Live from the Underground

Description

Live from the Underground
by Katherine Rye Jewell

ISBN: 9781469677255
Softcover, new
published: December 2023

Brief Description:
Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings
of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and
their DJs on musical culture since the 1970s was anything but inevitable.
As media deregulation and political conflict over obscenity and censorship
transformed the business and politics of culture, students and community
DJs turned to college radio to defy the mainstream–and they ended up
disrupting popular music and commercial radio in the process. In this first
history of US college radio, Katherine Rye Jewell reveals that these
eclectic stations in major cities and college towns across the United
States owed their collective cultural power to the politics of higher
education as much as they did to upstart bohemian music scenes coast to
coast. Jewell uncovers how battles to control college radio were about more
than music–they were an influential, if unexpected, front in the nation’s
culture wars. These battles created unintended consequences and overlooked
contributions to popular culture that students, DJs, and listeners never
anticipated. More than an ode to beloved stations, this book will resonate
with both music fans and observers of the politics of culture.