Commercial Radio DJ's Punk Rock College Radio Beginnings

In his "Radio Waves" column this weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle, Ben Fong-Torres writes an extensive profile of Annalisa, a professional DJ at San Francisco commercial rock station KFOG. Like many commercial DJs she had college radio beginnings. Fong-Torres writes:

"She came here in 1995 from Boston, where she'd been on radio since college in the early '80s...

At Bridgewater State College, she got onto the campus station, and her work there - playing punk rock - led to her first paying radio job, at a nearby country station. That gig, in turn, led back to rock...but only after gaining five years of solid radio experience.

The lesson she learned - and tries to pass along to younger radio enthusiasts - is to remain open-minded. 'If I'd said, 'No, I'm not going to work on a country station after playing punk rock in college' ... why close those doors?'

It was at the college station, she says, that she began calling herself Annalisa. 'It's actually a Johnny Rotten song,' she says. 'I thought it was a good, anonymous name, and why not be anonymous on the radio?'"

It's nice to know that there's still a little punk rock left in commercial DJs, even if it's just in their airname or in their private record collections.