Frequency Downed

Damn the man, UNT. Damn him. It seems The Man and his penchant for something called "decency" (I asked around the office what that means, and nobody seemed to know) have shut down one of the best local-indie radio shows in town: Sunday nights with Frequency Down, hosted by comic...

By Robert Wilonsky

May 23, 2006

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Damn the man, UNT. Damn him. It seems The Man and his penchant for something called "decency" (I asked around the office what that means, and nobody seemed to know) have shut down one of the best local-indie radio shows in town: Sunday nights with Frequency Down, hosted by comic and sociology student Frank Hejl. Those who were at the Dallas Observer Music Awards will remember Frank as the dude who ran onstage to accept the best radio show award for The Adventure Club's Josh Venable; and he was the guy who pretended to own the Lizard Lounge and accepted that award too. Funny stuff.

What's not funny? The word "fuck" in a song, apparently. Usually, Frank tells Unfair Park, they'll get radio edits of a song or bleep 'em themselves. But last Sunday, he says, "This one just slipped right by me." The offending tune was "Shake It Off" by Ninja High School out of Toronto. Just can't trust those Canadians and their dirty, dirty mouths, eh?

Since Frank signed a KNTU-FM (88.1) station agreement precluding "indecency," the show was canned. "I can't say I didn't see this coming," Frank wrote in a MySpace bulletin. "It always seemed like I had to look over my back in fear that we would get cancelled, only this time it actually happened."

If you ask me, real indecency is most of the crap they play on mainstream radio--but that's just the angry hipster wannabe inside me talking. Lord knows there are all those impressionable children listening to UNT college radio who need to be sheltered from bad language in the devil's music. Speaking of the acronym, wonder why they call it KNTU instead of KUN...oh, right. --Andrea Grimes

Music editor Sam Machkovech's interview with Frank Hejl appears in this week's edition of the Dallas Observer, which hits newsstands tomorrow.

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