The day Aspen Public Radio’s music died

A few days ago all of the volunteer DJs at KAJX Aspen Public Radio were notified by the recently hired executive director that there would be “programming changes.” A meeting followed on Friday night, Jan. 17. It was a short meeting. We were told that all music programming was terminated effective immediately.

Unfortunately this left all of us with no opportunity to do one final show, which would have given us the chance to thank you, our listeners, for your loyalty over the many years that we created music programming for this amazing community. For us it seemed appropriate for Aspen Public Radio to have a mix of news and music as The Aspen Idea as formulated by Walter Paepcke highlighted the importance of not just knowing things, but of processing knowledge and information within the context of great ideas, great music and natural splendor.

It has been a privilege for all of us DJs to serve the community in a very creative way for these many years, and we will dearly miss that opportunity in the years ahead. Aspen remains a unique community and we regret that Aspen Public Radio has moved in a direction to be less unique, and simply put, just another generic public radio station.

Thanks for listening.

Stu Huck, Thursday Night Jazz; Scott Harper, Tuesday Night Jazz; Jeannie Walla, Wednesday Night Jazz; Neil Jung, Monday Night Jazz; Stan Bialek, Aspen Hot Wax & First Tuesday Jazz; Andrea Young, Aspen Beat and former jazz host; Cheryl “Bluebird” Koehne, Blue Horizon; Arlene Guillen, Thursday Night Jazz; Sandy Sattler, Wednesday Night Jazz; Ned Cochran, Emeritus Jazz host; Dan Sadowsky aka Pastor Mustard, Bluegrass With Mustard