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If the station were still playing by Roberts' rules — that scalpers should be "removed without bias" — Spearman wouldn't, in fact, be doing radio there for much longer. Absent any evidence to the contrary (asked if she'd seen any odd transactions on her PayPal account, Spearman said she'd noticed some "funny" ones, but was unable to produce proof of anything that looked like hacking), signs point toward her having sold promotional tickets on at least a few occasions.
In the meantime, Roberts — entrepreneurial, tech-savvy, often straight-up obnoxious Roberts, who cut ties with his former staff members so forcefully that he takes issue with reporters even describing Mutiny Radio as something that grew out of Pirate Cat — is an easy bogeyman for the station's woes, way over there in Berlin.
Radio, and the function it plays in shaping culture, has arguably changed more over the past 20 years than just about any other medium (except, of course, for the internet). Ask anyone born before 1990, and they'll tell you of a soft spot they nurture for a particular DJ — there's a reason the voices of Chuy Gomez, Big Rick Stuart, and Aaron Axelson sound like lullabies to Bay Area natives — or high school evenings during which they marked time by when Loveline came on. These were collective, formative ways to experience music. And college radio? For Berkeley kids, there was pretty much nothing cooler than going to see a band because you heard about it on KALX.
Spotify and Pandora and other music-streaming sites have since turned radio on its head. The internet has democratized the way we consume art by making us curators of our own soundtracks, but it's also fragmented us in our thirst for individualization, our insistence on music as a personal accessory. So where, in 2015, does community radio fit into this puzzle? It's a tough question.
BFF.fm, Radio Valencia, FCC Free Radio, and San Francisco Liberation Radio are all alive and well within San Francisco city limits. Each offers a slightly different ethos, but the spirit is similar: If the newfangled forms of listening have separated us from one another, community radio done well has the power to bridge the distance. The next time someone tells you all the great, civic-minded weirdos have left San Francisco, point them toward Burrito Justice hour on BFF.fm, or whatever esoteric blues are currently playing on FCC Free Radio. They're still here. They've just gone underground — which is, in some cases, where they've always been. We just stopped thinking to look there when we do go looking for news, entertainment, and connection. There are 1.3 million apps, after all, in that race.
"I think something everyone can agree with, even if they hate everything else about Monkey, is he had a great idea from the beginning," says Spearman diplomatically. "To have people come together and give the community a voice, to let people know that you don't have to just listen to Fox News and think that's truth. You get to listen to your community instead."
As for the scalping? Spearman says she doesn't condone the idea of selling tickets, but she can understand how a person could think it was a good way to keep a station afloat. After all, no one goes into radio for the money.
"I can see both sides of it," she says. "And certain kinds of people are more desperate than others."
Which leaves us, unfortunately, not too far from the starting square of this wacky board game. After all the evidence has been shaken out, Spearman maintains her innocence. Roberts maintains those at the station are, in fact, trying to sully his good name, instead of the other way around. And the person behind the tech@mutinyradio.org address is happy to share opinions of the station, but certainly isn't going to provide any details as to his or her identity. One thing's for sure: Whoever's haunting Mutiny Radio hasn't been exorcised, and it doesn't seem like they'll be leaving of their own accord anytime soon.
On Monday, Jan. 19, Benjamin tells me that Mutiny Radio has been taken off the air; the archive of podcasts is nowhere to be found. (They were back on the air by Friday.) At the moment, though, the staff is in a panic; Benjamin believes the station has been hacked.
"Pearl Harbor for Mutiny Radio," she writes. "Twin Towers down."
"Love, the 'real' Pam Benjamin."
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