Veiled by the shadows of a frigid city morning, a granite saint’s hand is lifted, blessing the concrete path twisting into the distance.

“Throrl, korl ra black courtt…rock amen the feet by night…” That’s what I hear. I think. It sounds like music in the distance, vaguely familiar.

It’s “Cradle of Filth.” Black metal? I can’t place the song, but the stream of musical profanities and screams is totally incongruent with the chaste semblance of the university’s campus.

I stop, partly in confusion about the music, and partly because I’m lost. The University of San Francisco, California, is barren of any life. Shaking my head, I experience: chagrin. Jet sent me here, at this unholy hour. Jet, with her worn-in cowboy boots and music shirts and infectious laughter. I know from the other night that she shares my affinity for Bloody Marys at any time of day, and I think she must be having one right now, sipping it and guffawing about my situation.

The campus is gorgeous – embodying every lyrical image that an archaic, parochial school is expected to. Luckily for me, it also has a complicated, labyrinth-like layout, and everything is obscured by ivy vines. My map is shit. It’s mocking me with its vagueness. So I just walk.

By some grace of coincidence, I spot the building I’ve been hunting: Phelan Hall. It sounds so New England to me. Peering through the glass entrance, I note that it is also void of humanity.

Awesome.

But it is unlocked, and I go in, seeking a tiny radio station in the bowels of the elegant building. KUSF radio—one of the few remaining stations in the city with a strong connection to the larger community—is hiding here someplace.

And I continue to be lost. With glee and a little fear, I call Jet Nordling, the Advertising and Marketing Coordinator of KUSF. After all, it is six o’clock the morning, and being bitched out is not on my “to-do” list today. Miraculously, she answers, laughs at me (I don’t ask about the Bloody Mary), and tells me where to go.
The station is shockingly inconspicuous. As I enter, I hear it: King Diamond—another proud group of the black-metal genre. The metal mystery is solved; Black Metal Martha, a KUSF radio volunteer, will be wrapping up her 2am-8am show in a couple of hours. The window is slightly open, letting her “Rampage Radio” show filter out into the quiet.

Martha Hughes is exhausted, though her eyes remain a clear blue. Despite the discordant music pounding through the station, inertia is inevitable. But Metal Martha fights it, jumping up to greet me and talk excitedly about her life a KUSF.
“Really, the radio show is the most fun thing I do in my life,” she sighs. “Nothing I do gives me as much satisfaction and joy.”
For the volunteer deejays of KUSF – and they are all volunteer — dedication to the art of radio play is the bastard child of a tenacious addiction to music and a healthy relationship with insomnia.

“We absolutely live for the pleasure of sharing music,” Jet— who also deejays— tells me one night.

The two of us are sitting in the corner of a quiet Italian restaurant in Union Square with Trista Bernasconi, the Program Director of the station. We talk while getting drunk and stuffing ourselves with deep-fried good-ness. “There is nothing like people calling in [to the show] and telling me that I’m playing their favorites. It’s fuckingbeautiful.”

The massive chunks of these people’s lives, spent beneath the dated sound equipment and chipping paint, are not reciprocated with tangible rewards. Expensive organized events— from rare-record sales, DJ-ing at bars around the city and hosting local concerts— draws hundreds of San Francisco patrons but rarely makes a profit. Even on-the-air announcements asking for donations yield little support, although the KUSF fan base reaches into the thousands.

But this apparent lack of encouragement is no match for the devotion and ardor that KUSF’s personalities feel for music, radio, and the San Francisco community.

“Logs need to be filled out, ticket winners need to be faxed to venues, rows of albums organized and alphabetized,” Irwin Swirnoff, the head of the KUSF Music Department, stated in their latest ‘zine.

“None of these tasks are glamorous, or totally exciting to perform, but these are the things that need to be done to keep a radio station running and operating in its full capacity 24 hours a day. These tasks all become a second thought. These tasks are performed out of a love of music.”

But this incongruence of hard work equaling little profit is not a new trend in the radio industry. What was once society’s lifeline to the rest of the world, during wartime and before the invention of television news, before iPods and music downloads, is today a dying enterprise. Jerry Del Colliano, a Music Industry professor at the University of Southern California and former radio host, believes that it was greed that killed the radio star.

“Radio is an industry dying from self-inflicted wounds,” says Colliano, “Technology didn’t steal listeners away. Indecision and bad decisions did.”

Colliano’s statement is supported by statistics indicating a high level of consolidation by corporate media companies that control radio broadcasting. And when one company owns and operates 1,200 of the approximately 1,400 stations in the United States—such as Clear Channel Communications— consolidation can be damaging. As Clear Channel grew as a company, purchasing and merging as many radio stations as possible, the radio audience began to fade because of the emerging similarities among stations.
“I stopped listening to the radio because everything is either Top 40 or some talk show,” says Chelsi Nakano, a 23-year-old Art History major at San Francisco State University. Music, she says, is her passion. “If I want to listen to a show or something I just go on the internet.”

And it appears that the Internet is exactly where underground radio is hiding and still thriving. The Internet may either be the future of the industry or simply a place to hibernate, until radio executives find a way to re-capture the imagination of the “iGeneration.”

“It’s harder to reel in this Internet generation because they grew up not craving radio,” Jerry Del Colliano claims. “Many don't even like radio even if they do use it. No project is more important to radio than rethinking its youth initiative. First, they need to get a youth initiative.”

But back to the radio heroes at KUSF, who regardless of statistical trends believe that their passion for music and love of radio media is enough to keep their station alive and successful.
“I’m not aware of many radio stations around here that do what we do, and I think it’s important,” says Nicole Ginelli, an assistant Publicity Director at KUSF. “Especially in this day and age when people are force-fed so much crap, there we stand at the opposite end of the spectrum offering up great music. We’re eclectic.”
In any artistic profession, the rules will change as the audience grows and becomes more diverse. We are always distracted by the multitude of media choices presented to us.
It is the simple passion and dedication of people, like those who volunteer at KUSF, that dictates the future of a craft.

In my quiet apartment, I hit a button on my ancient stereo. The radio buzzes to life, and I hear a familiar voice. It’s nine o’clock in the morning, and this time it’s me laughing at Jet, who had to wake up at dawn to go do her show today.
I curl up on my couch and listen to her clever antics. The sun is just starting to peer through the fog. I close my eyes, relaxing, and take a long, spicy sip of my Bloody Mary.