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KZSM — A place to share your passion

Sunday, June 28, 2020

As Texas remains in partial shutdown amid a resurgence of COVID-19, you can stay informed by tuning in to our KZSM. org live news specials at noon on Mondays and Fridays. San Marcos Mayor Jane Hughson and County Judge Ruben Becerra call in regularly with their latest updates, and we talk to experts, officials, and your neighbors.

All of our program hosts are volunteers, and each one has a personal passion, along with a dedication to community radio. For Mark Moniz, host of “Metal Mark Live,” Thursdays 10 p.m. to midnight, passion and dedication began in his teens. “As a musician at the age of fourteen, playing guitar in the Hollywood underground, I got into heavy metal,” he recalls. He also became “a real radiohead.”

Moniz’s dedication to radio continued when he moved to San Antonio with his mother. There he discovered 99.5 and Joe “The Godfather” Anthony, the DJ who helped make San Antonio “The Heavy Metal Capital of America.”

In San Marcos, Moniz began broadcasting on KIND radio, an alternative radio station, in 1997, and developed “a really big following for my show there, called “Twenty Years of Metal.” Classified as a pirate radio station, KIND was shut down early in 2000.

When he learned about KZSM.org, Moniz sought out then-Station Manager Griffin Spell and completed the application immediately — with a crayon, the only writing implement in his car. In tribute to Joe Anthony, Moniz became “The Godson of Heavy Metal.” “When I came on KZSM. org, I decided that that’s the kind of format I wanted — Old School Metal.”

The KZSM studio at 216 North Guadalupe offered more space, and Moniz was able to invite bands to play live on his Thursday night show. He reconnected with San Antonio groups he had featured on his previous show, and discovered a lively heavy metal scene here in San Marcos.

To showcase the bands he loves and to help causes he supports, Moniz organizes benefit concerts, most recently at Ragnar’s on the Compound, at 6900 Ranch Rd 12 in Wimberley, underwriters of “Metal Mark Live.”

Though not all of us have a history as long as Metal Mark Moniz’s, our radio hosts at KZSM.org all share his dedication to community radio. To get involved, E-mail kzsmsanmarcos@ gmail.com. To help sustain our programming, find the “donate” button on our website, KZSM.org. Tune in, stay in, help out.

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666