DOOM CORPORATION — Interview
You’re driving through Santa Barbara, CA on a Friday afternoon. The city streets are congested, the freeway is bumper to bumper. You turn on the radio… another played out rock song from the 70’s, no thanks. Pop country, mumble rap, and more of the same. You scan the airwaves in desperation, anything to occupy the brain while you inch along in that metal coffin. And then it hits you, that old familiar sound. The distorted power chords, the heavy bass lines, the machine-gun blast beats, and the blaring vocals. Punk rock on the radio? Turn it up, you’ve just discovered DOOM CORPORATION! A radio show dedicated to combating the monotonous clamor coming from the corporate radio stations, even if only for a few hours a week. You get your daily dose of punk rock, some humorous/scary public affairs stories, and get updated with the local scene report. Doom Corporation is unleashed onto the general public through KCSB 91.9 FM and streaming online. Every Friday, 12pm-2pm. I sat down with the host — Mark aka “The Chemist” to talk about the show and what inspires him to make it happen.
What initially got you interested in doing a radio show?
I’ve been a fan of college radio since the mid-80’s, I was listening to KXLU in Los Angeles and they had a punk rock show, they actually played a radical mix pretty much all day. It wasn’t just segregated to like an hour. But in their case, they did have an hour show that had everybody who was anybody in punk rock as a guest. They had Slayer, Corrosion of Conformity… These bands would be touring and they’d be in town, they’d go by the show and do their thing. I would tape it, I’d set my alarm because I was pretty young and I’d have to stay up. It was on Tuesday nights and the show was called The Final Countdown. Then, when I went to Cal Poly they had a radio station there, and when I got there I thought “wow, this station really sucks”. They played really sappy, kind of quasi-commercial stuff, but my friends had a punk rock show on for an hour. It was like the “separate but equal” punk rock show, bands would play, I had a band and we played a couple times and it was cool. But at one point this student had played a song — some classic punk song, and afterwards he actually apologized for it — in case any of his five listeners got upset. And I thought “fuck that”, that was a defining moment for me, I had to get my own show.
So that’s how you got started?
Well, I didn’t do anything at Cal Poly. I came to UCSB for grad school and I had friends who had shows. This was back when KCSB had a way more radical mix. There was more than one show that was devoted to the format of “free-form noise”. And eventually I got my own show.
What’s the process like to get on the air?
It’s actually pretty simple, well, it’s simple to explain at least. First, you show up — that’s 80% right there. There’s a little training, and then you go into the practice studio, which has all the working parts of the real studio. You go there for an hour per week for 8-weeks and do a practice show. You play a little music, say some stuff on the radio, play some PSA’s and then when you think you’ve figured it out you record your show. You give it to a committee who listens to it and says, “R&B slow jams and shoe-gaze, well sure, that sounds like we could use a 10th show of that”. Then you get a show, and your time slot is somewhere between 2am-6am one day a week, and that’s your initiation. The idea is that if you screw up or have dead air, nobody will notice. But you can play whatever you want, which is cool. You do that for a while and eventually when they redo the schedule you get a better time slot during the day and you’re cooking with gas!
Some people have this image in their head that you just sit in a booth and play music… What kind of work goes into putting together a 2-hour show each week?
To do it from scratch is about 3–4 hours. I’ve always got music playing at work. I think I finally cracked the code. I’ve got some record label, which is a PR firm that represents a whole bunch of other record labels and they’ll give me digital downloads of all these new releases. Most of them are like doom metal or technical death-metal (I just figured out what that is, and I don’t like it). But occasionally they will drop something really epic like the new eyehategod album. So, I review those and then send them to the “black hole” which is our station music directors. They put them on a computer, cloud-based music library which eventually you should be able to pull songs from there and play them in real time.
How long have you been doing the show?
I’m not exactly sure, I should know… I’d say 8 or 9 years now. I can’t imagine it’s been 10 years. That’s awful…
What gets you motivated to keep doing it?
Mainly because if I don’t do it, no-one else will. It’s like, I’m trying to do a certain thing — and until I see somebody else doing it, I’ll keep it up. Although maybe that’s preventing others from doing it… I actually ran into this guy — Sean Mayuga, during a show at the Fun Zone. He had listened to my show and got all pumped up. I told him he should get his own show, and he actually did it! So now he has his own show, Friday mornings 6am-8am.
Punk music obviously has always had a strong political message. Public affairs is a big part of your show — What kind of message are you trying to project?
The reason why I got into punk rock was because of the meaning essentially, it’s not just about being a jerk. I would say that of all genre’s — I would argue that punk rock has a near monopoly on political activism. There are lots of examples of other artists — Bob Dylan, Ice Cube/NWA (that’s punk as fuck) but as a genre — punk rock, REAL punk rock is all about the message. It’s the rebellion against war, corruption, environmental destruction, and straight up capitalism — and that’s the draw. So you have that musical content, plus the public affairs news stories that I cover, and the scene reports so that people know what’s going on out there — as far as stuff to do.
Why is it important to you to support the local punk scene?
If you think about it — where else do you find touring bands, playing house shows where a whole bunch of people show up, and they have socialist literature sitting on a table? Think about it, that does not happen. With punk rock, these things happen — they’re off the grid and I think that’s worth promoting. As a young person, if you’re not 21 — let’s say you’re 17, you’re probably not going to bed at 9:30pm. So you’re up and there’s nothing to do. I wish their was some positive outlet for the youth. There used to be a place called the Living Room in Goleta, which was an all ages, drug and alcohol free showspace. It was a place to hang out — they had video games, ping pong, whatever. But they also had some of the maddest bands ever playing there. That kind of outlet just doesn’t exist here anymore. The city needs to subsidize some shitty warehouse with an insurance policy and just make it happen. There’s plenty of bands that would book shows here but there’s nowhere to play.
On a more personal level what really moves you to do this?
There’s the music, obviously. That’s just what I’m into. I don’t own a TV, I don’t think I’ll ever own a TV — but I have five radios! Audio is what I’m into, and there’s a lot of good music out there, more and more everyday. And I know how much that has helped me throughout my life. I just do my thing — but almost every show, I get calls from listeners that are just stoked. I try to support the scene because that’s been a huge part of my life. I try to open people up to new music that they haven’t heard before — whether it’s new bands or the older bands that pioneered the sound. There’s a little bit of musical education or a history lesson going on so to speak. So, know your roots, or learn them! It’s a lot of fun. But I also feel like I have to counter all the commercial crap out there, because it’s a war for youth culture. Corporate takeover of youth culture has been decisive and I’m just trying to show that another musical world is possible.
