There are many radio shows through the years, most of which are amazingly still on the air, that have influenced me. In this post, I will list them; if you like my show, you may like these shows as well. All have archives, live streams during the show, and are on terrestrial radio if you happen to live within reception.
Acid Jazz on KXJZ
Back in the summer of 1995 I was listening to the jazz radio station out of Sacramento State university as my dad drove us to the grocery store in our quaint mountain town, when this show came on called Acid Jazz. I had to stay in the parking lot and listen! When we got home, I continued to listen on the living room stereo, and have been listening ever since.
The show was started by host Steve Milne who was aware of the acid jazz, rare groove, jazz-rap and UK jazz dance scenes. He added it as a show to his Saturday night line-up, which started with his show Global Beat, a show be created as a response to the late 80s world music craze. While I enjoyed listening to Global Beat, I couldn’t wait for Acid Jazz to come on later in the evening.
Steve Milne still continues to guest host the show, but usually the host is the music director at KXJZ, Gary Vercelli. Another host named John Florek hosted the show from approximately 2002-2007. His take on the show emphasized funky and jazzy jam bands, and so was my education on groups like Particle, Jacob Fred Jazz Oddessy, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Skerik, and Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe/Robert Walter’s 20th Congress/Greyboy Allstars (though actually I already knew about the Greyboy Allstars and DJ Greyboy from Steve Milne’s 90s episodes of the show.)
I highly suggest you catch archived episodes on the website, and at archive.org, especially the Steve Milne hosted episodes. A good one to start with is this one in honor of Lee “Scratch” Perry. Also, I uploaded 4 partial episodes of the show that I taped in the 90s.
I actually don’t suggest you listen to the show live, as it conflicts with FroggyMe’s Fantastic Fantasy, so don’t do that, haha. The show used to be produced live in the studio, and I even chatted with Steve Milne on the phone when he was there during the show, but it is now produced as a podcast and aired at a later time, so there is no real reason to catch it live anyway, unless you are within reception of KXJZ and want the thrill of listening to it over terrestrial radio waves. The archives are sufficient for Acid Jazz, but for the remainder of the shows listed below, I do suggest catching them live, as they are live in the studio and it’s more fun that way.
Gilles Peterson Worldwide
Gilles Peterson started as a pirate radio DJ at Radio Invicta, playing soul jazz and jazz funk for all the UK jazz dancers from a ship floating off the shores of the UK (unless Radio Invicta was just in an attic, and I’m not going to look it up.) He later had influential shows on Jazz FM, Kiss FM, and went mainstream in 1998 on BBC Radio 1. I used to listen to him via RealPlayer 10 to catch his shows on BBC Radio 1. He has since moved to BBC Radio 6 Music, and I highly suggest catching his show. It’s a Saturday morning show in the US, Saturday afternoon for people in the UK.
He is the originator of the term “acid jazz” and founded both the Acid Jazz and Talkin’ Loud record labels. His current label is Brownswood, named after his house he keeps just to house his massive record collection.
If you hurry, he currently has episodes (they expire after a month) celebrating the unique sound of London club culture with Broken Beat in the early 2000s (with Bembe Segue, Bugz in the Attic, Masters at Work, IG Culture, 4 Hero, Domu, Two Banks of Four, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Da Lata, Paul Murphy, UNKLE, Ed Rush and Optical, DJ Shadow), and an episode celebrating Manchester and Liverpool soccer.
Shoot, as I type this I am being blown away by the Broken Beat episode, but I see that it expires in 8 hours. Oh well.
RISE/Listen Here
In the late 90s, Mark Maxwell started a spiritual jazz show called RISE on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles. The description of the show was “RISE is a weekly creative jazz celebration of African roots, social consciousness and spiritual transcendence.” When I moved to southern California to go to college, I was blessed to discover this show and the amazing spiritual jazz scene in Los Angeles. The show was usually hosted by Mark Maxwell, with guest hosting by Ollie Bivins and Leroy Downs. Leroy Downs now has a great show on KCRW, and until a couple months ago, RISE was still going strong. Mark Maxwell decided to hand the show over to Ollie Bivins, and the show was rebranded Listen Here (named after the Eddie Harris song). Ollie Bivins with Listen Here continues the deep kozmigroov spiritual sounds that we had come to love on RISE. Unfortunately management at KPFK were idiots, and stole the time slot out from under Ollie Bivins, so instead the weekly show we were to continue, he’s only once a month. The show the other weekends is still good, but it’s just straight-ahead jazz, and clearly a prerecorded podcast, where-as Ollie is always live in the studio, and playing the deepest spiritual jazz vinyl and new releases. Expect to hear from labels like Impulse!, Strata East, Nimbus West, Milestone, and more.
His show is Sunday night into Monday morning midnight to 3AM in the Pacific time zone. If you are in the area, it’s on 90.7 FM Los Angeles. KPFK.org has archives of the show for a couple weeks. Listen Here is the 4th Sunday (Monday morning) of each month.
KFPK archives.
Innamissions
When I was on the acid-jazz email listserv, there was a weekly playlist always posted by a DJ at KUCI 88.9 FM Orange County, California, with a show called Swope Transmissions. His playlists were amazing, and when I started DJing at KUCI myself, I was happy to discover a friend of the classic Swope Transmissions show host. His name is J. Pulaski, and he has his own awesome long running show on KUCI called Innamissions.
He plays super groovy future soul, deep house, broken beat, and similar sounds from labels like Tru Thoughts, Ubiquity, BBE, Sounds in Colour, Ninja Tune, Mo’Wax, which is fitting since I believe he works at both Tru Thoughts and Ubiquity.
His show is every Monday evening on KUCI from 8PM-10PM Pacific. You can catch it live at KUCI.org. Typing this up, I just discovered they give him an encore broadcast on Sundays. Nice! And here is an interview with J. Pulaski.
Higher Ground
Another show I discovered from the acid-jazz email listserv was Higher Ground on CIUT in Toronto, one of snowdusk’s favorite radio stations! It is hosted by Jason Palma, and I loved reading his playlists in the 90s.
His show Higher Ground is still going strong, and has episodes on Thursday evening 8-10PM Eastern time. The station hosts time limited archives, so be sure to catch the show any time!
If you are interested in the acid-jazz email listserv I mentioned, it was archived by the moderator at that link. I don’t think it is live anymore, but if it is, I am definitely going to sign back up and get my playlists on it. The archives are full of good info about lots of music. The listserv was hosted by UCSD (I think the email was acid-jazz AT ucsd.edu), and in 2006 the archives moved to a UCSD server. Those archives unfortunately no longer exist, but the original archives from ~1995-2006 are at the aforementioned link. The list originally started in 1993. I started reading the archives around 1995, and joined in ~1998.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this, and I hope you enjoy some of those shows! –FroggyMe