How to Find Good Music on San Francisco Bay Area Radio

A lot of people, especially many of my middle-aged peers, complain that there is no good music on the radio. Often this is the excuse provided by people who no longer let music into their lives in a meaningful way. Wrong! There is still exciting new music being made and there is still good music on the radio, you just need to search around a bit. The trick is to not waste your time with the commercial stations.

Here's a list of the San Francisco Bay Area's best radio stations and a weekly schedule of the best music shows. Note: there may be some good stations that I can't receive in my area and there are probably some good shows that I don't know about. By the way, many of these stations are available in streaming form on the internet. If you like my tastes and know of something good, let me know.

The San Francisco Bay Area's Best Radio Station

KPOO- 89.5 FM, www.kpoo.com
This is one of the few truly independent community stations left in the U.S. They tend towards African American music forms including rap, R&B, jazz and blues, but the station can be quite eclectic. Sometimes they ramble on way too much, but you can often catch some good music here.

KUSF- 90.3 FM, www.kusf.org
This station is run by the University of San Francisco, some type of Catholic college. In the evenings you can do "Hail Marys" with the priests but in the daytimes and late evening they play mostly alternative indy rock, punk, electronica etc. with a few good surprises.

KALX-90.7 FM, http://kalx.berkeley.edu
The U.C. Berkeley station may have the most hours of good music of any local station, fortunately they keep their mostly not-so-hot talk and news shows to a minimum. Being a college station they play mostly recent rock, electronica and rap but they can be surprisingly eclectic and often pretty tasty.

KALW-91.7 FM, www.kalw.org
This station is operated by the San Francisco Unified school District, but the only evidence of that is live coverage of Board of Education meetings. They mostly feature NPR-type programming but at night (mostly) they break out of the mold with some good local music and discussion shows.

KCSM-91.0 FM www.kcsm.org/jazz91.html
The college of San Mateo's station sticks to straight ahead jazz. They are usually pleasant and tasteful, but stuffy and bland. At least they stay away from that crappy "smooth" style fake-jazz muzak which can cause serious brain damage. If you didn't know much about jazz, KCSM would probably convince you that its a pretty drab genre. Catch the Saturday afternoon jazz shows on KPFA and you'll hear that jazz is still moving forward into innovative and exciting new directions.

KPFA-94.1 FM, www.kpfa.org
Part of the leftist Pacifica network, this station emphasizes news and public affairs programming. The quality of the news and public affairs shows ranges from excellent to pathetic. Don't expect unbiased presentations, they wear their convictions on their sleeves, which can be refreshingly honest. Music is mostly relegated to the evenings and weekends, but the programmers tend to be very knowledgeable and selective. There is a good variety of music, much of it quite avant, although they generally don't get into more youth-oriented styles.

Weekly Schedule of Highlights