Amy Eades
Graduation year and major?
1994 and English degree, with a music minor in recording
Position at KCPR:
I was underwriting director and then I was the programming director. I was a DJ the whole time. My biggest show was New-Wave mania. My mentor had started the show. After he graduated, I took it over. I did it for the remaining time, and a couple of months after I graduated, until I moved away.
Favorite part about working for KCPR:
The music and the people of course. I was there in the 90s when grunge was breaking – we broke Nirvana, we broke Pearl Jam. Industrial was emerging in performance art. There was so much new music that came out during my time there that [is] still influential today.
We started the Earth Day shows and Green Day even performed at one of our Earth Day shows before they were big. Beck was another one. He was nobody. He was living in the back of his car and his biggest hit at the time was “MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.” He performed at our great art or stage show and, within the next couple of years, he broke out with “Loser” and launched his career.
We saw so many shows and were able to talk to bands. It was really fun. [We] went to the music conventions and New York a couple of times as college music journalists. We would descend upon downtown New York City and take over all the bars. Our pass would get us into every club, some that aren’t even there anymore, like CBGB, The Roxy and The Ritz. Then we would see all kinds of bands on it, all night long for four days straight. College Music Journal (CMJ) was the big magazine and they would have a convention every year out there.
Where do you currently work and what do you do?
I’m a sales professional. I’m starting a new job for a company called BAYCABLE. I’m super excited they do custom cable assemblies for everything from communications to medical and military. I’ll be the Southern California outside manager, representing all of Southern California from Santa Barbara and South.
How did, if at all, KCPR help or prepare you for your career trajectory?
I was underwriting director and my job was to get sponsors for the station. I learned how to present the station in a very positive way, encourage businesses to support the station [and] get donations when we would have our fundraising drives. I was really challenged when I was Programming Director. I had the hard learning curve of dealing with people and scheduling. It wasn’t always perfect but I learned a lot from [KCPR] that I now use as a sales professional.
For sales over the phone, one of the biggest things I learned at KCPR was to smile. When you’re on the air, people know if you’re smiling – you project through your facial expressions. When you actually put the smile on, people see you through your voice. I always say that one day I’ll get back to radio when my life turns in that direction.
I always loved the old school splicing back when we used razor blades and tape and reel to reels. Now it’s digital and you just go to a point on the screen. It’s such a different process. There’s something magical about having two pieces of reel to reel tape that you find that route, and you cut it, and then you splice it, and it makes just an amazing cut. Those were good times. My gravitation toward being an audio file and understanding signal processes also led me to the career I’m in now.
