It was 60 years ago this Sunday that KFJC first broadcast from a broom closet at Foothill College. In six decades that followed, the humble station has become synonymous with adventurous tastes and documenting the bleeding-edge of underground music, both at home and on location around the world. In the process, KFJC has defied the state of radio, proving that truly alternative music still has a place on the air. To commemorate the 60th anniversary, they’re hosting an open house and inviting the community to come meet the DJs, enjoy some music, snack and celebrate. Long live the Wave of the West!

KFJC’s 60th
Sun, Noon, Free
Foothill College, Los Altos Hills

It’s been almost 60 years since the lovely weirdos at KFJC began broadcasting from Foothill College. What began in 1959 as a two-hour broadcast, four days a week, has since grown into one of the best college radio stations in the country. With their live session series, an encyclopedic library and some of the most knowledgeable DJs around, KFJC is a cultural jewel perched high in the Los Altos Hills. As part of their annual Penny Pitch, KFJC DJs will be broadcasting live from Streetlight Records, spinning vinyl and collecting your spare change. A little goes a long way. Here’s to another 60 years.

KFJC Penny Pitch
Sat, 1pm, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose

The long running Bay Area radio station KFJC is bringing its celebrated record swap back to Empire Seven Studios for its second year of a reimagined tradition.

Since its founding in 1959, KFJC has played an integral part in the underground but vibrant Bay Area music scene. Broadcasting from the Foothill College Campus at 89.7 FM, the station has a lengthy tradition of championing boundary-pushing acts, as well as serving as a tastemaking curator for the region.

In addition to helping propel many bands to stardom, KFJC has held an annual record swap on campus for nearly two decades. Last year, in a major shift, the swap was moved to Empire Seven Studios in Japantown, San Jose. This year, it returns to Empire Seven, with the aim of becoming a permanent fixture there.

“It has been a staple in the bay area for many years, and bringing it back is always a good thing, says Leticia Domingo, a current on-air KFJC DJ and former publicist for the station.

This won’t be a flea market affair. Empire Seven Studios, with art on the walls and DJs spinning all day, works to make the swap less of a bartering market and more of a musical learning experience.

“When I first joined the station in 2001-2002, one of the first events I ever went to was a record swap,” says Domingo, better known by her on-air name Ms. Tiza. “It was mostly record labels, and it was a paid event, with early bird specials.”

Seeing the formula as outdated and unfair to newer collectors, Domingo and the station reinvented the record swap—freeing it from the confines of the Foothill Campus and, more important, making it a free event. The idea was to encourage everyone, from the serious veteran collector to the merely curious, to intermingle and learn.

It’s a welcome change. While the swap has been a staple of the Bay Area music scene for decades, the insider vibe meant the event mainly drew an insider crowd. Domingo has stripped away most of that snobbery in order to let the love of music rule. “Now the great thing is you have collectors selling and collectors digging together,” she says.

KFJC Record Swap
Apr 2, 10am-5pm, Free
Empire Seven Studios, San Jose

These days, terrestrial radio isn’t the first place most would turn in search of new or obscure music. But this weekend—all day Friday and Saturday—fans of the spacey sounds of modern psychedelic music, will be tuning into KFJC, Foothill College’s radio station, as it will be broadcasting live from the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia in the United Kingdom.

KFJC’s low-wattage frequency (89.7 FM) can be hard to get a fix on—especially for those outside of the South Bay. Yet, even while the station broadcasts at a frequency that is dwarfed by the major commercial radio outlets in the Bay Area, KFJC works hard to punch above its weight class, by delivering programming, like the live broadcast of the psych festival, that listeners can’t get anywhere else.

According to Eric Johnson, general manager at KFJC, broadcasting the psych fest is likely to be the radio station’s largest undertaking to date. They’ve covered events in Japan and New Zealand—both further away than Liverpool—but this time around they’ll be doing much more than they have in the past.

“It’s pretty huge,” he says, noting that KFJC will capture live sound at three individual stages, conduct artist interviews and stream live high definition video of the festival, some of which will be cached for repeat viewing.

In spite of the challenges posed by the broadcast, Johnson says he is “confident” that the station and the team of six heading across the pond will be able to handle it. More than that, he is “looking forward to it.”

That’s because he and the rest of the staff at KFJC—along with the student DJs—feel the work they are doing is important.

Johnson, who has been at KFJC since 1991, says he doesn’t know anything about commercial radio, and it’s pretty clear he doesn’t care to learn.

“I think it’s kind of been a mission of college radio to be an alternative to mainstream,” he says. “We’re looking to sort of satisfy folks who get a little tired of the formulated stuff out there. We’re looking to draw attention to bands that may not otherwise get attention.”

The bands playing at the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia include: Goats, Woods, Allah-Las, Suuns, White Hills and Amen Dunes, among many more.

Bringing KFJC listeners live performances of these artists is equally as important to Johnson. “There are things that happen live that just don’t happen in the studio,” he says. “Live, sometimes, is far more amazing than studio.”

The Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia will be broadcast live on KFJC, 89.7 FM, from 6am-7pm on Sept. 26 & 27. Live streaming audio and video will be available at kfjc.org. Watch San Francisco’s Allah-Las below.

The South Bay recently lost one of most unique and beloved figures in the local underground music scene. Cy Thoth, aka Phil Herz, who hosted the Firebunker show on KFJC at Foothill College every Thursday at 2pm, passed away on March 11th, only four days after his seventh anniversary show. He was 58 years old.

Herz was known for playing the darkest, most obscure songs he could get his hands on—doom-metal, psychedelic-noise, hypnotic chants and meditative droning. But perhaps more than his playlists, he drew in listeners for his deep baritone voice and distinct on-air personality, which more closely resembled a spoken word performance than standard DJ banter.

“The content of his monologues and mic breaks were incredible,” says Moris Minor aka Andrew Noto, fellow KFJC and keyboardist/drummer in Herz’s group Qumran Orphics. “Folks liked it just for that alone, and he did have great knowledge of philosophy, history and the like. His knowledge of vocabulary was seemingly endless. He was an amazing wordsmith,”

Herz had joined KFJC in 2004, he was an avid listener to the station, which always tended toward the weird and the eclectic. He would even call in and tell the DJs how much the music they played inspired him while he was doing his drawings and writing poetry, which he gladly shared with them.

“He would speak out these poems, word-play kind of things, with ancient philosophy, religious themes, but also with great funny silly humor, lots of rhyming and alliteration,” says Noto.

Once Herz got involved with the station, it became his life. During the annual fall fundraisers, he would volunteer six days a week, sometimes for as long as eight consecutive weeks. We would also volunteer nearly every month to help clean up along the stretch of Hwy 280 that KFJC had adopted. And if there was a KFJC event, he would be the guy at the front door, greeting KFJC listeners, of course, dressed in his cloak.

“His show was on Thursdays, which were also always Thanksgiving days,” Noto says. “Every year at our KFJC meetings he would tell everyone that if they had no place to go on Thanksgiving, they could hang out during his show. He’d bring the turkey, dessert and drinks.”

News of his passing came just a week and a half before his band Qumran Orphics were scheduled to play the Blank Club. Qumran Orphics were a sort of a fun project consisting of different KFJC DJs that rarely played live shows, and the DJs never played their own music on KFJC. But Qumran Orphics played the kind of crazy noisy music Herz would have gladly played on his Firebunker show if he wasn’t in the band. His contribution to the group was spoken word, much like he would do on his show, and some thoroughly engaging theatrics.

“He would wear a cloak and had a large wooden mask that he would slowly move thru the audience with—and then prop it at the front of the stage. He would sit in a chair with the flashlight on his book of writings, and read from it with his scary dark round glasses on,” Noto says.

Herz was a friend to all the DJs at KFJC. Once he became friends with someone, Herz liked to leave these long, absurd, rhyming messages on their voice mails. They were so weird that most of the people that received them never deleted them. After Herz’s passing, many of the KFJC DJs got together at the station and listened to the different messages that Herz had left each of them, laughing and crying.

“He was friend to us all, a co-pilot on a cosmic sonic adventure, a DJ, a musician, a poet, a philosopher, a chess master, an artist, a freak, a comedian, a really amazing person who had a tremendous effect on people, always,” Noto says.

When Jeff Brummett isn’t busy working at Streetlight Records, he’s playing guitar and singing in Doctor Nurse, one of San Jose’s best indie rock bands, featuring heavy psychedelic and folk influences and a balance of lush vocal harmonies and carefully textured instrumentation.

Their song craftsmanship is surprisingly sophisticated, better even than a lot of touring psychedelic-influenced indie rock bands. Mood and understated emotional intensity are at the forefront of every song, usually starting out mellow, using repetition and layering to give the songs a slow and powerful buildup. While Doctor Nurse has only been around a couple years, Brummett is no newbie to the San Jose scene. We asked him to share the spots in San Jose he knows and loves.

What part of San Jose are you from?

I live in Willow Glen and there’s this particular homeless guy I’m fairly obsessed with. He is always madly scribbling what looks like crazy scientist Aztec symbols in this book. Whenever I give him some dough, I’m tempted to ask him about it, but ultimately I don’t want the mystery revealed. The not-knowing is the thing. Unless he’s making blueprints for a time machine or something—I definitely want in on that.

What’s your favorite place outside of San Jose?

Costa Rica is a magical land filled with green trees, monkeys and banana milkshakes. Can’t beat it, and their capital is named San Jose.

What’s the best show you’ve seen in San Jose?

This one is easy. In 2008, the Blank Club had Extreme Elvis, Neil Hamburger and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy on one bill. The stars were aligned that night in ways I’d never conceived. The Ledge left the stage during a song leaving the band to finish without him as he went and caught the bus. Neil Hamburger did the Colonel Sanders/Sally Field joke and Extreme Elvis (after um, “marking his territory”…. yes, what you’re thinking is absolutely correct) eventually led the crowd to the street for an acoustic sing-along rendition of “Suspicious Minds.” Did I mention that he was completely naked? Sublime.

Who’s your favorite local band?

Well, I loved Worker Bee so much I am now in a band with two of the members. I’ve gotten sneak peeks of the new Plantain and Ugly Winner records and they are really, really good. Totally looking forward to the Amonie record coming soon. The new Sourpatch record is great. It seems like a bunch of folks will finally be releasing material this year. Very cool.

Where’s your favorite place to get a drink in San Jose?

Good Karma has an amazing selection of high-end beers. They have such great variety and are always getting new and unique brands. They have events with exclusive brews that you can’t find anywhere else. Ryan Summers is the best host in town and all the staff there are incredibly nice and welcoming and don’t yell at me when I’m hanging in the back getting in their way.

Where’s a cool spot for new threads?

I’m the most unfashionable dude ever. Black and Brown is pretty much the only place I go. Last time I went there, I scored this corduroy jacket and Irene who works there said that I liked “grandpa clothes.” She was right. Plus, they have cool art and music shows and are generally awesome people.

What’s your favorite spot for a cheap bite in San Jose?

Me and my buddies have been obsessed with Taco Bravo for years. I can’t say I’ve actually eaten there in a long time, but what other place can you order an item off the menu item called “The Boneyard.” I work down the street from there and one of my favorite pastimes is driving by and counting the number of people waiting in line during breakfast time. The record? Eleven people wanting Bravo at 10:30 am. The world is a wondrous and mysterious place. Plus, the dudes who work there go to the same bank as I do.

What’s the best thing about living in San Jose?

A few things I guess. The group of talented, creative geniuses/doofuses I hang with truly make this place all worthwhile. The close proximity to the greatest radio station on Earth, KFJC. Joey Myers still lives here. Plus, that beer-batter thing at the SJ Giants game is kind of a hoot. Did I mention Bravo already?

Where’s the best place in San Jose to go relax?

Funny you bring that up. Every Cinco De Mayo I like to put on a nice velour jogging suit, whip up a little chamomile tea and take a leisurely stroll down Santa Clara St. and soak in all the stabbings. Very zen.

Where’s the place to see a show in San Jose?

Unquestionably the Gingerbread House. It’s by far my favorite place to play. They get a lot of touring bands that are under the radar and are real independent musicians scraping by, driving through the country just having a good time. The bands don’t have to worry about drawing a crowd, because there’s always enough friends to fill it up. You don’t have the stress of club owners and promoters being bummed on the lack of support. The room sounds amazing and Todd and the crew who live there are such great people. They open up their house to let strangers do their art, which is definitely a very generous and selfless act. It’s an important bubble in our little scene here.

What’s San Jose’s best kept secret?

R & D Liquors on Willow has free hot coffee!