Radio Waves
It’s Jan. 7 — my birthday — so I’m gifting myself with a break from pounding away on my trusty (and quite rusty) Royal typewriter, as you can see me doing on the HBO documentary about Rolling Stone, “Stories From the Edge.” I’m turning today’s column over to a revisit of one of the first articles I wrote for The Chronicle, which I joined in spring 1983 as a feature writer. The piece was about — what else? — radio, and it went something like this:
After three years of mourning the death of the rock and roll, “Jive 95” era of KSAN, where I spent nine years freely spinning records, I’ve found a new favorite radio station: KFOG. I love the way it came on, as lowprofile as the “beautiful music” it used to play. Up to the second of the format change on September 18, 1982, there was no hint of anything afoot. The same sonorous announcers; the same Muzak. But then, at noon, one last reading of the slogan: “All music … all the time.” And instead of a segue into Mantovani, it was the Stray Cats! “Rock This Town!”
And it’s been non-stop rock ever since, most of the latest stuff, blended with some of the best from the Sixties, sometimes tossed in an album side at a time, just like the old days of free-form radio, whenever the jocks had to visit the john. Features like “10 at 10” and “Psychedelic Psupper” (excuses for splurges of oldies). Endorsements from rave comics such as Rodney Dangerfield … DJs with no discernible personalities, but all personable, nonetheless.
But I’m fond of KFOG for another reason. You see, I was the first DJ to play a rock song there, a bit before September, 1982. A good guess would be August, 1967. That’s when I was in the middle of six months there as the all-night announcer, my first break out of college. 1967. I know: The Summer of Love. And there I was, playing Henry Mancini and 101 Strings. But it was a radio job, in San Francisco, for pay ($400 a month for six nights a week, including typing program logs and writing commercial copy.)
I remember feeling pretty smug, having to leave parties at 11 so that I could get to the radio station. And I remember feeling pretty nerdy when anyone asked which station. What a bummer. On top of that, my program was, in fact, someone else’s, pretaped and shipped to us by the sponsoring Holiday Inns. My job was to play the tapes and break in twice an hour for news and station IDs. All the other announcers actually played records, and they had rules: no vocals and nothing even close to up-tempo.
For someone who was regularly going to the Avalon and Fillmore ballrooms, who was building a record library ranging from the Animals to the Zombies, who was getting high and watching not TV, but the fireplace, KFOG was too weird. That’s why, three months into the gig, in the middle of one of the numerous deep dark nights I worked in that studio in Ghirardelli Square, I broke the rules.
I snuck in a couple of my own albums, and, at one point when I was feeling particularly revolutionary, dumped the Melachrino Strings and broadcast — yes, a vocal! And not just any vocal, but the Mamas and the Papas. And when no one called to fire me, I went onto the ledge again, this time with the then-prince of psychedelia, Donovan. And finally, totally gripped by the wigged-out zeal of the Age of Aquarius — or maybe because it was the only other album I’d brought in — I played the Beatles.
I must admit that it wasn’t “Day Tripper”; it was “Yesterday.” It wasn’t “Straight Shooter,” it was “California Dreamin’.” And it wasn’t “Universal Soldier,” it was “Mellow Yellow.” In other words, I didn’t disrupt the near-dead beat of the station. I didn’t go all the way.
But it was far enough that I got some phone calls. Nobody upset, mind you, just a couple of my invalid regulars who needed the concept of lyrics explained to them. Plus a couple of my college pals who happened to be up at 3 a.m. (a common occurrence back then), tuned in to have a laugh on me, and got freaked out. One of them didn’t even say anything. He just copied a trademark remark by Russ “The Moose” Syracuse, the all-night jock on Top 40 KYA; a falsettoed, stretched out, questioning, “WHAAAAT?”
And I felt just like The Moose. I felt like rock and roll. It made my morning. It made me all the more appreciative of KMPX and KSAN, the pioneer “underground” stations; all the more sad when their time passed, all too soon, and all the more pleased that KFOG has come along and is playing rock. Again.