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.

Before there was Howard Stern, there was Dennis Netto, known to radio listeners as Dennis Erectus. As a fixture on San Jose’s KOME in the late ’70s and ’80s, Erectus not only got huge ratings, but endeared himself to a generation of fans by pioneering the extreme brand of radio that would take over the dial years later. He died this week at the age of 61, after a heart attack.

Dennis Erectus may have been the original shock jock, but he was a shock jock with a soul. That’s what separated him from so many of the blowhards that came after. He didn’t just push listeners’ buttons, he captured their imaginations, and that’s why he continues to be one of the most fondly remembered Bay Area radio figures of all time decades after his peak. As news of his death on Wednesday at a care facility in Castro Valley began to spread, fans took to the Internet to pay tribute.

Erectus came to KOME straight out of college in 1977. Though he continued on radio until the mid-2000s, it’s hard not to feel that Erectus was lost to the airwaves long before his time. A 2006 heart attack left him with brain damage and ended his career for good. Corporate radio, no matter how hard it tried, never could.

Click here to view the embedded video.

NPR host Ira Glass’ rough year continues with the announcement that illness will keep him from appearing at his Mountain Winery show scheduled for tonight. The show has been rescheduled for June 30.

Glass is the executive producer host of NPR’s iconic show This American Life, and is on tour with his show Reinventing Radio: An Evening With Ira Glass.

Glass, a sometimes polarizing figure who nonetheless has been credited with transforming the very concept of radio storytelling since his show began in 1995, has had a bumpy ride this year. In March, a This American Life story featuring former Silicon Valley tech worker Mike Daisey blew up in his face when a number of fabrications in Daisey’s story came to light. The episode, which was the most downloaded in the show’s history, included parts of Daisey’s monologue from his one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In an open letter retracting the story, Glass admitted there were a number of “significant fabrications” in Daisey’s story of visiting a factory in China that produces iPhones and other Apple products. Certain details didn’t match up to known facts—and others couldn’t be verified at all—in Daisey’s tales of underage workers, mangled hands and chemical poisoning on Apple assembly lines.

A live event in March centered around the This American Life episode and featuring a Q&A with Daisey was subsequently cancelled. Later that month, Glass cancelled a Reinventing Radio date in Hartford, Connecticut.

Tickets for tonight’s show will be honored at the June 30 date.