Spinning records on her Geoffrey Giraffe turntable, Amy Trulock fell in love with music, and vinyl at the age of 3. Which might explain why, when given the opportunity to DJ on UCSB’s training station, she developed and hosted the school’s first and only Alternative Children’s College Radio Show. For two semesters Amy experimented with the most cherished possession of her childhood, a crate of 45s, intermingling them with the contents of UCSB’s music vault. The rules were simple…keep it G-rated, use every genre and ban the purple dinosaur and the pop princess.

Amy held tight to these parameters when she launched Hip Young Parents Radio in 2005. “My two rules are ‘No Barney, No Britney’. There’s an overabundance of children’s music, and not all of it’s good. Because I don’t have my own kids, I have the freedom of time, and I hope I can help by wading through it.” While not a parent herself, Amy is a godmother, honorary big sister, self-described ‘young Auntie Mame’ and the long lost love child of Katherine Hepburn and Mister Rogers. “Ever since I was old enough to baby sit, I have helped raise some amazing kids with my whimsical and empathetic view of childhood.”

All of these qualities are readily evident in her brilliant programming line-up (see below), which features everything from the HYP Rodeo Hour of rockabilly, alt-country and Americana to the ‘International Hour of Nap!’ known as HYP Siesta Lunch. HYP Radio streams kid-friendly music 24/7 from all generations and genres via Live365 – the world’s largest Internet radio network (with thousands of stations and more than 4 million listeners a month.) And an added bonus is that as each song is aired the title and artist are listed on the site with a handy link to purchase the song/album from Amazon or itunes. Rock on!

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