The DJs on UCLA Radio’s Night School program know the
feeling of being outsiders. In their attempt to promote the station
by organizing an on-campus show, the DJs were fenced out by
bureaucratic red tape.
“The sound restrictions are pretty tough here,”
event coordinator Chris Fort said. “You can only have
amplified sound outside at Westwood Plaza. I think you have to have
the three people who signed the student organization up be present
when trying to request a time. It’s a lot of hassle so we
were looking for other alternatives.”
The next logical alternative was Pug’z, a record store in
Westwood. However, after two months of weekly performances,
Pug’z closed down. In need of a new venue, Fort (DJ Raindrop)
came upon Rhino Records. Now four Night School DJs will be spinning
an array of hip-hop, trance, drum n’ bass and jungle
Wednesday night from 6 to 9 p.m at the store.
“(People at Rhino) really want to see us draw a lot of the
UCLA crowd over to their store because they said they don’t
get very many UCLA students,” Fort said. “While
Pug’z was more than happy to have us, Rhino is a lot more
concerned about getting a crowd in. They want to see that
we’re going to bring people there, so the first event is a
test for us. If we draw a lot of people in, then it’ll become
a recurring thing.”
With Night School’s DJ showcase resembling a television
pilot, Fort has chosen more experienced DJs to represent the
program. Students Stephen Larkin, Julio Beltran, Andrew Kelley and
DJ Greg V. will no doubt be spinning at their very best. If Fort
and the Night School DJs can secure a weekly set at Rhino, it would
provide the long-suffering radio station with the publicity and
community it’s been craving.
According to Beltran, who hosts “Broadband” on
Wednesday nights from 10 to 11:30 p.m., UCLA Radio has dropped from
having simply a “low profile” to an “almost
non-existent listener base.”
“The biggest downer is the fact that we don’t have a
frequency,” said Beltran, a.k.a. Julio B. “It’s
okay though. We work (for) who we can get whether it be two
listeners or 2,000.”
For fifth-year political science student Larkin (DJ Whizard),
UCLA’s unsympathetic stance toward the station has hardly
helped matters. In his opinion, the school sets too many limits on
ads, hurting the station’s ability to make itself known to
oblivious students.
“I only heard about UCLA Radio through a guy, who had a
bag full of records, in my history of electronic music
class,” Larkin said.
The recent hike in the popularity and number of DJs worldwide
bodes well for Night School. More and more youth are purchasing
turntables and looking to DJing as a career.
“Obviously, there are up and down sides to this,”
Fort said. “For existing DJs that try to make a living,
it’s harder when you have a large influx of new talent all
willing to work for less and less, but at the same time it’s
probably made a lot of people work harder to get better. Los
Angeles is swamped with awesome DJs so you can go see great stuff
anywhere at anytime. For me, it’s just cool to see people
find something they like.”
About a year ago, Fort had organized workshops at the station to
teach people how to mix. Recently, some of the DJs have talked
about reviving the workshops as a way to draw some attention to the
station, but nothing has been set in stone.
“We’re just trying to have fun, expose people to
music, and hopefully promote the station,” Fort said.