Listen, I know if you’re reading this then you’re a thoughtful media consumer. The kind of media consumer who contributes to a worthwhile media fund drive.

So, good on you–it’s time to break out the wallet again for a very worthwhile cause.

KDVS, 90.3FM, the student-run independent “freeform” community station, is currently hosting its annual fund drive. It runs through April 27 and the goal is to raise enough money to keep the station on the air and awash in quality, independent programming and, we 7” singles.

Truth is this isn’t jus me trying to liberal-guilt  you into helping out a station. I mean, it Is, but it’s more than that, too.  KDVS means a whole heck of a lot to me on a personal level.

I’ve been listening to the station for more than 30 years (spoiler alert: apparently I am old). It started in August of 1983 when I first moved to California with my mother and two brothers.

For the first five months we lived with my grandparents while my mom looked for a house. During that time my mother and I shared a bedroom. I was 13 and starting the 8th grade and very much missing my friends in Texas. You can imagine just how thrilled I was to be sharing a room with two twin beds, a dresser and a desk with my mother. Good times.

Worse yet, my stereo was still packed away somewhere. I think I may have had a Walkman at this point but still. 

Anyway, every school night I’d sit at that desk doing homework while my mom drank white wine in the family room with my grandparents. There was a clock radio on the desk and on one of those nights as I labored over pre-algebra or English or whatever, I started flipping through stations. At some point I landed on 90.3 on my FM dial. The Clash was playing and the sound was pretty crappy through those tinny clock radio speakers but the point was I had found some pretty damn good music to accompany my studies. During those months that I spent holed up in the back bedroom trying, in all my adolescent angst, to avoid stupid adults, I listened to a lot of KDVS and got turned on to a ton of great music. I’m not going to front and pretend I was some preternaturally cool kid because I also listened to hella FM102 and KPOP. Really, what I’m trying to say here is that without that clock radio and KDVS and the other stations, those five months would have been even more unbearable.

So, right now I’m going to put my money where my blogging fingers are and donate enough money to cash in one on of the station’s premiums–a sweet KZAP t-shirt because that long-defunct classic rock station was another one of my youthful mainstays (and also because KDVS played host to some of KZAP’s old deejays during the college station’s 50th anniversary fundraiser. And also, because, cats).

I hope you do the same. Donate here.