Sofa Issues Spring 2025
Tuning Back In with Mr. Ghost
April 23, 2025
Text by Sarah Luu with Lewis Alexander Geist of 90.5 KSJS
“The most amazing thing I’ve seen continuing despite all these digital changes is that radio continues to be a beacon in the community…When one discovers something that they really enjoy on the radio, it’s as if they’re entered into a club that they didn’t know existed.”- Lewis Alexander Geist
It was around 6AM and I had just finished delivering the last case of pastries for the morning. I never figured out how to play my own music in the delivery van, though I tried. After a week or so, I just gave up and turned on the radio. I flipped through various channels of static, throwback hits, and classical music until I suddenly heard the voice of Lucy Dacus on 90.5 FM. I was totally caught off guard– she was the last artist I expected to hear on air. I looked up the channel online, and there it was: “San Jose State University’s Student Run Ground Zero Radio Station.” So, being the music nerd that I am, I joined the radio station, 90.5 KSJS, in Spring 2022 and would find myself spending the last half of my undergraduate program almost entirely at the station. I became engrossed in the world of radio, immersed myself in my local scene and left as radio’s biggest advocate.
After a year in this program, I began to question how I could use my other interests in my practice. I sat down for a chat over the phone with one of the first friends I met upon joining KSJS to uncover some of his thoughts on how radio is currently evolving, how it may change for the future and what ideas he might have to push radio into becoming a more flexible tool of expression and communication.
Sarah Luu: I have a loaded list of questions for you about your experience in radio and what you think about radio as a whole. Let’s start off with an introduction.
What’s your name and story?
Lewis Alexander Geist: My story is…whatever comes out of my mouth. Frankly, I’ll say anything. I’ll say anything I can all the time if in jest or for humor, and it may not necessarily be the truth, but my name is Lewis Geist. Lewis Alexander Geist, if you want to be specific.
I’m from the Haight in San Francisco, California and I really enjoy helping people. I would say that’s my main story.
Sarah: How long have you been working for KSJS?
Lewis: Man…I got involved with KSJS back in 2012…That’s crazy.
It was the spring semester of 2012. I was learning how to become a DJ and that summer I would have my first show, which was an overnight show going from 2AM to 6AM.
Sarah: What drew you first to working in radio and what made you want to stay so long?
Lewis: What drew me is that they offered elective units toward my degree and I needed those units so I could get loans, so I could attend school. What kept me around was that the radio station at San Jose State, KSJS, had jazz as one of their music genres that they played on their station.
I grew up listening pretty exclusively to jazz and so I was really excited to have an opportunity to play jazz music in general, not only for myself on air, but also for anybody else who decided to listen in. On top of that, the station also did sports broadcasting for San Jose State Athletics, which I’m a big fan of, so I started doing sports broadcasting and got even more work in that as life moved along.
Sarah: Yeah, you’ve been running your jazz show for years since then, too. Have you ever thought about exploring other genres for a show?
Lewis: Not entirely. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the other genres that are played at KSJS, which include electronic, rock (which we call subversive rock), hip-hop R&B, and what is currently Latin, but in the past has been Alternativo en Español. Currently all those genres, with the exception of Latin, generally have plenty of DJs or folks familiar with those genres as they’re more popular with modern audiences, or today’s audiences, I should say. So, I continue to play jazz as my choice just to make sure that it’s around.
Sarah: That’s beautiful. You’ve been in radio for quite some time, then. I’m very curious to know what potential shifts you might have seen in the culture of radio in the past 10 years or so, especially with the different types of media we play and interact with as well as the technology we use?
Lewis: That’s a really good question. It’s a really important question.
As you’ve noted, our tastes have entirely shifted. Our areas where we get this service, if you will, from radio (broadcasting) has now moved to an online platform. Radio is limited by the amount of licenses that the federal government has given out, whereas we have an unfettered distribution of music, viewpoints, opinions– whatever it may be, that the people can broadcast on the internet– so that’s one way things have changed. The listener now has a multitude of options to choose from. But, something that keeps radio incredibly unique is that it’s not only the music stations that you’ll hear in English, but multiple languages, at least fortunately here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, I know I can turn on the radio and hear things in Spanish or Chinese. I’m sure if I go to different parts of the Bay, I’ll hear Vietnamese. A bit further out, Korean. Japanese, as well. Definitely Tagalog. I’m sure they’re all out there.
Radio can serve specialized local needs, whether that is in the political opinion sense or in the music sense. You’ll see so many folks still post online in their social media like, “Hey, my song is on the radio!”, and it’s usually starting with local radio. This is a barometer that people still want to get to or clear.
And also, there’s the news. The news on the radio hasn’t very much changed. It’s still pretty locally focused. It’s still telling you the weather and the traffic ‘cause I imagine the majority of radio listeners are still kind of car-based? Radio isn’t as ubiquitous. If we imagine in the 1940s and 50s, before television really expanded across America, people would sit around and listen to the radio! They’d look at the radio! And that was the major form of entertainment.
So obviously, in terms of its overall popularity across the populace, it has just declined with the competition that’s been out there. But now, it allows for even more hyper local abilities. Even with nationally syndicated radio, there’s still that ability to connect within your community that exists only in these places because their bandwidth only exists within their community. Their power from their stations only exists within their community. The most amazing thing I’ve seen continuing despite all these digital changes is that radio continues to be a beacon in the community.
Sarah: That’s really insightful. I’d really love to know more about these changes you brought up. When it comes to the age of digitalization, how do you think that would affect the future of radio and how that would affect live broadcasted shows?
Lewis: Digitalization of radio would not only allow us to listen wherever, but folks who are no longer present in said community can have a chance to connect back. So if you’re living in New York City, but you’ve moved away and done work for a couple months or a year in some other place, you’d be able to go online and get the feed from your favorite station, still able to feel a connection back home. This also goes for some specialty shows that are now able to attract audiences from all around.
Sarah: So I know what specialty shows are, but some people might not. Do you have any examples? Maybe within KSJS?
Lewis: At KSJS, we have an oldies show run by Bay Area Radio Hall of Famer, Dennis Terry. Shout out to Dennis, who’s legally blind, who may not have previously (as he is a bit older than us) been able to deliver his choice of content without the radio. I don’t know how he would get oldies music to the masses without it. It’s his voice and his choice, and there are people who listen all over the nation who previously would not have had the opportunity to.
Not only does it help local communities, but it also helps those in niche communities. You can talk through the DJ to the other people, via the music, and thoughts being shared. While digitalization does decrease attention span (as we’ve seen with our relationship to our phones), it can really enrich folks who want to pay attention, as they now can access their desired content live from anywhere. I think that’s really cool.
Sarah: What do you think about this circulating idea about radio “dying”? Because that’s something that we both are trying to combat, largely in support of Kimb Massey, KSJS’s faculty advisor, who is incredibly outwardly passionate about keeping radio communities visible.
Lewis: Yeah, shout out to Kimb!
There’s this music group called “Jazz is Dead”. As someone who loves jazz, the wording freaks me out in a sense ‘cause the reason why they’re saying that, is because jazz and radio really came around at the same time in terms of their popularity.
But there’s still live jazz shows all over the place. There are still jazz festivals. Do these festivals now include some acts that may not be called ‘jazz’? Yeah, absolutely, I would say that. But everything evolves. Even though we’re in this digital world, radio will evolve with it. And hey, one day the power’s gonna go out, the phone lines will be down and the only thing you’ll have is your handheld radio. Stations usually have backup generators, too, so we’ll eventually have to fall back to listening to radio in general.
Secondly, radio is also not quite a secret society, but it can feel like a secret society you’ve walked in on. Nobody is really listening to the radio and in the amounts we used to. When one discovers something that they really enjoy on the radio, it’s as if they’re entered into a club that they didn’t know existed. And it’s possible that this club grows, but I imagine as we get more digital, there will be even newer things out there to take one’s focus away from the radio.
And you know, there’s podcasts. Podcasts, I’m sure, have taken away radio listeners. But in the end, the content from the radio will have to change in order to attract people. Maybe what I see in the future is that radio will change its content in order to stay relevant within the people.
Sarah: Do you think this digital shift has affected our relationship to physical media? Do you think we’ll lose our ability to connect in the physical?
Lewis: With more digital things, we lose more physical things. There’s no doubt about it.
Music these days is generally all distributed online, so we don’t get albums with covers that we can flip over and look at the backside, and see the tracks, and see the continuation of the artist’s work on the album. There’s no longer a little insert we can take out and read things about the album that were intentionally put in place for that specific album. We can certainly go online and read a bunch of different opinions people have on the album, but maybe someone got a music critic to write about that particular album and it gives you insights that are not necessarily accessible to you anymore. So, there are things that are lost. When we switch from physical media, which we might call radio, we may lose what makes radio, radio. Things may turn away from being live, and everything will start to be pre-recorded. But I suspect that going forward people will recognize that it’s one of the outlets that can connect to anyone anywhere.
You will still have a stronger community by still having radio because of it being used by the community as opposed to a large national syndication type thing. Not that there isn’t a place for a national conversation, there always is, frankly, but we don’t want it replacing all the local ones. I hope that as we move forward into the digital age, people will remember that it’s still pretty good to use these physical mediums. And that there’s still impact to be made from radio that just can’t be matched through other mediums.
Sarah: We’ve noted in the past that many college radio stations, even in proximity to KSJS within the Bay, have decided to operate fully online and how that may take away from the physical experience of radio in itself. There is a difference between clicking a mouse to play automated playlists and interacting with a soundboard and a music library as you broadcast. What do you think about these physical experiences that are lost when stations make the shift to go on the web? Do you think stations lose some credibility or validity when they make the decision to go online?
Lewis: A lot of stations that are now online-only originally had licenses to live broadcast. It’s very likely that during the great recession from ‘07 to ‘10, maybe even a little beyond that, they had sold their licenses off, especially if they were owned by non-profits.
At the time, we were facing massive financial issues and these licenses were (and are) very valuable. The fact that they’re now online-only is just a little bit different. You need to have that internet connection and you need to make sure that you go to it. It’s not as simple as starting your car and spinning a dial ‘cause the radio is already built into it. I don’t know if anybody still has clock radios anymore, but those things still exist and it’s also not as simple as just putting the power on. You have to connect to the right station you want. Even though it’s not on the same distribution level or wavelength system, its goals are generally the same, which is to connect the community with information. The goal overall is to provide content that interests, resonates or engages.
At some point, an online-only thing has to compete with other things that are also online, which could be watching some streamer play music and discuss it live in real-time with the chat. I’ve seen it happen now in our station; they’ll go live and say “Hey, I’m doing my show. Hit me up on my stream and I’ll answer your questions.” Maybe that is the next step, and I didn’t know that until we started having this conversation and that’s right where it needs to be. Current radio will adopt what the online radio people might have experienced and tailored to their own shows.
Sarah: Thanks for sharing that, it seems like radio will continue to exist as a critical tool to connect with our communities in any shape or form, from musical interests to personal opinions. In that sense, would you see radio as a potential platform for activism or other forms of cultural work?
Lewis: I think it’s always been a form of activism. There’s certainly different causes being taken up on airwaves, depending on what portion of the country you’re in. Sometimes you’re driving along a road and you’re listening to a station and all of sudden, it becomes another station, and you don’t even have to go far sometimes. I mean, where else is one able to get content that resonates with themselves? It takes a lot of community to make that happen. Almost all the time, radio very much responds to those who’s listening now.
Fortunately in our radio community, there are non-profit stations that are able to give us things that are not necessarily demanded by the public, things we might not know we need. Those things can be worship-related, language and culture-related, politics-related, and of course, music related. So, I think it is activism as we see the community push and pull their own individual thoughts and feelings reflected in our broadcasts.
Sarah: If you could reimagine the role of the DJ as a kind of public thinker or artist, what would that look like to you?
Lewis: I wonder if I can reimagine that or if I’m already too entrenched in being a “DJ”, that I couldn’t freely think of something else. Part of what may be inhibiting my imagination of rethinking is the fact that radio generally doesn’t have any silence.* When people tune in, whether it be online or the FM/AM bandwidth (though I guess actually the internet is bandwidth, too) there is this preconceived notion that the silence isn’t good. I guess I could imagine somebody adding silence, for a little while if it was part of an artistic demonstration. I’m also imagining somebody with a trombone just playing into the microphone for no particularly good reason.
*Note: When you are on air doing a show, there must be something playing at all times– music, dialogue, etc. Silence on live air waves is known as “dead air”, and you should never have dead air. Ever.
Jokes aside, because radio licenses are provided by the government, there are constraints even with some safe harbor hours. There are even further constraints depending on the radio station you work for. But it would be fun to be able to have an unconstrained stream of consciousness broadcasted on air. A stream of Art-ism. Um, that’s not a word. Art. A stream of artistic expression. And a part of that could be curated from other sounds or individuals, inviting others to come in and communicate.
Sarah: Wasn’t there a DJ that would read his dream journal on air?
Lewis: Yes, and that was incredibly popular. People would always ask about that.
Sarah: Has KSJS as a station ever pushed the boundaries of “typical” radio content?
Lewis: We do have the opportunity to use radio as a creative outlet within some of the confines of our station. Every April Fools Day we do something that’s satirical and mocking. Most recently, we changed song lyrics to cat meows, and that went unbelievably viral, relative to anything we’ve ever experienced recently, online and within our community. Even now, a couple weeks removed from April 1st, people are still talking to me about it, wondering if they could get copies of some of those songs, and relaying stories of how they called into the station that day and the DJs on the other side of the line would just meow. So, there are still opportunities within radio today that I don’t have to reimagine, because these DJs are already doing the things that I should have imagined already…
Overall, though, DJs have the responsibility to the community to give them something. And like everything in life, it’s not always the right thing or a good thing. We all miss every once in a while or some of us miss a little more frequently, but we’re not here to judge. Sometimes, it’s just how things go. I know I certainly miss every now and then but with such a platform, we have the opportunity to be able to give and share so much, and I love giving.
Sarah: Well, that is all the questions I have for you, Lewis. Do you have any for me?
Lewis: Yeah, absolutely, How do you feel about the SOFA journal being published digitally and not distributed with physical copies?
Sarah: Hm, well where do I start? As you know, I started this program last Fall. The SOFA journals were already fully digital at that point so this system is only what I know. It does make me a bit sad. I know it’s more cost-effective but it feels so much more special to read from something you can feel. The tangible, physicality of it. I feel more connected to things when I’m not receiving it from a screen. It’s why I do zines and stuff.
Lewis: You know, I wanna bring that up and this should be noted. You introduced zines back, or maybe for the first time, to KSJS.
Sarah: I did! ‘Soundshock’ was what Allyssa and I decided to call it.
Lewis: You even printed some cool stuff for us too…
Sarah: Yeah, I mean it all stemmed from wanting to help grow a community that I finally felt were my kinds of people. I joined in Spring 2022, post-covid and the beginning of “hybrid” learning at SJSU. I struggled to find my people through Zoom and made friends with the very few people that were present when I first joined…I always mention the small number of people when I first came because it sticks out in my brain so vividly. The station has grown so much since I’ve joined.
Lewis: It has amazingly recovered.
Sarah: Yeah, amazingly! I would table for the station a lot and noticed how many people came by just for the free stickers and shit. Sometimes they grabbed flyers but most times not. People wanted things to keep and personalize, or interact with. Since I was already making zines, I decided to just do it. I teamed up with Allyssa and we made it happen. It worked because we made it worth keeping. It wasn’t just a basic flyer you glance at briefly between classes. This had everything you needed to know to be a part of the station and an invitation to know more about the San Jose music scene as a whole. We put interviews, music recommendations by genres and photographs…I mean you were there.
Lewis: It was a very fun and tactile experience. You allowed us to promote KSJS in a different medium entirely, in an outlet that welcomed everyone.
Sarah: Yeah, and that was the goal of it all. Using an accessible medium to promote an accessible radio station for students by students. It reflected what we were already saying to our community, which was basically “Whatever we’re doing here, you can do, too”.
Lewis: Well, now people are still doing zines without you being here and they’re making…not knock-off or bootleg… but individually designed KSJS apparel, as well.
Sarah: Wow, that was my goal, honestly.
Lewis: You passed the baton. No, you built it! Like those things totally weren’t existing before the pandemic. You’ve created new paths that have rebuilt the station from that time.
Sarah: That’s sweet to hear. Thank you. It was so nice chatting and catching up with you Lewis.
Lewis: You’re very welcome.
Sarah: Bye! Talk to you later.
Lewis: Bye, bye. Bye!!!
If Lewis Alexander Geist (he/him) is not actively assisting in some matter for someone else, or walking in the middle of Haight Street, then odds are good that this San Francisco native is talking. Ever the conversationalist, his humorous and engaging manner meets all folks where they are. Even on his jazz radio show he will try to have (very, very one sided) conversations with the listeners. That motormouth does get put to good use in sports broadcasting where he does all manner of work; from play-by-play and color commentary, to sideline reporting and public address (plus less talkative roles such as camera operator, technical director and broadcast coordinator).
While studying political science at San Jose University, Lewis found his way to the campus radio station KSJS, where he would eventually become the Director for the Jazz/World/Blues Department and the Sports Department. Having loved jazz and sports for as long as he can recall, KSJS allowed Lewis to immerse himself in those worlds in ways he had never imagined…
Sarah Luu (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She gravitates towards photography, ceramics, zines and print-making. As a first generation Asian American, her work has touched on themes of her mixed Vietnamese-Chinese identity, intergenerational trauma and cultural tradition. She explores themes outside those topics by grabbing inspiration from her lived experience growing up and being raised in San Jose, California surrounded by a vibrant arts and music culture.
She holds a BA in Studio Art, Preparation for Teaching from San Jose State University and is currently studying for an MFA in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University. Her favorite food is her mother’s Bánh Canh and she can roller skate backwards.