liza richardson - music supervisor, DJ, radio host

"I don't really plan out my sets, I just go with the flow," says DJ, music supervisor and avid surfer, Liza Richardson.

Every Saturday night, her radio show on 89.9 KCRW, rises like the tide, waxes and wanes like the moon and pulses with beats, storms and sonic swells. Liza mixes hip hop-rock-reggae, dub-disco-punk, lo-fi-funk, techno soul, cosmic world party music and surfs the airwaves of LA.

According to BPM Magazine, "When you sit back and consider who in Hollywood is pushing underground music forward, Liza Richardson is definitely jockeying for poll position." Paper Magazine calls her "one of KCRW's most enduring polymaths."

During the week she's a music supervisor and consultant with credits including NBC's critical rave Friday Night Lights, films Lords of Dogtown, Y Tu Mama Tambien (garnering her a Grammy nomination), Nacho Libre, Failure to Launch, Wicker Park and some of the early iPod spots. Since her passion is surfing, Sony Animation's groundbreaking Summer 2007 penguin mockumentary, Surf's Up (nominated in 2008 for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film) was a dream job!

"How did you get into music supervision?" This is a question she gets asked all the time. "I don't really know. One thing lead to another. Director Mark Pellington helped a lot (he gave me my first job!), being an eclectic DJ on a cool radio station helped indeed, but I quickly learned that it takes more than good taste in music to do it."

Good taste however has come in handy. In February 2007, Liza was tapped to DJ The Acedemy Awards ceremony.

Phoenix native, Liza says she feels like she's always balanced a double life and is accustomed to transforming herself at the drop of a hat. "As a kid, I was a skateboarding, ballet freak. In high school I was a studious speech and drama nerd all day but an enthusiastic cheerleader after school; in college at SMU in Dallas, a hard-core theatre and dance major / sorority girl. When I got to KCRW in 1991, music director Chris Douridas asked me to host a poetry show, Man In The Moon, and suddenly I was interviewing Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith and blending Kenneth Patchen poems with William Orbit and Underworld! And then we switched it up and tried a Latin rock and alt-C&W show called Rancho Loco."

Now she's an assiduous disco DJ by night, an experienced Hollywood music supervisor / detective / researcher by day, and drop-everything surfer by morning.

Whether it's on the air, in the water or moving through life, Liza goes with the flow.