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This podcast is being brought to you by WXAV88.3FM and wxav.com. WXAV bringing the best podcasts to you. Hi everyone, this is Gisele Lopez, features editor at the Xavierite. You're about to hear mine and Luke Hoderk's interview with KEXP's Owen Murphy as he talks about international clash day and its impact as a radio holiday.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Okay, so first question is why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role in the KXP and the International Clash Day? Right, so at KXP I produced the morning show hosted by John Richards and I'm also a also managed project for projects here and one of being in this case International Clash Day. So within that role, helping the station celebrate an arbitrary holiday made up by my friend and boss John Richards.
I'm organizing every aspect of our broadcast for all three main shows Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So for example, I was just before you guys called. I was arranging the how we're going to spotlight local activist organizations, a different community from the ACLU to others. So I was organizing that with connected number of interviews.
I've also interviewed, I don't know, 10 different artists about the clash from yesterday with Tom Rello, a rich young machine, a guy who spots in them, also spoke to Colin Molloy of December. They have any work to come out. He was a clash fan, I think we also spoke to him. I'm like a lot of boys, a couple of East movie Avengers, Steve Jones of Sex Pistols.
Yeah, I read your on Steve Jones interview. I thought that was really cool. Oh yeah, I absolutely remember exactly where I was among my heard the Sex Pistols, Victorian house in the Appleton. And as much as John, Johnny Ronda, vocals cut through, for whatever reason, it was those guitars.
Here's the guitars, just blew my head off. Oh yeah, there's something in Steve's of their music and Sex Pistols in the clash that, I don't like you in the term change my life because that seems kind of, yeah, cheesy. Thank you. But it did certainly make me see things differently.
It was like some of us speaking to me finally and that, you know, the music of my older brother and sister, which was, you know, so kind of aggressive as it were. So long way, what an answer to what I do. Yeah. All right.
So what is the purpose behind international clash day? Why is it so important? It's funny because I kind of asked later on this. I, you know, when I wrote kind of a messaging to use on the air, I wrote a week soldering the music and the message to the clash and I purposely chose the music first.
I think that's what's most important, just that there's this great band that wasn't afraid to break rules, even punk rock rules. They started off as kind of a straightforward rock and roll punk rock band clearly influenced by, you know, the students and their moans. But from that, they've been branched off. They're also clearly influenced by reggae and by funk and by hip hop and extraordinarily interesting things.
We're also standing for the things they believed in. And some people will criticize that. You know, I just like that it did stand for a single weekend. So I think that's where, for the purpose of what we're doing now is what's important.
This is an odd social and political time right now. The country's fairly divided and there is feel that way. So we want to spotlight those people we think are making a difference in the community and want to get others to do the same. And it's been incredible.
You know, it's funny. We just add a bunch of really huge stations to our to our to international class. They want to stand out to me. Because I'm from the Atlas is the current, which is a, you know, the fellow traveler in the world, you know, gigantic nonprofit radio station.
So but yeah, I mean, we've got stations in Warsaw with a city like Vancouver, Columbia, San Francisco, Seattle, Olympia, Tucson, declaring international class days. So I'm trying to make a small little bit of difference in the world by highlighting what we think is important. Yeah, for sure. I did a little digging around on your Twitter.
And I saw that you retweeted a lot of governors from cities like Vancouver and Washington, the governor of Washington, declaring and recognizing international class day. I think the guy's name is Dow Constantine and he's an executive for King County. And he was also a former KXVDJ back when it was KCMU, right? That's correct.
That was pretty cool. And in all, there's it looks like there's 13 cities that have recognized international class day. I haven't looked recently. So you probably know more than I do, as a matter of fact, if you go to internationalclassday.com, it's all there.
And they've got the proclamation. There's something hilarious and ridiculous about getting cities to recognize international class days. So for example, if you go to the KXVD SoundCloud page, if you look on either the KXV, Twitter feed, or Elizabeth, which is John Richards, Twitter feed, you'll see a link to audio in which I don't know if you should, I'll gain full Florida, the County Commission or the City Commission, declares international class day. And it's totally worth a listen.
You see, it's a podcast as well. You guys should play that in this podcast. You know, the last, well, I'll let people listen to it. But the way the audio clip finishes is just go away.
I heard it yesterday, turned around right away. And I just couldn't stop grinning because it was just so funny and fun and cool and weird. Yeah. I think he's going to go to recognize international class day and arbitrary holiday made up by myself, John Richards, six years ago, for another reason that he wanted to play more class on.
Just one. I actually found out, his start, I was reading through a lot of these articles that were talking about international class day. A lot of them were just talking about how John Richards just did it, because he could. Like there was no other reason other than just to play class music.
And I just find that amazing how this kind of just took off. Like now it's five years later, the six year running, and it's grown into like this amazing, like huge celebration among radio stations. I'm glad you mentioned this because here's the second slice of this, right? Another slice of most radio stations have pre-determined playlists by a program director.
And that's fine. That's how they want to either run their business with nonprofit. But we don't work that way. Now we, you know, we have a great new director, Dunyakes, who in, who has sent CLX000 to record every day.
That's not correct. But it sure seems like a lot. And every week he is adding new music to our rotation and taking those stuff out and putting in our library. So what we do is we bring a little bit of a new suggestion here.
Here's the new music. You don't want to play something for it. Or play something you want to play. So our PJs are allowed to choose the music they want to play.
And from that, we get things like this where someone can just say, you know what? Because I think the way to start was it's a little bit like, you just play class on people in that class. And I'm like, why can't I play my class? Of course I can.
Why can I keep playing class? I'm just going to say, well, at some point, it's not in the morning. They're about to be completely changed to show from just a regular, every day amazing show to a show that was about the clash. And I like that.
You know, I worked in commercial radio for one time. More on new talking sports side. It's refreshing to be at a station like this now, KXV, that is about the music and the community and that spirit and that togetherness. And it's amazing.
And I wish and I hope more stations will do what we do and issue the trappings of regular boring, average everyday radio. This reminds me of another thing. Our boss and our executive Pete here at WXAV was telling us to tie this into college radio day. And now me and my one friend, we both run a show here together.
And we didn't have a spot back when another arbitrary holiday, International College Radio Day was a thing. But we had bands come in and we were sitting and we were watching all these, you know, local independent bands. They weren't all necessarily indie. We had a punk rock band in here too, which they don't really do that anymore, especially on the larger stations because I've been told that a lot of the larger mainstream radio stations have been bought out by TV companies.
So the reason why they're just playing whatever's making money is essentially to promote TV shows that are on and new movies and things that are coming out. And it's not even about the music anymore. And I heard like back in the day, if you're adjusting a local band, you could take it to the big radio station in town and they would probably play your record. But we don't have a whole lot of that anymore.
And college radio and independent radio are the things that are keeping that spirit of radio live. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure how that works back in the day. I'm a little dubious of that.
Some of each other radio stations and they would play their song. I imagine it happened a few times. But I would imagine there's some embedding process that they had to go through first, either legal or maybe illegal, or demoralize it were. But yeah, I mean, so, and I can't speak to the radio station.
But you know, one thing that's kind of hard to see is that radio stations are having your panaxian and they're videotaping and playing in playing the sessions live. You know, so for example, as I'm bringing Colin Malloy to the semperist in the art station, Jessica Lee Mayfield, a kind of a folk country rock singer out of them. I think she was national now. But somewhere she's from I'm trying to blink at sources from was just finishing a live session with the Sheryl Waters limited show here.
Yeah, so and we have 1.2 million subscribers on our YouTube channel. We've got over 600 million views and we 80, 75, 80% of our live sessions are open to public for free. Because it's about the arts, but the music is about the community. And I hope that that becomes contagious.
You know, one nice thing, I know that some fairly influential people watch the artists and then have them on their television show. I'm fairly certain that the people who work are actually found himself pay attention to KXV and then book artists on the show. I'm sure they pay attention to a lot of things, but we're one drop in that. So I mean, we'll talk about it originally.
Yeah, just by going on, man. So actually kind of like drawing a little bit from that. So there was a lot of college radio stations that were listed. In fact, I think most, if not all of them were college radios.
So is this international clash days a geared more towards college radios or is there like mainstream radio stations like I know in Chicago, we have iHeartRadio, which is a really big radio station over here. And so it was kind of like, are you guys planning on maybe expanding to hit the mainstream radio? Or is it just purely for or geared more towards college radios, I should say? So we don't care about whether a station is commercial or public or whatever we care about is the music and the classic of the clash and the arts organizations and the artists that were inspired and influenced before during and after the period where the clash was, well, I think the best bandwool and also the kind of interesting bandwool, you know, so for example, we just announced on Monday that Starbucks, all 7,000 plus Starbucks, I think it's in the country, will change their playlist on Wednesday, February 7th, which of course everyone knows is international clash day and play a curated playlist put together by our afternoon DJ and host and head of content, Kevin Cole.
I mean, that will feature, you know, big audio dynamite and Ragus on the influence today. And of course, a bunch of flash songs, muscularos, just one of the most hilarious. And Starbucks could not be further away from college radio, you know, it's obviously a giant corporation, but they won't be part of it and we're glad to have them. Not about what is it with someone's corporate or not.
It's about, again, this music, this message and building a community. So yeah, so we don't care. Sigraying from that about the message and the music of the clash, do you think that there are any bands, like, because it's not just about the clash international clash day, but it's like, there's also an emphasis on just protest music in general. So there are, I don't know, music from like the Dead Kennedys or Bob Dylan, or even new bands like I like Iron Reagan and another band called Idols.
I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it. You know, it's funny. I don't think it's an interesting or an answer to your question, but you know, I've been a good always artist and we're going to play clips for international clash day and all of our main shows, more intro to show and everything show.
But what really kind of grabbed me was radio stations in faraway places, taking time out to, again, and I feel like a broken record here, to celebrate the music and message of the clash and, you know, building a community around this and so forth. So that's kind of what matters to me more than protest songs. You know, on the morning show, we'll be talking to a guy who had a show on a radio station in all places, Antarctica, he's a scientist down there. Oh, wow.
Well, we're still trying to get this hard, because the time difference of goofy, we're trying to get the DJs from a radio station in China on with us, but it's kind of difficult. But we'll figure that out. I was just speaking to a guy in Mexico, in the Baja, part of Mexico who's going to join us on the morning show as well. And I'm still kind of working on booking other guests like this for the, for the, for the African show.
It's just completely interesting. I can't wait to talk to these folks. And I want to know why they are doing this on this barbecue. Like, why does it matter to them?
Why is it part of it? Maybe it's just a fun. Maybe they, maybe they, they feel like they want to say something in the social and, this odd social and political climate. I don't know, but I'm, that's what I'm interested in.
But the music itself, new protesting. I'm not sure. If there's a song that skips, of course, we'll play it. You know, it's very great.
It's fun as talking to, I was talking to Tom Lolo of the American Machine Institute said it, you can, you can have, I'm a character, it's something that you have, you know, music with a message with the, but the music better be great. So the message is like, you know, sugar for those of her. Right. And I actually got because you and Luke actually answered a lot of the questions that I had had posted here.
So I've actually got one final, like official question, would be what is the hope for the future of international clash day? Like, what are you guys, is there a plan for maybe adding on to it? Or is it like, what's just the hope for it? What's the impact that you guys are hoping to gain from this as it progresses as the years go on?
Well, for the morning show, we'd like to take the show and make this nation a London and also we're hoping this year we'll get out and do the show from there. And, you know, I know, so if you asked any one of us, I'm sure we have different aspirations for the day. And, you know, for me, it's kind of, you know, John Richard made it up. It's kind of his day sort of, I'm just here helping facilitate everything, you know, we tell the gathering space in Kixby, we have a, there's a coffee shop there, there's a record store, like the out of records, and there's a stage there and we can, I don't know, 350 people in there and we're going to have clash covers night with local bands.
Oh, so what would be fun to like have a huge concert, like, you know, I don't know, 50,000 people and do something of that nature with huge bands? You know, that's extraordinarily aspirational, I don't know. It reminds me, they did that with the Ramones where they had all the artists that were influenced by them. So like, I think it was at their very last show, so they had like Eddie Vetter come up and play with them and they had one of the people from Rancid come and play with them.
And yeah, talking about something like that. Yeah, I don't know. It'd be great to, you know, get the band involved. I think they're, they're reticent to do so they're fairly protective of their legacy and their their image.
But the band's management folks have been great and they've been helpful on the way. The Joe Summer Foundation, which is an organization where he lived before he passed away, has his some fan members on the board and they've been helping very helpful as well. So, you know, it's funny. This is an arbitrary holiday, you know, kind of morphing into, you know, building international community of like-minded folks who want to change the world for the better, which is kind of what the clash were about.
They used music and the guitars. I think that, I'm kind of, it's such a big question to sell that I don't know. I don't know. I think that's where I go.
Maybe, maybe not. Thank you very much for listening to this WXAV 88.3 FM podcast. Be sure to visit our website, wxav.com for more information on your escape from ordinary radio.