Radio Sucks
One of my worthless past times is trading cd's of live concerts with people. I started doing this a few years back on a regular basis . Since then I have aquired a couple hundred or so live concert recordings many of which sound like they were recorded from the third balcony by some mook with a (circa 1960's) Craig portable cassette player. In the last two years I have not really been actively trading but I did receive an email recently with a trade request who had noticed I had some old Triad radio shows on my list. For those of you who are not from the Chicago area Triad was what called a "free form" radio station. It came on the air in the early 70's and went off the air a few years later. They played an impressive mix of rock, kraut rock, space rock, prog rock, jazz, spoken word, and other significantly strange music that you would never hear anywhere else. I mean cmon..when is the last time you heard a radio station play Kapt Kopter & His Amazing Twirlybirds? Anyway this trader sent me like a 3 -4 page list of underground radio shows he had collected over the years and I was floored. Shows dating back to 1968 and through the 70's . After trading with him it got me to thinking of how lame radio has become (at least in the Chicago area) since the "golden age" of radio where stoned out dj's could play whatever they felt like at the moment and went by ominous sounding names like Scorpio, Pysche, and Spoke. Thank you Clear Channel and others for all the bad generic stations out there now. They are like bad theme parties..classic rock channels that think they are cutting edge when they play Dark Side Of The Moon for the umpteenth time (oooh how renegade!). The new thing now is the "we play whatever we want" theme. Well sorry Blaine..or Brent or whoever the tassel shoed , Docker wearing radio mook who is responsible for these programming decisions..the old radio regime were doing this same concept light years ago and doing a better job.
Anyway this whole rant leads me into a very blatant plug for a friend and and one of the members of my BBQ team , Perry Bax (the kid in the 3rd balcony with the portable cassette player)..
Perry has been pod casting a show from Chicago called The Best Radio You Have Never Heard. I am including the link to his shows so that you can give them a listen yourself. This is a good example of what radio used to be and what it still could be...you may not hear Kapt Kopter but you never know when Wild Man Fischer or M. Frog Labat will make an appearance. Please let Perry know what you think..heck you can even post your thoughts here too...
http://bestradioyouhaveneverheard.com
posted by deke rivers @ 6:02 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I don't really agree with the old "radio sucks" analogy. I believe that music is for the masses. Some masses like the generic based, being told what to think music. Others like music to sing to. Music to drum to, or music to take you back. Back to the times when life was good, friends were friends, and life held no responsibilities or problems. Music is soothing. Music can be healing and can be something to choose. Radio is not music. Radio is for the masses.
I received the following message and link from an old High School burnout buddy. Brought back memories...or at least bits & pieces. Check it out and the downloads too.
RC - Chi-Town Smokers
If you lived in the midwest or south during the 60s and liked listening to
the radio late at night, you might remember Beaker Street. Here's a website
that has the whole story (I didn't know so many people were into it, and
actually remembered!).... (gotta find that "Head" track...)...
http://www.beakerstreet.com/1stpage.htm
Beaker Street is an Arkansas institution which began quite literally as a
cost-cutting move for 50,000-watt KAAY. Radio stations which had directional
antennas were required to have an engineer on duty at the transmitter all
the time. However, KAAY had studios in downtown Little Rock, and station
brass didn't want to pay two people during graveyard shift, so they had the
engineer do the show from the transmitter (located in the small town of
Wrightsville). It was 1966, and the overnight engineer wanted to do
something different, based on the emerging "underground" FM formats on the
west coast. The managers basically said "Just go do it, and leave us alone!"
Nobody expected much to come of this experiment, dubbed "Beaker Street"
(legend has it the name is a drug reference - LSD was mixed in beakers). It
was the station's 50,000-watt nighttime signal, blanketing Canada down to
Central America, and through the midsection of the U.S., which carried
Beaker Street, and the rest of KAAY, to fame. Concert promoters bought time
on Beaker, advertising events in places like Iowa, where KAAY had a large
share of the nighttime audience. The show brought the likes of Pink Floyd,
Jethro Tull and Joan Baez to mid-America, exposing them to such music for
the first time.
Why the background music during the breaks? It came into being because the
poorly-insulated makeshift control room was close to the giant 50-kW RCA
transmitter, and required huge cooling fans which made a racket. The music
bed helped cover the roar of the fans! (The "music" is a 17-minute acid trip
called "Cannabis Sativa" by a group called Head).
Beaker lasted until the mid '70s, and was put in mothballs until 1987, when
Clyde Clifford revived the program on an FM station in Little Rock. Today,
it still goes strong, as a Sunday night fixture on KMJX (Magic-105) in
Little Rock.
wanted to say topic of discussion friday night the 2nd of december, was remember the days in central minnesota (driving around late night/early morning,1969-1970's, tuned into beaker street--what good times!!
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