Pavement Live on KDVS

When we recruit new DJs at KDVS, there’s a few things we tell them: DJ Shadow started out here. Blackalicious met here. Noam Chomsky was interviewed here. Pavement played their first show in studio here.

But it’s always been a bit of a thing of legend, because even if there was a reel-to-reel recording, it has long been missing. A couple of tracks from a listener recording surfaced last year on Youtube and then Pitchfork, but it seemed like the whole session was lost.

So imagine my surprise when the following occurred:

I was exchanging contact info with the web director of Smithsonian Folkways at the beginning of my internship, and he noted my 916 Sacramento number.

“That’s pretty close to Stockton, huh? I’m a huge fan of a band from there called Pavement,” he said.

“Oh yeah? This is debatable, but we like to say that at my college radio station…”

“KDVS?” [Surprise #1]

“Yeah! You know it?”

“Yeah, they played their first show there. I have it all on tape.” [Surprise #2] “I’ll make you a copy.” [Surprise #3]

Well, here it is: 46 minutes featuring Stephen Malkmus, Spiral Stairs and Gary Young on December 14, 1989, transferred from cassette to cassette, acquired in a tape trade in the ’90s. Download here.

And here’s a little preview of “Debris Slide” live followed by a pre-recorded “Box Elder” that they kind of played over:

KChung Radio ID

My buddy Solomon runs a low-power radio station in Chinatown called KChung Radio, named after its origin on Chung King Road. It started out broadcasting just one evening a week, but since the fall it has grown to cover five hours a night Sunday through Thursday, with dozens of DJs and live performances.

The station is currently holding a contest, mostly for their own benefit, to create audio station identifications for broadcast.

The winner gets a cute little KChung lightbox:

(I’m pretty sure I took this photo.)

So I cobbled together a submission tonight, attempting to redo my “I Am Sitting in a Room”-style experiment. Someone had to point out to me that I did it all wrong: I recorded straight from tape to tape in the same console instead of letting it play out loud and recording the room tone along with it. Doh!

But in this experiment I went back and forth between two portable cassette recorders. The first one is running out of battery, so my voice is slowed down (but I still can’t wrap my head around how it gets sped up to normal pitch). It pretty quickly degrades into feedback and then static.

If you want to compete too, submissions are due April 1.

• No parameters except it should probably say “KChung”
• Email to contact@kchungradio.org