Originally I was going to title these blog posts “Move Ever Towards Perfection,” but that would be better-suited to a different idea. I want to keep the theme of this post and the previous roughly the same, i.e. to put to rest anxieties a potential host may have which would otherwise stop him or her from approaching this position. I choose this title because it reflects and recites the core philosophy of the way I run my radio show:

Inflict yourself upon others; do not bend to the tastes of outside influence.

KEOL is defined by its status as a freeform radio station. Its raison d’être is that we play literally whatever we damn well please (limit common decency and FCC rulings – paltry semantics). Shackling oneself to the thought of “But nobody will listen to my show” is to self-sell incredibly short, as that’s not actually the point – the point of the show is diversity, to set oneself apart from those who came before and deliver a unique experience to draw in whomever might be listening… be it through impresed curiosity, hilarity, or sheer confusion. Like, seriously, imagine turning on the radio in rural-ass eastern Oregon and hearing this:

That is my entire MO for Rainbow Ride. It is three hours of hand-picked A-game simply because I find it undyingly funny that someone may tune in and for better or worse go “What am I listening to?” Whether or not they keep listening is up to them, and while I hope they do I ultimately don’t care because we don’t have metrics specific enough for per-show audience retention. I continue to roll in every week with my laptop and 90 gigabytes of music on the off chance somebody is just so baffled the radio is belting out the Ikaruga soundtrack or gets a pang of nostalgia while I’m playing from Random Encounter that they keep listening out of momentary fascination. It seems obvious to anyone who’s run a show, currently or previously, to play what you love, but it may well be a valid concern to those who have more offbeat tastes which don’t mesh well with the perceived local demographic. Besides, it extends beyond merely “Enjoy your work,” it’s to know that you are spreading your influence across the entire city, whether it realizes or not.

My primary audience is via the webcast, but I find it so much more satisfying knowing that for three hours, I am a presence through town, not just in it.

The interior of our studio building – our wonderful, historic, decrepit, condemned eyesore of a bungalow – is covered wall to wall in a quarter-century of graffiti. In the manager’s office, next to the door, is a hastily-scrawled “Own your show!” This distills the point to a punchy tagline, but lacks a certain terrifying gravity to drive home the message. Inflict yourself upon others. Invade space. Be the thing somebody thinks about, even if it’s while turning off that crap noise mangling their sensibilities.