(In which Ray Brandes channels frequencies of our youth.)
The recent announcement of bankruptcy and sale of San Diego radio station 91X has had many of us here at the Che Underground reminiscing about rock-‘n’-roll radio in San Diego.
The events of my own formative years were accompanied by a soundtrack that emanated from a small transistor radio. Powered by those little rectangular nine-volt batteries that are nowadays are only used to power smoke detectors and guitar tuners, mine had a tiny two-inch speaker and a wrist strap for easy portability. Late at night, under the covers, I listened to pop and soul hits like Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff” and The Three Degrees’ “When Will I See You Again,” interspersed with “oldies” like the Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” and the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun.”
For those of us who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, AM radio was a constant companion, whether we were listening to the hits of the day on KGB Boss Radio or KCBQ, or tracking Randy Jones, Dave Winfield and the Padres. In the mid-’70s, FM radio became big business in town, and I recall hipsters everywhere sporting KGB and KPRI stickers (sometimes naughtily modified) on their car bumpers.
Paul Kaufman recalls the heyday of Rodney on the ROQ!
Many here have recalled how Jim McInnes’ groundbreaking and influential radio program “The Modern World” introduced San Diego hard-rock fans to exciting new music in the late ’70s. For others, FM radio was a polarizing force, particularly 91X’s “Rock of the Eighties” format, which debuted in January 1983 (when the DJ mistakenly played a Berlin record at the wrong speed).
What are your memories of rock-‘n’-roll radio in San Diego? Are there particular stations, DJs or shows that evoke the era for you?
— Ray Brandes
More posts by Ray Brandes:
- “Puberty Principle”: First sonic crushes
- Helter Skelter: Tate-LaBianca at 40
- Guess who’s coming to dinner?
- My favorite things: What are you listening to?
- Footloose: Rockin’ the ’80s
- “I don’t get it”
- Me and my monkey: Guilty pleasures
- Man-eaters and mad crushes
- Our Lady of Chula Vista
- You Never Give Me Your Money: IOUs and the Che Underground
Ray--It’s amazing how nothing more than DJ names and station call letters bring a whole milieu instantly to mind. Thanks and Happy New Year! Besides these, I have very fond memories of listening to Dr. Demento’s show on Sunday nights in childhood and adolescence (can’t remember which station…KGB?), and I think he had a major influence in helping many of our generation to prefer humor, weirdness, and wit over self-satisfaction, dull proficiency, and feathery hair. I was stunned recently to find that none of my younger colleagues (I’m 42) had any idea who he is. Kids today…
Simon, I am right there with you with a toast to the good Doctor Demento!
It was on KGB, yes, at the time they called themselves “mellow radio”, heh. I have stacks of cassettes of those shows from the mid-70’s, recorded with a cassette mic infront of my transistor’s speaker long before I realized you could run a line out into a line in…
The Demento show would end and KGB would return to playing James Taylor and running ads for John Holmes movies (as a kid I wasn’t exactly sure what that was all about) — I kid not..guess FM stations got their ad income from whomever back in the day and I’ve got the proof on FedMart cassettes.
I loved how Dr. D would add a little history lesson into the mix from time to time, explain a bit (or sometimes postulate for the really mysterious ones) about the origin of the various recordings and how they might have fit into the context of the their times, especially on the political/cultural tunes. Although the ‘Funny Five’ countdown at the end of the show was usually pretty predictable (nothing wrong with hearing “Star Drek” again), each 2-hour episode contained unique gems from his extensive vault of Weird.
Knowing that there was this mad maniac somewhere, spreading the wacky word, was indeed a profound influence. And a wakeup that sonic and cosmic comic craziness wasn’t just a recent development — I don’t know of any other mainstream (?) radio shows (other than classical or jazz radio) that put you in touch with such a grand tradition of uncommercial recording…? Perhaps there was some clue there for a generation to look back for inspiration along with looking forward. If you haven’t heard something it’s still new, right? No matter whence it came from..?
And DIY props, too….his popularizing of homemade madness gave you the sense that you could come up with a good idea and spread it around using just the simplest recording tools.
thanks doc.
Here’s the actual miniature transistor radio I carried around with me constantly from 65/66 til at least 8/26/68. That was the day “Hey Jude/Revolution” was released. I was sitting on a bench outside the main North gate at NTC waiting for Dennis the Drummer to hurry up and buy something at the PX. I’d been denied entry onto the base because I’d refused a sentry’s demands to tuck in my shirttail…
“You say you want a revolution?” Sounded good to me…
So this a Topp “Bat Radio”.
It used to have nameplate on the front that fell off and got lost years ago.
There was also a Batman insignia charm on the chain, but I took it off so I could wear it around my neck.
Joe,
Great comment and photo! I’m always appreciative of your beautiful prose. There are a lot of you here (including Toby, Dave Fleminger, Matt and Harold Gee) who should really publish something.
This was the radio I had for much of the seventies. I think it was a hand-me-down from one of my sisters, but in any case I always think about it in association with my Kodak instamatic camera (which used Magic Cubes.)
Speaking of Dr. Demento, he was pretty instrumental in the careers of those “Fish Heads” guys and Weird Al, wasn’t he?
Anyway, I have a recollection of Benny Bell’s 1940s novelty song “Shaving Cream” being played on KGB AM when I was in elementary school. This was, it turns out, due to the old record being played on the Dr. Demento Show! It was released as a single, and the old guy had a hit record.
What was so great about AM radio in the sixties and seventies was the incredible variety of music that was played. I marvel at some of the strange and wonderful stuff that became hits in those decades. Where are all of the eccentrics today? On YouTube, I suppose.
Wow
Brings back good memories.
I wonder what my kids will be saying on a site like this in 25 years? I try and come up with what they would say but not having much luck.
Maybe my daughter will say something about how wierd it was using her Digital SLR camera?
Can’t think of anything like DR. Demento……..Maybe Barney or Teletubbies…………….
Happy New Year.
Ray , ” those fish head guys ” . . . one of them was Billy Mumy who was the young son Will Robinson on the Lost In Space television show from the late 60’s .
He went on to have a pretty successful career , if not under the radar and is currently still writing and singing weird songs , doing voice overs & narrator spots here & there and generally living a pretty sweet life from what I’ve heard & seen online .
i had this blue plastic radio that was a sort of teardrop shape that had a little hole through it in the top that you could hang it off a bike handle bar and listen to it while you rode around . The face of it was a big black dial and it had little volume dials on the side .
Wish I had it now !
Billy Mumy was also the little boy in the Twilight Zone episode who wished people to the cornfields.
>>Billy Mumy was also the little boy in the Twilight Zone episode who wished people to the cornfields.
We’re linked up on Facebook. He seems unusually well-adjusted for a child star! (Like Ron Howard … I’d say it was a redhead think, but then there’s Danny Bonaducci.)
Thanks Ray. Kind words, but you guys (and The Gris over at D de T) are the real writers. I’m really enjoying reading through the old threads here. There’s much to be gleaned.
Love your old radio!
Is that the embodiment of Sixties Space Age design or what?
does anyone remember after the dr demento show there was show for an hour profiling bands like the doors the who and other heavyweights?
Thanks, Kevin. I fixed it above.
If I recall correctly he at first used the Jam tune of the same name to open the show, at least a few times.
That reminds me, does anyone recall a station called KSEA? I wanna say it was 97.3 or so. Early 70’s hard rock station.
KCBQ. B100. 13K. “Magic” 91.
and KPRI -- which supposedly had less commercials and hard rock n roll -- not sissy pop stuff like the Sweet and Abba songs I LOVED in 4th or 5th grade. I used to put the transitor radio up to a tape deck to record songs. Do you remember those crystal radio kits we used to get -- I think I won one. Twice. they really work!
A friend of ours once told me that this was my song:
She started dancing to that fine fine music.
You know her life was saved by rock n roll.
Despite all the amputation
You could just dance to a rock n roll station.
He may have been right.
Lou and I used to sing this…”two TV sets and two cadillac cars..baby that won’t help you at all”.
Wish I still had my beat up tan Roberts.
OK, If memory serves, KSEA was/were the original call letters for KPRI.
When underground radio first came to San Diego, it was Fridays at midnite on KSEA and the DJ was OB Jetty. This was late ’67, early ’68?
The first time I tuned in, I was literally light outs and under the covers. After the regular programming faded out, there was silence and then the JHE’s “EXP” fading in and out of the Byrds “Eight Miles High” for about 20 minutes.
Totally turned on, and it was just a matter of time…
It was my little AM clock radio that got me through Jr high and into high school (circa 1970-1975). I was constantly being punished (Yeah I was that kind of kid) I would be put on restriction for weeks at a time by having to stand in the middle of my room and the only time I could get out of my room was if I had to go to the bathroom, go to school or go to church. The radio was my life line and connected me to the outer world. I’m sure that I would have gone over the deep end at a early age if it wasn’t for AM radio. I could predict what songs would be in KCBQ’s top 10 weekly givaway promo sheet (it was about the size of those “Sports Schedules”). It was this constant emersion into the AM radio that generated my love for music and one day to play music in a band. It was Jim McInnes who played our first single and so, as radio grew into FM I went from listening to it to being on it. Don’t have that radio any more …hmmm, just the memories of it.
I remember when KBG would play something like Cheap Trick- Live at Budakon or Kiss- Kiss Alive in it’s entirety. I would have lots of those TDK 90 minute cassette tapes laying around ready to record on.
I mean KGB.
I just looked up the history of KGB Radio. The station was licensed as KFBC in July 1922; the KGB call letters (which reflected the initials of VP and Manager George Bowles) debuted in 1928 (26 years before the Russians tagged their Committee for State Security with those letters).
Among the radio station’s tag lines at the end of the ’20s were were “The Sunshine State of California” and “Music for the Sick.” The latter sounds like it should’ve been a punk record 50 years later!
I spent many a Saturday morning with my ear stuck to a speaker, kneeling at the alter of Casey Kasem, hoping one day, some day, the Long Distance Dedication might be for me.
quote” I remember when KBG would play something like Cheap Trick- Live at Budakon or Kiss- Kiss Alive in it’s entirety. I would have lots of those TDK 90 minute cassette tapes laying around ready to record on….”
Ditto here, Todd. I remember recording that budakon and a “live in Chicago” c. 1978 on KGB. Now, where did those fedmart brand tapes go?
There was a KGB AM too. Was that the station that played Dr. Demento? I think it was an easy listening station.
KGB FM was actually pretty cool in the late 70s… for a while, anyway. They were trying to work a few punk songs into their regular rotation, like Sonic Reducer, California Sun by the Ramones and God Save The Queen (believe it or not). They must have gotten complaints about the music, because it disappeared quickly enough. They’d also play songs like Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman and some 60s garage punk songs like Talk Talk and Pushin’ Too Hard. This was part of their regular programing… before Jim McInnis started doing the Modern World show, which I used to tape every week.
Megan,
Glad to help make your dreams come true:
nice writings all, we played a show with billy mumy at madame wongs once, and i never new he was one of the fish head guys…he was playing jazz as far as i remember.
…and coming it at #3, Casey Kasem losing it in the studio about one more g-ddamned up-tempo record before a DEATH DEDICATION! Speaking of death dedications, anyone see this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/arts/music/15metal.html
I am fascinated buy this stuff. Maybe I have just been enchanted with the idea of Nordic faeries, and thus the irony of seeing the people from the land where the sun is always serenade decay and destruction. In full make-up and lycra.
Gary: you are in Norway, right? what gives?
…and coming it at #3, Casey Kasem losing it in the studio about one more g-ddamned up-tempo record before a DEATH DEDICATION! Speaking of death dedications, anyone see this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/arts/music/15metal.html
I am fascinated buy this stuff. Maybe I have just been enchanted with the idea of Nordic faeries, and thus the irony of seeing the people from the land where the sun is always shining serenade decay and destruction. In full make-up and lycra.
Gary: you are in Norway, right? what gives?
Gary: Finland. sorry.
hello megan…close! I am in Finland…I’ve been keeping this close to the vest, but I guess i can go ahead as we just finished today, (hopefully) but finnish tv has been filming a documentary about my life…i went yesterday to the orphanage where I was kept as a child…its now an oldfolks home..and i didn’t recognize anything until we did a bend where i recognized the trees next to the lake…it was one of the most powerful emotions i have ever experienced…I went numb…then we went to visit another person that was at the same orphanage…and he told stories about the beatings we were given as it was run by a strict christian woman,and said that most of the children from that orphanage either committed suicide became alcoholics, or drug addicts…the doc should be edited and shown in finland in march or so…and as i told the director here’s the deal…show it warts and all…anyway, its been a tough couple of weeks…but now i have some answers…love to all…heff
ok, now that you all mentioned dr. demento i have “shaving cream” stuck in my head. and henry, my awesome sone, sings “fish heads” all the time. quite annoying actually. but we love the billy mumy. he’s awesome.
casey kasem and his top 10 made me happy. mostly in the era of diana ross’ “upside down” and “another one bites the dust”.
what was that lecherous british dudes name? the dj from 91x? he was so slimy. ew.
my big carry it around item from back then was an old brownie camera that barely took pix anymore. it was my grandpas.
(that’s “son” not, “sone”… wth?)
and i will tell you that while filming today he asked what I was most proud of in my life, and he mentioned his kids…I said I’m proud of my kids and showed him this site, and told him how overwhelmed i was with all of the nice things people have said in here about us, and that the truth was that no matter where I have ever been in my life, i have always felt that I was out of place and didn’t belong there or wasn’t accepted…so yeah some pretty heavy revelations…and a lot of contemplation and introspection…but well…oh you kids…thanks.
wow gary, that must have been emotionally exhausting. I applaud you in having the fortitude to let that all in. Keep us posted with release dates, etc. mazel tov.
Ava: Was it Steve West? I’m not sure but that name comes to mind. I think he had a show with a guy named Russ T. Nailz (geddit?): West and Nailz…
Ava, probably Steve West.
“BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”
Thanks, Dean! This is great. Just like I remember it. I love the shots of 1972 San Diego, too.
An early memory: My brother Baba cranking up KPRI on his clock radio, circa 1970. Waking up me and our brother Lance at odd hours while Adrian Bolt yammered about something British and then played “Purple Haze.”
The other day he reminded me of an incident. A similar scenario to the above, with him falling out of the top bunk and being dazed and trapped in a wedge next to a dresser with “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” droning on and on. He says he’s hated Gordon Lightfoot tunes ever since.
I have an old radio memory of one of the first synthesizer / electronic tunes I remember really liking . It was a song by a guy named Dane Conover I think , the song was called Delta Sleep . It was all synthy & dreamy sounding and since i was an organ prodigy at a very young age , I was mesmerized that a keyboard could sound like something other than Organ Powered Pizza , or the electric light parade at Disneyland .
That led to my aural love affair with people like Gary Numan and Ultravox pretty early on .
I had a whole cassette tape of songs that were missing the first 3 or 4 seconds because that’s how long it took me to hit the ” record ” button on my little tape player radio combo when I heard that song start .
Ava: Steve West is still going and has an online 80’s radio station, http://www.radionigel.com
Mike: I really got into early Gary Numan (‘Replicas’ is such a great album), but for synth stuff had already been into Tangerine Dream for a couple of years.
Gary:
It’s awesome that you did that. Brave and gracious.
>the Long Distance Dedication might be for me.
Someone once dedicated Megadeth’s “Hook in Mouth” to me over the Newark, NJ Pure Rock station. The memory still evokes all my sentimentality.
“This Megadeth song goes out to Robin in Newark!” That must have really put a lump in your throat . . .:-)
Mike: Dane Conover and Trees. That is a great album, need to see if it’s still in the pile somewhere. An impressive solo debut.
Did an interview with Dane for the UCSD Guardian around ’83, after the LP was released.. not sure if the article was ever published but I’ll try to dig that up too if it’s findable…I probably asked him some pretty inane questions.
Apparently Dane has appeared on Dr. Demento compilations, along with other mainstream media, and creates under the name Popgems:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89449380
My first synth trip was taken on KFSD (94.1 FM) in the early 70’s, I was able to get the cassette recorder started about a minute into the music and for years until I found the LP the source of that magical stuff was a total mystery…it was the newly-released “Snowflakes Are Dancing” by Tomita, his masterful collection of Debussy compositions. Still one of my absolute favorite records that never fails to stir strong emotions, especially Claire De Lune. At the end of the tracks the KFSD announcer comes back on and soothes the mob with “alright friends…got a couple calls on that one…” Absolutely scandalous, gosh..I guess that was a bit beyond their normal programming. It sounded like music literally recorded on another planet.
Snowflakes Are Dancing is wonderful!
I need to rip that one to disc.
robin, that is awesome.
gary, i feel like giving you a hug.
kevin, ray, simon, et al… yes, it was steve west. wow, he’s still at it? he’s what now, 70 something? he was in his 40’s when we were in h.s.!
dave fleminger, there are some pieces of music that make my heart swell and tears automatic. most of them are beethoven, debussy, and gorecki. have you heard gorecki symphony 3? i can’t hear it without a box of kleenex. the story behind it is even more heartrending.
lately i’ve been listening to npr too much. i need more music. which brings me to a request…
how about we start a mix cd swap here? i would LOVE to have mixes made by some of my favorite men and women of ever. and i would oblige with one of my own in kind. what say we all? you in for a little mix tape action?
also to dave, i once met brian eno in paris while i was traveling with karl. that was a mind blow. he was down to earth, funny and very unassuming. so unlike his music… which transports.
I still just LOVE this:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4156/saturday-night-live-nprs-delicious-dish-schweddy-balls
Ava: Gorecki’s music is such that I usually have to keep it at arm’s length as I’m most often not prepared for it…not that I choose to have to put on an emotional Hazmat suit in order to listen to certain music but that is among the most powerful, intense sounds known.
As a result symph’s #2 and 3 just sit there, CD cases just staring silently…I should take this discussion as a sign to just deal with it and see what bubbles up, it would be stuff that’s in there all the time anyway, right?
I’ve heard that about B Eno from a friend of mine who did some work for him too. Very low-key and non-superstar in behavior.
Gorecki is great.
non superstar is right. he welcomed karl and me into his fold without reservation and without any pomp.
as for the gorecki, yes, those emotions are right there. it’s best to confront them to access the grace of the music. it’s worth it. dawn upshaws voice is splendid, as well.