SAMPLE Spring 2022 by KWUR 90.3 fm

CONTENTS 4 Interview with Dave Thomas 15 The Birth of Aphrodite 20 KWUR Meets Nirvana

CONTRIBUTORS Kade Becker Dee Cea Natalie Fikes Cam Lind Hannah Megery

INTERVIEW WITH DAVE THOMAS

Interview between Natalie Fikes and David Thomas, the first Music of KWUR 90.3 FM in 1976. Dave “the Rave” Thomas’ show “Rock It!” was one of the first punk rock radio shows in St. Louis. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

NF: My first question is how did you first get involved with KWUR, and what year was your first radio show? DT: I don’t know if the early history of the radio station has ever really been documented. I know that when I was still in St. Louis there wasn’t much of anything. But KWUR started as a 10 watt FM station. It was started by a couple of engineering students. I first went on the air in the fall of 1976. The station’s first air date was July 4, 1976, billed itself as America’s Bicentennial radio station because that was the bicentennial. Do you know all this already? NF: I actually did not know that it was started by engineers. I’m trying to remember all of my KWUR history and knowledge. I feel like a lot of it got condensed down over the years. DT: One of the main driving forces behind the radio station was a guy named Bob Feleky who got the FCC license. The very first general manager of the station was Ron Peeples. The first program director was David Kooy. And the first music director of KWUR was myself. NF: Really? That’s so cool. DT: I can tell you how I started. From the time I was, you know, eight years old, I was a serious record freak. By 1975, I was already working in record stores and collecting records. I was taking Paul Yamato’s “History of Rock and Roll” course in ’76. He wanted to do this rock and roll history radio show and pulled me in to do the engineering. I didn’t have any previous radio experience. It was like, “Well, how hard can it be anyway?” They gave me a crash course on how to run the boards and stuff. at the time, we had an old, mid 1960s or earlier 1950s RCA board and VU meters. It was as big as the dashboard of a car, a huge thing. The equipment was pretty limited but there was a really huge record library. Part of that was because prior to going on the air there was a radio station at WashU, which was called KFRH [for Forsyth Residence Halls].

KFRH was actually a carrier current station kind of like cable TV. You had to be plugged into the electrical system of the dorms to actually receive the program. It didn’t require an FCC license. You couldn’t hear it anywhere but in the dorms. I think because of the lack of interest at some point. KFRH had gone off the air sometime in the late 1960s or early 70s. But during that whole time, the radio station was on all the promo mailing lists for all the record companies so it continued to get reams of promo mailers. There was an entire room probably 20 feet by 15 feet which was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, unopened promos from record companies. There were two huge filing cabinets that were filled with promo 45s. Many of those had KFRH stamps on them. This was amazing stuff that hadn’t been touched in years. Student Life had run an ad for an organizational meeting, “WashU’s Bicentennial Radio Station, going on the air.” I went to that initial meeting and filled out a form saying, “Have mucho record knowledge.” Just a joke about it. I already knew people that worked at the record companies and record reps in St. Louis. The first thing they needed was somebody to go through all of the records to figure out what it is, alphabetize, and put stickers on them. I said, “Oh man, I’m your guy for that,” you know? Very quickly, I started doing my own show, which was initially on Saturday afternoons. I named the show “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” based on a Yardbirds song. This was 1976. Every week I would feature one band with an album from 1966 and other stuff from 1966. At the same time, I was plugged into what was going on culturally and musically. There was this thing [beginnings of punk] brewing not only in New York but in London. The first Ramones record had already come out. Patti Smith’s first album was out. The very earliest records I heard that got me into it were just as exciting as records that had come out in 1966. It was this stripped down, energetic, guitar oriented, blast. And so, by January of 1977, I pivoted and “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” became “Rock It!” I was the music director so I lined myself up with the Friday night 7:00 till 10:30 time slot for the next two and a half years.

People had begun hanging out at the radio station. A number of early St. Louis punk rock bands formed in the basement of the Women’s Building, right outside the studio. I would put speakers in the windows, and people would sit out in the parking lot. It was kind of like a party for a while. Campus police cracked down on that fairly quickly. But nonetheless, it was kind of a cool little scene. I would get people to vote for their favorite records, and then my girlfriend at the time and I would compile the voting in the “Rock It” Dirty 30 Hit Record Surveys for what were the most popular punk rock records which I was playing week in week out. NF: By the way, I did not know that much detail about the start of KWUR so that was really cool to hear. DT: That’s almost everything that I know. Early on, there were several KWUR program guides, which were printed up on glossy paper and folded out by 18 inches by 24 inches or something like that. I didn’t have anything to do with the actual printing but I think they printed like 1000 of them. The idea was just to put boxes of them out in the dorms and the student union and stuff like that so people could take them home and stick them up on their wall because it had the whole weekly program schedule. I don’t know if those still exist somewhere. NF: I have not seen them but maybe I’ll dig around studio. DT: If somebody didn’t squirrel them away and archive them I suspect they may not exist anymore. The only reason those “Rock It” Dirty 30 Surveys exist is because I still had them. In the very first ones, I hand drew the logo and stuff, and then I would just Xerox them and take them around to record stores. There weren’t very many gigs happening at the time, that came slightly later. There weren’t really any venues in St. Louis yet. Also, by that time, I was playing in bands too.

NF: And did KWUR at the time have relationships with the punk scene across the US? DT: I was plugged into the larger punk rock culture. There was a magazine out of California which is called Bomp. It was edited by a guy named Greg Shaw. He was kind of a mover and shaker in that early sort of weird, out on the fringes, rock thing. He started putting out a newsletter. He put a thing in the magazine that said to send your information if you’re playing these records. I sent in the information about my radio show. It was published in every newsletter so I started getting promos from all over the country. The first two Devo singles showed up in the mailbox one day before they even had a major record contract. There was a band from Indianapolis called the Gizmos that showed up, and Pearl Harbor and the Explosions from San Francisco. More and more independent records started showing up not from major labels. Groups were figuring out how to put out their own records. It was the very beginnings of the whole DIY culture. They had figured out how to, you know, what’s the old communist phrase, “seize the machinery of production, and take over the world,” or something like that. That’s what people were learning how to do. That was all new and different. NF: Would you say that college radios stations at the time were integral to this DIY scene? DT: There were other radio stations published in Bomp as well. Whenever I would make one of those Dirty 30 Hit Record Surveys, I’d send it to all those other radio stations. There was a school I’d never even heard of in Grinnell, Iowa, but somebody was doing a show there. Someone else was doing a show at KU in Lawrence, Kansas. There was a guy in Boston named Oedipus who was doing a show. You would have, I mean relationships not exactly, but you would drop a postcard to them or something and say, “Hey, we’re over here if you have any groups in your area that made a record, send it to us.” Again, sort of the beginnings of the DIY stuff.

For a while, if you were plugged into it, it was like electricity. Of course, it was way before the internet, way before cell phones and personal computers. Everything was analog. That meant taking those Dirty 30’s and putting them in an envelope, writing the address on the envelope, and sticking it in the mailbox. But that’s what everybody was doing. It wasn’t for another four or five years that college radio became a real driving force of what became known as alternative music or alternative rock. NF: Yeah, it’s cool to hear about how KWUR definitely had a wider reach than just the 10 watts. DT: We joke with people that our biggest audience were the bear pits at the zoo. That was half the range covering Forest Park. NF: We still only have 10 watts. That’s still kind of the way it is. DT: If I remember right, the antenna was on top of one of the dorms, wasn’t it? NF: Yeah. I think it is on top of the library now. We actually moved the studio from the Women’s building to a building that’s called the Danforth University Center. DT: Yeah, the studio was in the basement of the Women’s building when they first went on the air and the whole time I was there. But the antenna was on top of Shepley Hall. I was not a tech guy. Going back to the very beginning, the guys that started the radio station were engineering students. I think Bob Feleky was getting his Master’s Degree in engineering and licensing of radio stations. His application for an FCC license was part of his graduate program and putting together the equipment such as the transmitter to actually broadcast right. His Master’s thesis was on how to obtain an FCC broadcast license. NF: That is wild that’s the way KWUR kind of started.

DT: That’s how it started. Like I said, that’s why when I put in my application “mucho record knowledge,” they jumped at it. They were like, “Oh, here’s a guy that knows something about records.” Nobody else did. At least you when it first started out. I actually brought in other local St. Louis people that also had radio shows. One of whom was a guy named Steve Scariano who I later formed a band with that I’d met at a record store. I got him to do a show on Saturday nights called “Radio City” named after the Big Star record. He played a lot of pop, like guitar pop, later known as power pop. I got another guy whose name was Joe Condeleri. He was this dude that whose family had always vacationed in Jamaica so he had gotten really hip to reggae. He started doing a show before Steve’s on Saturdays. He would do a two hour show which was called “Reggae Spectacular with the Mighty Striker.” I got one of the tech guys to hook up a Reeboks reel to reel deck and somebody to show me how I could set up some sort of an echo system for Joe Condeleri and his reggae show. They were doing that in New York, but nobody ever heard of that in St. Louis. It was just because he happened to be this guy that was plugged into Jamaican culture. The “Rock It!” punk rock show followed a guy that was on for two hours playing Christian rock. He would read Bible passages then I’d go on and play the Sex Pistols. When my show was over at 10:30, there was a guy that came in after me named Chuck Lavozi. Chuck Lavozi had a Gonzo radio show. It was like a theater and comedy records. I don’t even know what he played most of the time. But it was kind of crazy. He was plugged into the St. Louis theater scene and would bring in actors to do readings. KWUR was a real mixed bag. That’s kind of what college is right? It wasn’t for another four or five years that college radio became a real driving force of what became known as alternative music or alternative rock. That hadn’t happened yet when I was there. NF: Were there any events KWUR held at the time?

DT: Fall of 1977, the first weekend students came back, KWUR did a marathon. We stayed on the air for 48 hours straight. Myself and Steve Scariano did probably 36 of those 48 hours. We slept in the radio station. Usually the station would go off the air at midnight. Because I was a townie, once winter vacation hit everybody would be out of town, and I would be on the station for 12 or 14 hours a day. It was my thing for a few years. NF: We still do all night broadcast events where we have shows throughout the night, but we do broadcast 24 hours now. We have WideOrbit that kind of runs things for us when no one has a show. DT: At that point, we had two turntables and a pretty decent cassette deck that was wired into the board that you could playback or record on it. There was a Reeboks, quarter inch reel to reel which we actually used for interviews. NF: What was KWUR’s connection to artists? DT: KWUR was the only game in town for certain kinds of music. There was a pretty healthy Sire Records and Warner Brothers office in Clayton with a record rep who got hip to the fact that we were playing this stuff, even if it was only 10 watts. When Blondie came to town, not even to do a show, I had Debbie Harry in the studio for an interview. I got her to do a promo card, and she said, saying “first” with a lisp, “You’re listening to KWUR Washington University radio where you hear it first.” Also, over the telephone, I got to interview Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd from Television, a New York art band. I did a thing with a band in England called Eddie and the Hot Rods. I interviewed AC/DC on their first American tour, and I interviewed the Ramones the first time they ever played in the St. Louis area. And this was all because of the radio station. NF: That’s amazing. Wow.

DT: Yeah, it was cool. But you know, it was kind of going on all over the country. It was a small explosion which expanded over time. KWUR was there right at the very beginning with all that stuff. NF: I was wondering if you could say your introduction for your radio show? If you had one. DT: I always had a regular thing that I did. I would start the show with the song “Friday on My Mind,” which was originally recorded by an Australian 60s band called the Easybeats and was later covered by David Bowie on Pinups. Then I would say something like, “This is KWUR 90.3 on your FM dial, it’s time to roll back the carpets and store the breakables. Because punk rock is on the air.” NF: That’s perfect. DT: I don’t know if you know this but recently an exhibit opened at the St. Louis History Museum about the history of St. Louis music with a section all about the St. Louis punk rock scene. There are several flyers from my radio show, and I’m actually mentioned with information about the “Rock It!” program. There’s flyers from some of the bands that I played in and all my friends played in and stuff like that. NF: I’ll definitely check that out. Thank you so much. This was so cool to just hear about the very beginnings of KWUR. KWUR means so much to me. I spend so much of my time there so it’s very cool. DT: Well, I can identify. It meant a lot to me at the time too.

COMIC BY DEE CEA

KWUR MEETS NIRVANA — 1991 In anticipation of the upcoming show at Mississippi Nights, the legendary and beloved St. Louis concert venue that closed down in 2007, two KWUR DJs, Tim Fowler and Claire Newbern, pulled off an interview with Nirvana members Kurt Cobain and Chris Novoselic. As the recording crackles to life, a surprisingly calm Tim bridges a band that had just released what would become one of the best-selling albums ever, Nevermind, with independent, student-run radio. What follows is an edited transcript of the inteview, annotated to provide context and portray this pivotal moment in the band’s rise to mainstream fame. KWUR: How’s this tour going so far? I mean, now that you’re on a big label, as opposed to an indie label, is this tour any better, any worse, are you getting more support? [Nirvana had just released their first album on a major label, DGC Records, and was on tour in support of Nevermind. The video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was in regular rotation on MTV, which you’ll learn more about later in the interview.]

Nirvana: Well yeah we’re getting a lot more support, but our band has always just kind of been broadening its audience. Every tour there’s a few more people so… there’s a lot more people on this tour. But the last tour we were on, full tour of the US, was over a year and a half ago, so that’s a lot of time. KWUR: Have you been getting a much larger audience, like sizeably larger, on this tour? Nirvana: A few hundred extra people. It’s a lot bigger, they have bigger egos. KWUR: The audience? Nirvana: Yeah. We try to say something and they go [scoffs] ‘You’re half that man,’ or whatever. They scoff and spit, pull up their pants, and shake their fingers at us. They give us the shame shame finger type rub. Egomaniacs. They all carry mirrors. They’re vain.

[KWUR’s view on the “egomaniac” fans. Article by Michelle Provenzano from the Fall 1991 issue of Sample, KWUR’s zine.]

KWUR: On this new album — well, it’s a different sounding album than Bleach [1989], or Blech, or whatever. How do you pronounce that album? Nirvana: Blech. KWUR: Alright I’ve learned now. There’s a big difference in the sound. Is that a maturing band or just a new direction? Nirvana: There’s new hairs cropping up all over our bodies. We’re having wet dreams, we’re overreacting to our parents’ guidance. My mom told me to take out the garbage and I just went crazy. Popped a zit on her. I went and hung out with my friends and smoked cigarettes and listened to Metallica. Smoked pot. KWUR: When you play, your strap has this big, long extension. Your roadie was wearing the bass and it was around his ankles. Is that the way you learned to play or is that just a cool thing to do? Nirvana: Some people wear their straps up high, some people low. It’s just like the three bears: one was too hot, one was too cold, and the one in the middle was just right. But see, you can’t take her word for it. I’m hung like a bear. KWUR: Yeah, I’ve heard you’re the most well hung band in the business. Nirvana: Oh boy, are we. We played in Budapest, Hungary one time. KWUR: Really? Nirvana: It was amazing, it was a stadium. I think the capacity for the venue was about 20,000 people, but only 200 people showed up. And they were afraid of us so they sat around the side, against the wall. They really didn’t even pay attention to us. KWUR: Was that just you playing? Nirvana: The beer was bad.

KWUR: Really? I thought beer was supposed to be better in Europe. Nirvana: Not in Hungary— centralized economy. It was like two cents for a Pepsi, it was pretty cool. We got paid hundreds of thousands of Forints [Hungarian currency] and our tour manager was like, ‘You guys are gonna have money coming out of your ass!’ But that was like five bucks. If you buy Hungarian products, then you’re rich. But the only things to buy at that time, because it was really late at night, were these cardboard pizzas with ketchup on them, and corn. [Communism fell in Hungary in 1989, so the end of the Soviet Union was fresh on everybody’s minds at the time of this interview. Hungary had an especially difficult time transitioning their economy, which led to extreme inflation and price hikes. This must have been an especially interesting and difficult time to tour in Europe.]

KWUR: Now that the war is happening and all these political things are going on, everyone is getting involved in politics. Do y’all feel pressured to have lyrics or say something in your music about political issues? Nirvana: Well, we’re all pretty aware of what’s going on and we have some pretty lively political discussions. It’s bound to seep through, you know? Like right now we’re talking about it. I’ve gone through my PC stage. KWUR: So what stage are you on now? Nirvana: PCP. Have you heard about the new rage in the ghettos? It’s called space base. It’s half crack, half PCP. I try. I get all cranky like, ‘hey, we’re driving around, burning up petrochemicals. It’s too bad you don’t have a choice what kind of car you drive. If there was an electric car out there, or alternate fuel car, I’d buy one.

They just don’t even give you that option, it sucks. I don’t know about public transportation here in St. Louis, but in Tacoma you have to wait every half hour for your transfer for a bus, it’s a pain in the ass. You have to walk in the rain a lot. Cars are cool, I like cars. But the internal combustion engine is a pretty old idea, especially ones that burn off fossil fuels. You could run a car off cottonseed oil, hemp seed oil, or a diesel engine. Johnson’s baby oil you could drive around and then rub yourself down after you’re done with your ride. I saw something in the paper that there was a hemp rally here, under the arch. Did you go to that? KWUR: No. St. Louis isn’t the most liberal place in the world. There was that big Guns ‘n Roses riot here so everyone thinks rock and roll is bad. And marijuana, hemp, all that — it’s the same thing, it’s twice as bad. Nirvana: Do you think anything good came out of that incident? Because a fan had a camera and he flipped out, right?

[The student is referring to the July 1991 “Riverport Riot.” At a Guns ‘n Roses concert, Axl Rose stormed off stage after getting angry with a fan who was taking pictures of the band. A full riot ensued, causing dozens of injuries. At Nirvana’s show later that night, a more spontaneous kind of riot would occur, although one that is more familiar to the punk world. Here is the firsthand account of the chaotic show as described in Sample by Michelle Provenzano.]

KWUR: There’s a law here that a band has to have a license to perform and it costs about $200. So a lot of the local, small bands are having a hard time with that because they can’t afford that. [In St. Louis, there is a 5% “entertainment tax” on venues for putting on live events. It has been enforced on and off since it was written into law on August 16, 1969. What is likely being referred to here is the amendment to the ordinance, ratified in 1992, which reinforced the tax by revising the ordinance just slightly — but enough to bring it to the attention of event promoters. In order to cover this tax, venues would have performing artists pay a fee. This put a strain on independent artists, as it was often as much or more than they would make from performing and merchandise sales.]

Nirvana: How would they benefit from that if it’s a big band? Any big band is gonna be able to afford that. KWUR: It just makes it so local bands can’t play. An entertainment tax is what it is. You have to have a license and then the club has to pay 5% of its earnings. And it’s not just rock and roll bands. If you’re a comedian or a lounge singer, you have to have the same license. It’s apparently an old law that they’re just enforcing. That’s St. Louis. Nirvana: [Fake patriotic voice] America. Liberty. People coming together. Believe in one thing, the undeniable spirit of democracy. Every crumb for himself. This country was founded two hundred years ago with the ideal that every man was created equal, but we still had slaves. KWUR: If there was a war, would you fight? Nirvana: Depends what the war was. KWUR: Would you fight for America?

Nirvana: It depends. If some evil bastard country, who was just totally evil… Canada. Yeah. If Adolf Hitler grew up in Canada, if Canada all of a sudden turned into Nazi Germany maybe I would. If they were gassing Jews, or whoever. But I don’t see anything to fight for. I wouldn’t go to Southeast Asia and fight for DuPont chemicals, you know? Killing people is wrong, no matter what mask you put on. I could only fight in a civil war in the United States. To get the crooks out. To take over the man. Get Eldridge Cleaver [of the Black Panthers] out of the church, gather all the gang members and put their AKs to use. Just have Public Enemy [the hip-hop group] as the background. [Public Enemy is often cited as the first consciously political popular hip-hop group, setting the stage for conscious hip-hop, which would go on to thrive in the 90s. Nirvana’s reference to the group here shows a real knowledge of political action across the musical landscape at the time.]

Would you fight for freedom? Would you fight for democracy? Would you fight for that beautiful old glory, flapping gently over this nation, casting its benevolent gaze upon all? Fuck no, I wouldn’t. I’d wipe my ass with the American flag. That’s okay as long as you don’t burn it. KWUR: Why did y’all decide to do a video? Is that something you felt is part of expanding?

Nirvana: We’ve done videos before. Videos are great. I’ve seen some great videos. Like what? Mudhoney videos. [Mudhoney is a grunge band formed in Seattle around the same time as Nirvana. They were signed to Subpop, an important and genre-defining indie label. Even through Nirvana’s success in the early 90s, Kurt Cobain performed with Mudhoney, and the bands remained friendly. Mudhoney is still active today — and still gets asked in interviews about their connection to Nirvana]

KWUR: Did y’all have the concept for the newest video [“Smells Like Teen Spirit]? Nirvana: Yeah, we did. But we were under such great time restrictions that we really didn’t get a chance to work on it as hard as we wanted to. The production company that filmed the video edited 90% of it. Some of it was really embarrassing. So I flew down to LA as a last resort to change a few things and make it passable, but it really didn’t turn out how we wanted it to. KWUR: What don’t you like about it now? Nirvana: There was just a lot of raw footage that I saw when I was down there that I would have rather had in the video. We didn’t get the chance to see the raw footage, it was already compiled. KWUR: So would you want to do a video like Soul Asylum’s “Artificial Heart” that’s so gory that it can’t get played, even though it’s all tongue-in-cheek?

[Screengrab from Soul Asylum’s “Artificial Heart” music video, which depicts a woman with an artificial heart who is kidnapped, dismembered, and eventually reassembled by surgeons a-la Frankenstein’s monster. Since its release, the video has been banned by UK television, US MTV, and multiple VHS compilations.]

Nirvana: It depends on how into that statement you are. Were they so proud of that video and thought it was so awesome that they had to do it? They knew it would be banned or that they wouldn’t be able to play it. If we thought of some visuals that we were so proud of that we just had to have it done, yes, we would. But there’s no need to if you want to have your video played on MTV. KWUR: Is that the goal, to have a video get played on MTV, or is it just a video you’re happy with? Nirvana: A video that we’re happy with. “The theme for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was exactly what we thought. There was no need for gore or sex or anything in it. KWUR: Right. How’d you come up with the title, “Smells Like Teen Spirit?” Nirvana: A friend of mine wrote it on my bedroom wall once. KWUR: It probably boosted the sales of Speed Stick deodorant.

[Screengrab from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video. Most of the video depicts the band playing for a young audience in a high school gym as cheerleaders perform around them.]

Nirvana: I had no idea that product existed at the time that I wrote the song. KWUR: Do you do any other type of art? Nirvana: Yeah, I’m a full-fledged bohemian. I paint, draw, write poetry, and do interpretive dancing. KWUR: So are you gonna put all that in the stage show, do a little poetry and interpretive dance while you play the guitar? Nirvana: Maybe, I don’t know. That’s how most of the lyrics are written, anyhow, just pieces of my poetry. I don’t ever start on a song with a theme. I just use all these pieces from poetry as a last resort, because I can’t think of anything else. KWUR: So you don’t try to keep them all separate? If you came up with an idea for a painting would you put that in the lyrics? Nirvana: Not with a painting, because I just don’t value painting very much. I’ve never thought of a theme for painting, I just paint for my own self. I really don’t care if it has an impact, even on me. It’s just the process of painting. I usually paint right over my other paintings. I’m too lazy to buy canvas.

KWUR: This is the campus by the way. This is where we live and work. Nirvana: Are we going to the station? KWUR: Yeah but we’re in the sorority building, so there must be some sorority thing. You know, radio, Greek life. Nirvana: I hate that shit.

[Some of Kurt Cobain’s paintings. Most of his visual art was not published during his lifetime, but in archival books and biographies after his untimely death in 1994.]

[KWUR station in the basement of the Women’s Building, circa 2010.]

Sample is a zine made from the work of the KWUR 90.3 FM and the wider Washington University in St. Louis communities. This Edition was set in Superclarendon (OFT) Black Italic, Aktiv Grotesk Regular, and Aktiv Grotesk Bold.