The most pow­er­ful per­son at CYVR was the woman who oper­ated the cash reg­is­ter at the the cafeteria.

There was a dial on the wall beside her. If she didn’t like the music — which was often — she could turn off  CYVR  or turn it down. There’d be silence through out the Uni­ver­sity of British Columbia’s Stu­dent Union Building.

Even­tu­ally, CYVR became CITR and got itself orga­nized to the point where it’s now cel­e­brat­ing its 75th anniver­sary. It has 30 year old shows about reg­gae, folk and rap. It has pod­casts. A monthly music mag, Dis­corder, itself 30 years old. It presents weekly bat­tles of the bands, Shindig.

Last month, it threw a reunion for CITR alumni with guest air shifts, tours, a con­cert and a cham­pagne brunch. I was invited to the last, but couldn’t attend. If I had, I might have told a few sto­ries about the time I was the station’s Music “Dic­ta­tor,” and the sta­tion was, per­haps, at its low­est ebb.

At the time, the early 70s, CYVR was try­ing to get a cable license and later to go to FM, which it even­tu­ally did. Then, though, the sta­tion was heard at the SUB and was trans­mit­ted into three dor­mi­to­ries. We bragged that we were heard by thou­sands of lis­ten­ers. The truth was that the trans­mit­ters often were not work­ing and if the woman at the cash reg­is­ter didn’t like us, the only per­son who could hear CYVR was the per­son in the broad­cast booth.

We needed money for such things as the repair of the trans­mit­ters and to hire proper man­age­ment, but we had no cred­i­bil­ity. Fund­ing, thus, was hard to come by. I remem­ber that one writer from the Ubyssey, the cam­pus news­pa­per sit­u­ated to the sta­tion, sneered as he asked what it was like to be a pre­tend radio station.

We weren’t pre­tend­ing. We  wanted to be a real sta­tion. We were fac­ing a lot of  basic prob­lems and were still man­ag­ing to be of ser­vice. At least one record com­pany promo rep used CYVR for elab­o­rate pro­mo­tions while oth­ers would bring by cur­rent acts to be inter­viewed live on the air. We also did a few pro­duc­tions and aspir­ing jocks used the facil­ity to make demos.

For my part as Music Dic­ta­tor, I had a few prob­lems of my own. I would pub­lish a top 30 list and would mail them. The hope was that the on air per­son­nel would play songs from the list and write them down. They sel­dom did. Most pre­ferred to play album tracks or songs from their own record col­lec­tion. In the end, I wouldn’t say the top 30 was bogus, but was more a reflec­tion of what I liked and backed.

Then, too, some­body was steal­ing new records from the music library. It was my bright idea to deface the albums with big felt pen writ­ing that selected prime cuts and brief, usu­ally sar­cas­tic, cri­tiques. Some were silly or sex­ist or both. Sorry. The think­ing was that nobody would want such marked up albums. The ploy worked only slightly but the thefts con­tin­ued. Once in a while I see the hand­i­work and am embarrassed.

I hung out at CYVR, spend­ing most of the time cut­ting classes and zip­ping into the SUB pub. Thus, I was privy to what CYVR hoped to accom­plish — if it had fund­ing, if it had everybody’s coop­er­a­tion. Some of us wanted to be dif­fer­ent and be an alter­na­tive to the com­mer­cial AM sta­tions. Oth­ers wanted to be exactly like the com­mer­cial sta­tions with iden­ti­cal playlists, legit­i­mate news broad­casts and a pro­fes­sional air.

That was impos­si­ble as long as there were so-called jocks who used the air­time to eat lunch in pri­vate and bliss out to a side of Van Mor­ri­son or the Moody Blues. Not that it mat­tered. Who cared if you were in search of the lost chord if the woman in the cafe­te­ria had turned you off.