c
d
a
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TOP: GIORGIA VIRGILI; LINDA A. CICERO ( 4); COURTESY MARK LAWRENCE
b
J;;;; J;;;;, ’06, MA ’ 11, is a science writer
based in Palo Alto.
DOMAINS
Radio Free Cardinal
Putting a Stanford spin on campus radio.
BY JULIA JAMES
Powered mostly on the volunteer labor of
students, faculty and a few local residents
since its inception in 1947, Stanford’s underground (literally!) radio station KZSU
beams news, tunes and sports coverage
across the Bay Area from its home in the
basement of Memorial Auditorium. The
windowless den, largely unchanged since a
few major construction projects in the late
’60s and early ’70s, features a two-track
reel-to-reel tape recorder from the 1980s,
along with a bunch of other stuff that chief
engineer Mark Lawrence, ’ 67, considers “too
good to throw out as e-waste.” Brand-new
digital consoles, installed recently at a cost
of $43,000, have spruced the place up a bit.
But KZSU is in no danger of losing its authentic college feel: A grungy couch, a Jimi
Hendrix mural and pot of perpetually stale
coffee speak to the station’s soul. ■
a. Maayan Dembo, ’ 14, aka DJ May-jahn, hosts “Pumping Iron” from
Studio A. The two-hour live
show mixes dubstep, electro,
house, trance and “maybe also
some Enya curveballs.”
b. The station operates on “an artful
blend of ancient and modern technology,” says Lawrence, who joined
the KZSU crew in 1963 (inset). That
mix includes obsolete telephone
switchgear donated to the station in
1969. “After I’m gone, nobody will
know how to fix it.”
d. Shows span the stylistic spectrum—
from classical to country, R&B to
Bollywood, show tunes to spoken
word, punk to funk—but spurn the
commercial mainstream. KZSU is
“free-form,” says general manager
Adam Pearson, ’ 12. “If it’s good,
we play it.”
c. The library houses between 50,000
and 80,000 albums and tens of tera-bytes of data. In an effort to keep
the music collection under control,
volunteers are tasked with reviewing
albums that come in and tossing
those that don’t make the cut.
e. When Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at
Mem Aud in 1990, campus cops did
a security sweep of KZSU and scrutinized an old analogue multi-meter
as a potential bomb. “I have 5,000
objects here that could be bombs,”
says Lawrence.
