MONTEREY POP 40 Years Ago

NPR has Lou Adler and Michelle Phillips doing a slight retro on MONTEREY POP as it was 40 years ago. The NPR page also includes video of The Who and The Mamas and Papas, along with audio from Big Brother, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix...



[ from NPR: ] 'Forty years ago this week, at the dawn of what would become known as the Summer of Love, a musical experiment unfolded in Monterey, Calif.

'The Monterey International Pop Festival, which preceded Woodstock by two years, brought together a diverse group of big-name acts including the Mamas and the Papas and Jefferson Airplane as well as some then-unknown performers, notably Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

'The 1967 event was organized by Lou Adler and the late John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and it was caught on film by documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker. Adler and singer Michelle Phillips look back at the event.

"Some of the greatest performances of all time happened at Monterey," Adler tells Renee Montagne.

'Michelle Phillips, a member of the Mamas and the Papas, remembers how Hendrix amazed the crowd — and fellow artists — with his jaw-dropping performance, playing his guitar on his back, behind his back, lying down and setting the instrument on fire.

"I had never seen anything like it," Phillips says. "And I didn't understand that it was kind of theater. I was used to people singing and harmonizing and taking care of their instruments. It was shocking for me to see this kind of behavior on stage."

"The festival also exposed soul great Otis Redding to a new, primarily white audience, whom he called "the love crowd," Phillips says.

"A whole new audience opened up to him," she says.

'Redding was killed in a plane crash just months after that performance. A few, short years later, Hendrix and Joplin died within weeks of each other. Their performances at the Monterey Festival have become part of music legend.'

Sgt. Pepper's 40th

The Beatles', Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released June 1, 1967, in Britain, and on June 2 in the United States. The album became a phenomenon, spending 15 weeks at the No. 1 spot in the Billboard Top 200. The success came after the Beatles had announced that they would no longer tour...

Even AM radio was forced to play songs from the album — but the record was perfect for the then-new frequencies of FM. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was certified gold within two weeks of its release...

Take the link above to check out NPR's audio retrospectives, including complete original versions of "Getting Better," "Within You Without You," and "A Day In The Life."

Laura Ellen Hopper, R.I.P.

"KPIG's founder and program director, Laura Ellen Hopper, dies at 57"

By Wallace Baine
Santa Cruz Sentinel staff writer


ROYAL OAKS — Laura Ellen Hopper, the longtime program director and co-founder of KPIG 107.5 FM, died Monday from complications of lung cancer. She was 57.

Hopper of Royal Oaks was widely known to fans of KPIG as the mellow midday disc jockey who loved to champion emerging country/folk singer/songwriters, but she also was largely responsible for shaping both the sound and the public image of one of California's most idiosyncratic and beloved radio stations.

"Laura Ellen was the heart, soul and glue of KPIG," said "Sleepy John" Sandidge, a longtime KPIG on-air personality and friend. "Losing her is like losing an old-growth redwood tree"

After a persistent cough, Hopper had been diagnosed with cancer less than two weeks ago. It was then she learned that the cancer had spread to her liver, said her husband Frank Caprista, also KPIG's general manager. On Friday, her liver began to fail. She had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for years. Caprista said that his wife died early Monday morning without pain.

In 1975, Hopper originally helped found KFAT in Gilroy, a free-form country station notorious for its rejection of conservative radio conventions. After KFAT went off the air, she re-emerged with local attorney Leo Kesselman in 1988 to found KPIG in Watsonville, finally making a success of the station's renegade format in the 1990s.

Under Hopper's direction, KPIG married KFAT's pugnacious country/rock programming with a more savvy business plan. Eventually, the station became instrumental in establishing a new radio format, Americana, which emphasized artists who were often ignored by mainstream country radio, such as John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker and Peter Rowan. In the 1990s, KPIG's prominence in the Americana genre gave it the power to provide career-making exposure to such performers as Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider and Iris DeMent.

Funeral services for Hopper are pending. Fans interested in updates on plans for memorial events can go to KPIG's Web site at www.kpig.com. The station is also setting up a forum for fans to reminisce and reflect on Hopper's career and influence.

-----------------------------

Additional links:

KPIG
KFAT Gallery
KFAT Online Archive
Mercury News (includes comments)
Lard Almighty
KPIG Squealing
Google Search

'Morning Becomes Eclectic' turns 30

KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" has been on the air for 30 years, now. Hard to believe, when most of our gigs could be measured by one or two or three years... Not freeform, as promoted, but, on occasion, close...

'Morning Becomes Eclectic' turns 30 - The Money Times

Dusty Street

Travus T. Hipp shouted out some good news about Dusty Street. You can listen to this day's newscast, along with word about Dusty at:

TTH: Dusty Street

OFF THE TRUCK 001

Dumptruck O'neill is back!@

OFF THE TRUCK 001 - Freeform Radio | Google Groups

KFML Homepage Updated

I've added all the external links to the KFML homepage, so as soon as you visit the site, you get to see the locations, with links, for other related pages with even more info. Click on the staff Boulderado pic, below, to get there:

Freeform Forum / Google Group

This is a Google group for discussions related to freeform radio, past and present.

It is an inactive group, but could be reactivated if there is some interest. No matter the activity or lack thereof, there's some neat info still contained within -- especially stuff written by Bill Ashford before his passing.

To check it out and/or contribute, please go to:

Freeform Radio Google Group

KPOO San Francisco

KPOO-FM still broadcasts in the Bay Area and now even streams over the Internet at: http://66.134.90.174:8080.





"In 1971, with the help of broadcasters Lorenzo Milam and Jeremy Lansman, several community organizations with no prior radio experience applied for an FCC license to begin broadcasting community issues on the premise that any community group with something to say should be able start a low-powered radio station to serve that community. The result of that act was KPOO, the first Black-owned, noncommercial radio station west of the Mississippi River. Wade Woods remembers, "None of us knew anything about radio, but we had created the Fillmore Media Center, including video and audio." Two years later, Joe Rudolph took over as Station Manager.

"In the early days the station was housed at Pier 1 in San Francisco. In 1973 the station was asked to leave and moved to a garage on 532 Natoma Street, located in the South of Market neighborhood. KPOO broadcasted from the Natoma location (pictured right) until 1982 when once again it was necessary to find new housing. It moved first into a condemned building at 1325 Divisadero, then an old victorian structure up the street, before finally purchasing its permanent home at 1329 Divisadero in 1985..."

KPOO San Francisco 89.5 FM: About Us

"Prime Green"

NPR's Terry Gross interviewed Robert Stone and there's some great stuff in it about Neil Cassady, Kesey, Kerouac and the Pranksters. Click on the title of this posting to go to the audio interview. Here's a write-up from NPR:

"Novelist Robert Stone has written a new memoir that begins with a stint in the Navy in the late 1950s, continues through his work as a journalist in Vietnam and then includes his counterculture years in the 1970s, taking hallucinogenic drugs, cross-country road trips, and hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. His memoir is, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. Stone's novels include Dog Soldiers (which was adapted into the film Who'll Stop the Rain), and Outerbridge Reach."