Do Not Touch This Amp (or DNTTA) has its roots in
my own development as a total music geek. Let's take a trip through time
shall we?
I grew up in a small town in Southeastern BC called
Cranbrook. Cranbrook is a metal town, so if you didn't listen to metal,
you got laughed at and beaten up. I got laughed at and beaten up.
It's not that I didn't like metal. My own record
collection at the time sported 4 AC/DC albums, and albums by Quiet Riot,
Def Leppard and others. Some metal was really well done, like early Metallica,
Anthrax and the wonderful orchestral metal of Iron Maiden. I guess I just
didn't buy into the whole theory that "Ozzy is God". It didn't help that
most of the metalhead in town were jerks either.
My first dabbling in music outside of the inevitable
metal was into British pop and new wave. Bands like The Cars, Duran Duran
and Billy Idol were among my first purchases in vinyl (Yes, I am that old,
I have vinyl!). Then, in 1987, I hit my grad year and everything changed.
In 1987, I heard three albums for the first time.
They changed my life. The first two were the seminal punk albums, "Rocket
to Russia" by the Ramones, and "Never Mind the Bollocks" by the Sex Pistols.
I had never heard music this raw or visceral before. My own world was limited
to the whitewashed, perfectly coifed pop that was being played on MuchMusic
at the time. This was something very new, and it pointed me in a new direction.
I decided that I needed to find out more about this music and explore more
forms, regardless of how "weird" they might seem.
The third album took a while to impress upon me,
but it turned out to be pivotal. It was "Freedom of Choice" by DEVO. I
was already interested in synth-rock, being heavily into the Cars and Blondie,
but I was drawn to DEVO because of the "Whip It" video I kept seeing on
the TV. Somehow, the tune resonated with me. After hearing "Freedom of
Choice", I grew more and more attached to the idea of electronic music.
First, it was just rock with electronics in it, like DEVO, Depeche Mode
and others. DEVO was a gateway into a larger world, one which would take
a while for me to fully discover.
As I entered college in the fall of 1987, I began
listening to more punk. The Exploited, DOA and especially the Dead Kennedys
dominated my listening. I also began to hear music related to the punk
movement in strange ways, like Big Black and Killing Joke. I also heard
Foetus for the first time in college and boggled at the weirdness of the
music.
In 1989, I went off to university in Lethbridge.
It was there I joined my first college radio station, CKUL.
At the time, CKUL, was a cable only station, due to the fact that the AM
transmitter it was using recently exploded. Here, I played my favourite
tunes in a show I called "Nosebleeds Galore". The format was largely free-form,
ranging from metal, rap, modern rock, folk rock and, of course, electronic
rock. I soon launched another show, "Word Up!", based on my growing interest
in the then infant rap movement.
In 1990, through friendships at the station, I heard
the next album that would change my life: "Land of Rape and Honey" by Ministry.
A friend of mine was deep into industrial, and I quickly got involved as
well. The music of industrial is raw and primal, but at the same time,
totally alien, due to it's largely electronic instrumentation. Still, it
moved me in ways I had never felt before.
Before long, I had a proud collection of Ministry,
Skinny Puppy and Front 242 albums. I had also become Music Director at
CKUL, due to my ever growning fascination with music. I have a partially
photographic memory and I was soon memorizing minutia of my favourite bands
and spouting my newfound knowlege over the air. My friend, Rev. Craig,
and I launched an off-beat show called "SubGenius Beach Party" (we were
both members of the holy Church by then...), consisting of skronking rock,
metal and industrial. The germs of the modern DNTTA had been planted.
I left university in 1991 due to my inability to
handle the math requirements in the Computer Science degree I was pursuing.
Heading back to Cranbrook with my vital music collection, I explored other
forms of music through correspondence with old friends and through mail
order catalogues.
In 1995, I returned to school at the local college,
this time as an English major. I had a lot more luck this time. I returned
to Lethbridge in 1997 and rejoined CKUL. I then launched the first version
of "Do Not Touch This Amp", which at that time, was an all industrial show.
A word about the shows title. It comes from an in-joke
from my earliest days at CKUL. At that time, the station manager, a woman
I did not get along with, had become concerned about the volume of the
speakers we hung outside the studio to let passers by to the studio hear
what we were broadcasting. An amp underneath the control board controlled
the speakers. So, she put a note on the amp that said "Do Not Touch This
Amp". During the day, no one touched the amp. After the University had
shut down for the day and management went home, well, we touched the amp.
We turned it on and broadcasted our wonderful programming up and down the
halls of the University of Lethbridge. Call it righteous retribution, the
triumph of music over bureaucracy. Or call it a childish attempt to bug
a person I didn't like. Whatever...
DNTTA was proudly ensconsed into a Friday night
slot I still hold to this day.
One of the wonderful things about working and volunteering
for a campus radio station is the sheer volume of musical knowledge you
absorb. Campus stations are populated with people who really know their
music and you learn a lot from them just by being around them. So, while
I have pursued industrial music relentlessly, I also have a great deal
of knowledge about roots, folk, jazz, techno and world music. In fact,
I hosted an hour long roots and world show called "Neorxanawanga" during
my second stint at CKUL. (ask me offline what the word means...) After
a certain period of learning, most music and its connectivity comes into
focus. The way music has developed over the years is a very interesting
story if you take the time to learn.
Because college stations play forms of music that
the mainstream ignore, all sorts of weird and wonderful things were broadcasted
during my second stay at CKUL. Somewhere along the way, my obcession with
electronics grew to a proportion where playing the music simply wasn't
enough. I was reading about acts before even hearing them, mouth watering
at a new band that I had only read about finally releasing a CD. I explored
the history of electronic music from its earliest forms to its most modern.
I attempted to understand the modern techno movement, without success (Note:
I still hate techno and consider most forms of it very unoriginal. Getting
a body to move is not the main thrust of music in my eyes... but I digress...).
I brought my new found knowledge to my show and expanded my album collection
into stranger places.
In 2000, I left the University of Lethbridge with
a Bachelor's Degree in hand. Struggling with the prospect of graduate school,
I decided to forgo grad work for something more concrete. I became disgusted
with the intellectualism that surrounds the study of literature and grew
eager to turn my talents in writing to something more useful. I applied
to the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, BC and was accepted
into the Journalism Program. While I checked out the school, I learned
that UCC had a college station on the verge of hitting FM for the first
time. After finding a place to stay, I ran down to the station and left
my name for the station manager. Two weeks later, I was a volunteer at
Radio 8.
My own history in campus radio turned out to be
a valuable asset to the growing station. I became the de facto Music Director,
which I quickly streamlined. I spent long hours in the music library labelling
and listening to the small music library that the station had accumulated.
I honed my programmer's skills doing a roots and world show on closed circuit.
In February 2001, we got the word from the CRTC:
we were heading to FM. On April 2, 2001, CFBX
officially hit the Kamloops airwaves. The first Kamloops edition of Do
Not Touch This Amp debuted on April 6th.
No one told me that we already had two industrial
shows on the air. After some soul-searching, I knew I had to change the
shows format. The decision was clear, DNTTA had to go experimental.
Today, DNTTA can be heard on Friday nights, 8 to
10 PM on CFBX, 92.5 FM and 106.1 Cable FM. DNTTA is a show dedicated to
experimental and electronic music, covering such diverse genres as early
and modern industrial, noise rock, experimental rock and pop, synth rock,
synth pop, kraut rock, early new wave, sound and tape collage, avant garde
jazz and other forms of "strange" music. I feature a lot of information
during the show, since I recognize that the average listener has never
been exposed to this type of music before.
Feel free to email me at [email protected]
for comments, questions and missives.
Enjoy your stay at the DNTTA Webpage!
Steve Marlow