Sounding a bit like stoned preteens with access to the liquor cabinet while their parents are away, the “new KPFK” premiered Safe Harbor last night in the time formerly curated by Roy of Hollywood in what used to be the most listened to late late night program in the nation’s 2nd largest radio market.
The only premise behind Safe Harbor appears to be trying to sound “dangerous”, which was attempted on Monday night by playing most of a George Carlin in Concert CD with some of his frequently heard 20-40 year old scatalogical comedy routines including the Seven Dirty Words and Bullshit. In between, the reggae DJ hosting asked listeners to donate their cars and their estates to KPFK and then cursed a bit.
Although nominally a call-in show, no calls were received from Southern California, with the solitary call-in over the two hours coming from a friend of the host in Northern California.
Besides shit, fuck, cunt, and cocksucker, there wasn’t much evidence of what anybody wanted to say as the old Carlin routines, which Tuckman’s audience (like the rest of the world) is likely to have heard about 5,000 times previously, were presented with little to no context, background, added material, curation or supplementation.
The host’s analysis consisted of saying that KPFK was exhibiting “awesomeness”.
The Carlin CD was followed by a rerun of some “New Uprising” material including pitching replacement host Thandiswe Chimurenga’s 2014 book and talking about the Cabrini Green housing project on Chicago’s South Side with a few rap songs added in.
This is what the geniuses at KPFK came up with???? Really, Leslie Radford and Adam Rice are eminently UNQUALIFIED to run a radio station as that they have no idea what to do and everything that they have done so far has been to weaken KPFK and Pacifica and not strengthen it. I have not listened to Roy of Hollywood in the past due to my work hours, but I will now look for archived shows of his and listen to them. It is also good to hear that the entire Brazon-Siegel wrecking crew is out at KPFK, and perhaps other stations may end up being tossed out and kicked to the curb. The main thing here, is to resuscitate the network and keep it from being altogether destroyed, and to change the structure so that there can never be any self-appointed boards which have no responsibility to the listeners, and that people like Dan Siegel,Margie Wilkinson and Lydia Brazon be banned for life from Pacifica due to the tremendous damage that they have caused to the network.