Tomorrow, Labor Day, I’ll be on the radio, talking about Jack Kirby and Comic Book Apocalypse. Specifically, I’ll be on UC Santa Barbara’s station, KCSB, doing an interview on Ted Coe’s show, The Freak Power Ticket, between 11:00am and 1:00pm PCT. I can’t wait!
The Freak Power Ticket is an wide-ranging and phantasmagorical show described by producer/host Ted as a “wondrous boatride” among rock’n’roll and other music, movies, pop culture, counterculture, and various esoteric but vital forms of art and expression. Ted interweaves interviews and tributes with eclectic music and audio tidbits from movies and obscure recordings. Most episodes are curated around particular themes or guests. Tomorrow the theme is Kirby!
All this takes me back a bit. Years ago—say about thirty—I myself went to UC Santa Barbara, and got my BA in English there. Heady days. I lived for a couple of years in Isla Vista, that curious unincorporated community attached to the UCSB campus, and fell in with a loose circle of esoteric music buffs, comics fans, nerds, neopagans, creatives, and Ren Faire anachronists—my peeps. One of the things I most enjoyed doing in those days was tagging along when my friend Dio Sanchez (RIP) did his late-night prog rock radio show, Willow Farm, on the campus station, KCSB. I too got an FCC license, and did some subbing for Dio. I also ran, briefly, my own wannabe prog show on the station’s closed-circuit AM feed (which only reached the dorms). Naturally I spent a good deal of time listening to other KCSB programs, including a late-night ambient show called Sonic Gallery and Pat Cardenas’s wonderful folk show The Black Nag, which is still going strong after all these years. I can’t claim to know much about KCSB or the station’s history, but I’ll always fondly remember my brief time there.
So I’m delighted to be joining Ted Coe (Ted C.) tomorrow for a show that is clearly a labor of love. We’ll talk about Kirby, comic book labor, and art, Kirby’s relationship to the Marvel Universe, and of course the exhibition. Ted has a cornucopia of music and sound bites prepared, all of it related to Kirby or comic books. That’s The Freak Power Ticket, from 11:00am and 1:00pm Pacific Time, tomorrow. I hope you can tune in—and support independent radio!
Here’s KCSB’s official announcement about tomorrow’s show.
HAND OF FIRE 