Rusell Rogers On Discovering College Radio

"When I was a teenager in the late 1970’s, FM radio was still a new thing. If you bought a new car people would ask you what kind of radio it had and if you answered “I’ve got an AM….and FM radio” you were, in fact, the cat’s meow. 

The happening new radio station that everyone listened to was 107.9 something or another. They played all the latest hits! Over and over and over again. Pat Benatar’s HEARTBREAKER seemed to be a favorite. The best that I can remember it played every ten minutes. I was laying in bed one night and I said to myself “If I hear one more Pat Bena-fucking-tar song I’m going to…do bad things.” However before I headed out the door to start my crime spree, I thought that there has to be something better out there. (True story by the way.)

So, I whipped the little red line on the tuner down to the left hand side of the dial and started slowly turning the knob to find a station that didn’t play Pat Benatar every ten minutes. The first station that tuned in, barely, was WDAV, the Davison College radio station on the other side to Charlotte, North Carolina. I lived in Fort Mill, South Carolina, which is about 40 miles away so it is an absolute miracle that I could pick up the station at all. Furthermore, FM college radio stations were rare at that time. So, this was clearly God taking pity on an awkward scruffy redhead that didn’t fit in anywhere (I was a bird watcher, I had a wild flower garden in my back yard, and, as a gymnast, I wore tights. Literally, I fit in nowhere). The first thing that I heard was the student DJ saying “Hey guys! I just got back from a vacation in the UK and I have a big stack of new stuff to play.”

Did I tell you this was a true story? True story. 

The very first thing I heard was GOD SAVE THE QUEEN by the Sex Pistols. I thought to myself, “Well, now that’s different.” You have to remember, I was a child of the Deep South. Cutting edge cultural events just didn’t happen there. A further sign from God showing me the path forward. That week, or shortly there after, I heard the likes of X, Dead Kennedys, The Dammed, Black Flag, Buzzcocks, and so on. I was so happy. 

As a side note, a few months after I discovered WDAV it changed its programing to all classical music. Again a higher power showing me the way to an ephemeral path that would soon be lost forever.

So, I credit Pat Benatar for changing my life. I still have a PTSD reaction when I hear her. However, had I not wanted to gouge my eyeballs out hearing her songs over and over, I might never have pushed myself to find new and better things. I learned at a fairly early age that mediocrity was a cancer that kills. 

I left home, went to art school in Philly on a gymnastics scholarship, then moved to Washington with my lovely wife Mary, went to grad school and became a professional wildlife biologist and ecologist. So, I still dig birds and wildflowers, and as a cyclist, I still wear tights. And I’ve not listened to commercial radio.

| Russell Rogers and Frank Shankly met in college. Years later, they're still friends.