in the UK – the final act was a band performing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor…arranged for three piano accordians.
It was actually pretty awesome.
Yeah, I saw that last night. Very nice work, I love that piece.
If they haven’t got a t-shirt with
‘Music so good it makes you KUMM’
yet, why not? In fact with some canny marketing they could make more money from t-shirt sales than advertising :P
If your college station has a religious programme, maybe it could be called “The Second KUMMing”. They could play hymns like “KUMM, Lord Jesus, KUMM”.
And if you phoned in and berated the DJ for advocating creationism or Sarah Palin, they’d call it desecrating the host.
And so on…
There are a number of public radio stations with terrific call signs. They were all helped over the licensing regulatory hurdles by a pioneering character (sorry I can’t remember his name!) who was noted for this choice of call signs. WORT in Madison, KBOO in Portland. I have no doubt he did KUMM also. Any eyebrows that might have been raised in KUMM’s case were, I’m sure, mollified by some arm-waving about U of Minn …
When I was at college, I always wanted to just play three hours of theremin music to see if I’d get any phone calls. probably just as well I ended up in the Writing Lab and not the DJ booth.
Here in my little town the local station is WWOW which stands for “Walking on Water”. It’s an all-Catholic all the time AM station. Go figure!
I’ve always thought there must be some poor soul in the FCC offices that shakes his head every time he has to write our call letters down on a report. If we weren’t UMM I don’t know how on earth we’d justify such a thing!
The station does have a long history of cool shirts in varying degrees of poor taste and hilarity. They do have an on-line store at Cafe Press, but only one shirt design seems to be available at the moment. I’ll have to ask them about that.
Apologies to anyone who tried to listen in on-line and found the sound quality very poor. For some reason our on-line stream was really distorted last night, and we’ve got people looking into that. We were clean and shiny on FM, but that doesn’t help most of the people here :-(.
Strongbad notwithstanding, college radio is way cool. This is my third college radio station (KRRC at Reed as an undergrad, KTSB [now KVRS] at UT-Austin as a grad student, and now KUMM as a faculty), and it’s one of the key things that keeps me sane. My lovely wife and I are on Sundays from noon-2pm, and our frightening 14 year old son now has his first solo show from 8-10am on Sundays.