KSDS 88.3 Blog

By Matt Silver

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how social this music can be. On Tuesday evening, Aug. 12, Eric Reed reminded us, with a Hampton Hawes-inspired performance that was charming in a way that feels much less common today than maybe it once was.

By Matt Silver

For legions of people of all worldviews, sensibilities, and persuasions, the world feels like a chaotic mess. Despite this – or, more likely, because of it – people seem hungrier than ever for meaning, connection, community. One of the ways this manifests is giving. Giving is virtuous. Whether its any of the world's major religious faiths or a more secular set of life-organizing beliefs or principles, most with any kind of historical staying power seem to keep this close to their core.

But man's generosity is not infinite, nor are his resources. And the demands for both feel greater and more persistent than ever.

Which begs some version of the question stated above in this post's title.

When you're an organization like ours and you take to the airwaves to ask people for money and you tell them it's urgent and existential, it's a question you have a responsibility to ask yourself. So, first, I asked myself, "Why should our radio station continue to exist as a community resource?" And I think I answered that one okay. But, then, the radio station is one thing; the broader effort to ensure the future of the artform we champion is another, warranting its own explanation. So, why jazz? I've found it nearly impossible to answer without being nauseatingly maudlin and high-minded. So, indulge me; this comes from an honest place, and it's the best I've come up with so far.

By Matt Silver

If we weren’t part of your life, there’d be no sense in asking. But we know that we are; we see you, we hear you, we know you. And you know us.

That’s rare these days, in the era of Amazon and digitally delivered entertainments. If we’re old fashioned, it’s not in the manner of mustachioed hipster bartenders who call themselves “mixologists.” Rather, it’s in the spirit of Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer and John Coltrane. We won’t be held hostage by the political fads and fixations of the moment. After 50-plus years, we, like Kern and Mercer, know that this year’s fancies are passing fancies.

How are we so confident? Because we have you.

Jazz 88ers,

KSDS is facing an emergency, and we need your help. You already know the broad strokes. Federal funding’s gone. More specifically, we will be without $200,000 we were relying on to operate. We still need it; it's just not coming. 

This "Now's the Time" campaign is not a membership drive. Membership drives are doctor’s visits you make even when you’re well, to stay well. This is more akin to emergency surgery… without insurance.

By Matt Silver

You ever have a stretch of days where everything — every task, every responsibility, every obligation whether big or small — just feels way harder, way more fraught with obstacles and landmines than it ought to?

Hi there, Matt Silver of KSDS coming to you from our innovation labs here on the campus of San Diego City College with good news and bad. Here’s the bad: despite our best efforts, time travel remains only theoretically possible at this time. Decreased government funding of public media has all but guaranteed that our time machine development project won’t be ready for the next pledge drive. 

The good news is that here at KSDS, we’re mighty resourceful.

After surveying sporting houses of Storyville and the speakeasies of South Side Chicago, KSDS’s Jazz University returns with its most ambitious semester yet. Like Porgy, Bess, Sportin' Life, and George Gershwin before us, we’ve got our sights set on New York City, and KSDS GM and resident jazz historian Ken Poston is just the man to shepherd us all the way uptown without having to bear the expense of a monthly Metrocard.

Saxophonist, composer, and arranger Jack Montrose, pictured here in 1954. His arrangements would be recorded that year by ensembles led by Chet Baker and Clifford Brown. Photo by William Claxton.

By Matt Silver

A man with talent wants the world. Even if he’s too modest or mannered to announce it aloud, or to himself, there’s a part of him that sees one possible future where everything breaks his way. But what does such a man deserve? Maybe it’s fair, if harsh, to say that he doesn’t deserve anything. That no one deserves anything. But if you’ve some combination of natural talent, acquired skill, and the nerve to open yourself to the world’s judgment, all you can really ask for is a window of a few years to show what you’re capable of, come what may. 

By Matt Silver

By my rough count, this past week’s broadcast was the 50th distinct episode of Breaking Jazz to air here on KSDS. I hope you’ve found the programming to be fresh yet familiar, comfortable yet adventurous, clever yet heartfelt, athletic yet soulful. 

I hope you’ve encountered here virtuosity that’s more than just an intellectually stimulating exercise in sound. Virtuosity in service of tuneful music making. Music to help you better grasp for a moment’s peace or excitement or transcendence or whatever makes life awe-inspiring or worthwhile for you personally. 

Anyone who’s watched Seth McFarlane’s “Family Guy” knows his love for both the Sinatra and Great American Songbooks runs deep. It also comes as no surprise that such a brilliant voiceover artist is one heck of a singer!

By Matt Silver

With his new album, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, Seth McFarlane walks the musical roads Sinatra left untaken, singing a dozen charts that were originally written for the Chairman — by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Don Costa — but never recorded. Anyone who's ever watched Family Guy knows of McFarlane's abiding love for and encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century music and culture, most particularly popular song and dance. But, for as much recognition as he receives for brilliance as a producer, actor, illustrator, comedian, and voice actor — all of which is deserved — McFarlane might also reasonably be called one of the most astute pop cultural historians and commentators of our time.