What a year it's been here at Beware of the Blog - 1.7 million hits, 1,130 articles, 35 authors and two cease and desist letters (both fake). For those who joined us late, here's a list of the posts that were stuffed with chewy MP3 goodness.

...................................................................................................................................................................................

After the WFMU staff walkout in 1969, Upsala College closed the station for 10 months, until they hired a new station manager to run the station with "a more professional effort".

Troubles soon arose between Alan Fritch, the new station manager, and the staff at the station. This issue of the Upsala Gazette from March 12, 1971 (PDF file, 1.27MB) details a full-blown controversy surrounding the dismissal of two staffers by Fritch, a list of grievances against Fritch brought before the WFMU Radio Board by the station staff, and the subsequent vote to dissolve the Radio Board.

Apparently, as quoted by one Upsala student, Fritch didn't "get along with the kids". The list of 15 grievances included complaints about Fritch acting as a "policeman" and "stifling dissent". He dismissed two staffers after they broke into the station after-hours. Whether he was a power-mad dictator or merely doing his job was a matter of opinion. Some staff members believed that Fritch was "slowly getting rid of the long-hairs", while Fritch claims to have been "merely going by policy". Lots of interesting details about the controversy surrounding Fritch's management and about the station in general (like how one of the dismissed DJs was cut loose after an on-air "marathon.. reading of Lord of the Rings") are all available.

- bill 12-24-2005 6:01 pm

WFMU recently was asked to curate an hour of videos by the kind folks at NYC-TV's New York Noise program, and we got so much feedback about this clip of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band from German TV in 1972 that we decided to toss it up on the old blog. "I'm Gonna Booglarize You" (41 MB mpg) here on the Beat Club finds the band in peak mode slipping and sliding all over the place, and here's a bonus vidclip of the TV ad for the Spotlight Kid album (929K mov) that must have confused many TV viewers. Love to find a good anthology of Beat Club performances on DVD, just to see Blue Cheer once again performing buried beneath a mountain of amps (and hair).

- bill 12-24-2005 6:13 pm [add a comment]





add a comment to this page:

Your post will be captioned "posted by anonymous,"
or you may enter a guest username below:


Line breaks work. HTML tags will be stripped.