Blast from Your Past: kgb

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Saturday, November 30, 2019

Rock Radio DECEMBER 1969 True or Falsetto?

Rockin’ through Christmas into the New Year ~ New Decade!

50 Years Ago this Month we faced a not-so-different New Year and New Decade. Our country struggled with the beginning of the first military draft “peacetime” lottery since 1942, and today, the wars still wage. Hardly a traditional Holiday for the countdown to Christmas. All the while, the music plays on.

No different than other industries, radio stations revel in change before the New Year, with format flips and staff severances. December can be a lot of fun or a lot of heartache. That choice is up to you. Every change is opportunity! My choice? Let’s keep Rockin’ …

Your Tinny Transistor Radio News ~ DECEMBER 1969

December 6^th: With a lead singer still of middle school age, The Jackson 5 released their debut album on this date, bolstered by the incomparable Diana Ross. From Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back” shot up the December 30^th chart at *KGB/San Diego to #9, forging up to #2 before starting a downward slide.

December 17^th – In the early 1960s, falsetto singing could be heard from beach to shining beach; although now waning, one musical anomaly showed it wasn’t dead yet. After a dainty “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” in 1968, on this date in 1969, peculiarly falsetto, Tiny Tim (Herbert Butros Khaury), was flanked by yellow tulips for for his marriage to “Miss Vicki” (twenty years his junior) on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show.

December 30^th: While it didn’t make a huge chart splash, The Archies’ “Jingle Jangle” made it to *KGB/San Diego’s “Boss 30” (barely, at #27). Filmation Associates produced The Archie Show animated television series on which the title-named fictional band’s antics delighted fans. BFYP DJ, Norm Prescott, a Filmation co-founder, had transitioned away from the DJ mic and into animated TV in the early 1960s, but his heart was never far away from popular music’s tinny transistor radios.

Rockin’ Retro Radio

December 1969, Blast from Your Past Rockin’ DJs were scattered across the country. Mitch Michael, aka Ron Terrell / Terrell Metheny, spent the mid-Sixties at WOKY/Milwaukee, then grabbed his buddy, Lee Gray, and skipped over to WMCA/New York in 1968, to become a popular program director.

In BFYP’s The Swinging Sixties, by December ‘69 “Mitch” finally switched to his real name, Terrell, and had this to say about WMCA: We switched from DJs playing Rock & Roll to half Rock & Roll and half talk. Some sort of nightmare that the owner had … it was such a horrible nightmare.

Of course, switching formats willy-nilly and literally overnight, was/is common for stations, but often a career disappointment at best, for DJs and staff, and job loss, at worst. The only constant is change.

*Featured Radio Survey: KGB/San Diego, California, Boss Jocks were all the rage in ’69 and at KGB they were giving away up to $15,000 per day! "The good ol' days." Poke your memory as you reminisce over their "Boss 30" Issue No. 166, December 30, 1969, heading into the 1970s ... ♪ Well, I’m your Venus ♪ … 50 Years Ago this Month in Rock & Roll Radio! Where were you that groovy day when …

Celebrate DECEMBER 1969 and … Rock On!

Blast from Your Past Gifts

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LinDee Rochelle is a writer and editor by trade, and author by way of Rock & Roll. She has published two books (of three) in her Blast from Your Past series, available on Amazon (eBook and print): Book 1 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The First Five Years 1954-1959; and Book 2 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The Swinging Sixties. Coming soon … The Psychedelic Seventies!

Note: FYI – All links in the BFYP site are personally visited, verified, and vetted. Most are linked to commonly accessed sites of reputable note. However, as with everything cyber-security, use at your own discretion.

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Monday, September 30, 2019

Rock Radio OCT 1969 Winding Road to Outhouse

♪ Whole Lotta Love ♪ & an Outhouse!

1969 began its metamorphosis into a new decade with Richard Nixon president. In my writings I have often compared the ‘60s politics, lifestyles, and societal ills, to the present decade.

The primary difference between this decade and the 1960s is high-tech “progress.” In its infancy then, it now rules our lives. On October 29, 1969 we witnessed the first message sent through ARPANET. The baby Internet was born. Eventually hailed as a lifestyle savior, it has eroded our lives in its child-like self-serving demands for attention.

Is it coincidence or providence that we ended the ‘60s like we’re ending the twenty-teens … unable to establish peace in the country or within our neighborhoods, and with a president who emphatically declares, “I am not a crook!”

At least we had … and have … our Rock & Roll for comfort. And with that … we Rock On to the forerunner of fake news … 50 Years Ago this Month.

Your Tinny Transistor Radio News ~ OCTOBER 1969

Throughout the month we experienced fake news long before it became a maliciously insidious Internet disease. It ambled down the “Long and Winding Road” of rumors about Paul McCartney.

Even the most popular radio stations perpetuated the possibility of McCartney’s untimely demise nearly three years prior, to entertain their listeners and up those all-mighty ratings. There is always an angle … money, politics, or publicity …

Per Wiki: Lennon was interviewed in London by New York's WMCA, and he ridiculed the rumour but conceded that it was invaluable publicity for the album.

It took a November (1969) Life magazine interview with Paul McCartney to set the world straight again. ♪ You left me standing here a long, long time ago ♪

Now, they call the story a “legend.” And yet, how does it differ from today’s “fake news”? Just askin’ …

October 14^th: “Someday We’ll Be Together,” Diana Ross & The Supremes’ final single together, is released. But the story goes, that song did not include Supremes Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong in the recording. It was Diana’s first solo song in anticipation of her January 1970 departure from the group. Ironic song in view of their split. The Supremes’ consolation prize was the B-Side, “He’s My Sunny Boy.”

October 22^nd: One of my all-time favorite bands—Led Zeppelin—released their iconic second album, Led Zeppelin II, on this date. Considered by many, the most prominent and powerful collection of quintessential English Rock era songs. Talk about “influencers”—Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were a solid force to reckon with; though classified as Heavy Metal, Zeppelin’s many followers can attest to their incorporation of Blues, Psychedelic Rock and Folk Music.

While most everyone knows and loves their “Stairway to Heaven” (1971) my all-time favorite song came from this album. “Whole Lotta Love” is the first tune I ever heard through headphones. Oh … my. I was never the same.

Not only the lyrics rattled this impressionable teen psyche, but headphones carried its palpable reverberation through my brain as it wrapped itself around and through my mind. ♪ Way down inside honey, you need it … ♪ The only way to listen to Zeppelin is through headphones.

Rockin’ Retro Radio

*Featured Radio Stations for this month are a double-whammy pair of San Diego heavy hitters—KCBQ/San Diego (10/03/69), with artful cover sketch of BFYP DJ Neil Ross, and KGB

(10/15/69) with BFYP DJ Rich Bro Robbin starting off the football season in a fun original caricature.

But it’s KQWB/Fargo, North Dakota that gives us a chuckle and makes October ’69 a hit.

Yep - this IS a transistor radio in the BFYP Collection.

The ‘60s were famous for over-the-top radio station contests and outlandish antics. KQWB takes the cake this month with an outhouse contest and boasting an “exclusive story ‘The Mystery of Paul McCartney’.” Anyone know if the outhouse prize was a transistor radio? <<<<<<<<< Cute!

*“Double” Featured Radio Survey(s): KCBQ and KGB, both popular San Diego radio stations ignored the McCartney mystery—at least on their surveys—and even differed with each other on fans’ favored #1 songs.

KCBQ fans kept the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” at the top of their “Heavy 30 Hits” a little longer than some pockets of the country (10/03/69); but “Sugar, Sugar” already slipped to #13 on KGB’s “Boss 30” with The Beatles’ “Something” and ”Come Together” boosted up to tie at the top of their chart (10/15/69) … 50 Years Ago this Month in Rock & Roll Radio! Where were you that groovy day when …

Celebrate OCTOBER 1969 and … Rock On!