It's a good thing Paul Hullabaloo has a radio show, because he sure does make
an art of speaking. Have you heard him? He's on WRIU (90.3 FM) on Sunday nights
with a program called No Positive Radio. And he has a lot to say. For
example, about his radio objectives, he says: "My mission is to create a
platform of discourse of thought and action reaching out to people who are more
subversive and intellectually minded. I try to provide something that will be
more challenging and confrontational."
No Positive Radio is the only call-in forum on 'RIU's schedule. The
administration, which Hullabaloo insists is completely supportive, has allowed
him more leeway than he could have ever hoped. He's using that leeway to make a
difference one listener at a time. "Radio is an extremely valuable social
pulpit," he says, "and at this time I feel it's being used inappropriately.
Mainstream radio right now is politics, sports, and scatological homogeneity.
It caters to the lowest common denominator, and it poisons its way through
popular culture."
If it doesn't sound like it by his tone of voice, Hullabaloo, 27, comes out of
the punk culture. In fact, he still plays in a punk band, the Cringe, with
engineer/partner in crime John Winterbottom. The band spent a lot of time
formulating philosophy and carving out an attitude in the German hardcore
scene. Yet even though his band gained a bit of notoriety there, he's never
been as fulfilled and focused as he is right now, on the air, on the
microphone, on the phone with callers. "I've never been so engaged in something
in my life as I am with radio. I've never been so monastically interested as I
am in this. It feels tangible, important. And I'd like to be a catalyst in the
evolution of talk radio. It's frankly the only thing I think about. It fuels
me."
If you haven't heard it yet, No Positive Radio is the antithesis of
commercial talk radio. In that forum, talk jocks communicate with sycophantic,
like-minded people who want little more than to reiterate their agreement with
the host. Often, when a rare dissenter gets through, the host gets the last
word and spends the next few minutes berating the caller for disagreeing.
Hullabaloo's No Positive Radio prides itself on being open-minded. While
the host likes to express his opinions, he's accessible, never insulting,
always listening -- a rarity for a talk host.
"Sure, I can share whatever views I want," he says. "But I think I'm tapping
into a demographic nobody's tapped into at all. I'm providing a platform for
people to express themselves openly without being screened. In a commercial
radio station there are sometimes three levels of screening. Here, I get
everybody I can on the air and I just serve as a moderator."
Hullabaloo's show has been so popular and so rabidly followed that he has a
hard time fielding all the people wanting to get in. "I go way out with views
purposely to get a reaction. I think people respond to reactionary ideas
whether they're organic or constructed. I throw things out on a fishing hook
and see what I catch. There's a huge subculture of disaffected and ignored 15-
to 17-year-old males that cling to the show. The brunt of e-mails is
astonishing, young males that have been deemed apathetic by society. I hear a
lot of energy."
Hullabaloo takes that energy and feeds off it. It shows up in his dialectic
with callers, in the animated expression of his views, and in the way he enjoys
the idea of using radio to reach those disaffected people. For Hullabaloo, the
idea of radio as the theater of ego -- tuning in to listen to somebody's voice
-- is satisfying. Still, ego has no part of the way he sees things. "Radio is
the only pulpit left that is still manipulated by humanity and not vice versa,
and it should be preserved."
His punk views serve as the cornerstone for much of the hour. "I see punk as a
serious westernized social disposition, disciplined and voluntary mental
configuration, as a social order. Punk can be a protectorate of the
counterculture. I use order as propaganda. In the East it's so many
male-oriented Yakuza, samurai, technocratic organizations. In the West we don't
have much, but punk could be that order. Stop with the mohawks and give up the
costumes. We can take the ideals of that movement and apply them differently
and create a potent movement and start now with the show."
Yet therein lies a bit of a problem for the talk host. While he enjoys and
thrives on his platform for talk, he feels limited -- in the audience he
reaches, in the impact he can have. He knows that if he wants to make a bigger
impact and reach that wider audience, he'll have to set aside his subversive
punk-grounded beliefs and, well, "sell out." Still, if it means he can make a
bigger splash and have a greater effect on people, then so be it.
"Radio is the seed I'm planting. I have sociopolitical goals," he admits. "I
want to build an army. I want to be on the cover of Time. I want to
mobilize and identify a subterranean culture.
"My objective breaks down on a number of levels," he explains. "In the short
term, I'd like to help the community I'm reaching out to. The second is to
build a stronger underground. Right now, in the US, what is considered the
underground is so fractured it's become discombobulated. Here, lots of people
will fondle the underground culture to bed the mass supermarket. I don't see it
that way. I think my goals are more genuine."
You can hear Paul Hullabaloo and his band of merry ideas on No Positive
Radio on WRIU on Sunday at 8 p.m. If you miss it, you can catch him on the
Web anytime at WRIU.org.
WANDERING EYE. Remember Frampton Comes Alive? Do you ever wish,
in your private moments, that you were an audience member at that wacky
concert? Remember when Peter pulled out that silly talk box and played his
guitar through it? Yeah, groovy memories. Anyway, you can step into the making
of a live epic yourself on Saturday at the Ocean Mist, when Planet
Groove rolls tape to make their very own live recording. They may not trot
out the talk box, but they'll definitely make sure the crowd is heard. Why not
be one of those voices that will live on in history? Get there early to make
sure you're not kicking yourself 20 years from now.
Reach me at big.daddy1@cox.net.
Issue Date: September 27 - October 3, 2002
