I am new to KZSM, but not new to radio. You can hear my show Monday nights 8-9 p.m. on 104.1 and KZSM.org. “Searching For The First Rock and Roll Song” traces the extensive roots of rock through the productions of small regional record companies, featuring home grown music you’ve never heard.
If you grew up with radio, you know the power of late-night listening. With four of your senses loafing, your ears and mind will deliver brain disasters ranging from insomnia to nightmares. There’s an escape, though. Follow the light. The radio dial’s glow. A beacon into a world of unlimited freedoms.
I was the kid who constantly called the ten-watt “underground” radio station. Finally they said, “Okay kid, ride your bike to the studio and I’ll show you how.” Eventually, I got my first radio job—changing the tapes on the late night Saturday shift nobody wanted. But I could deliver the hourly station ID. After my first week, station management restricted my station identifications to the FCC minimum of two words. Still, the unbridled enthusiasm of my “KUNC, Greeley” can never be topped by anyone with an ounce of shame. Radio was my freedom.
I took a decade break from radio to pursue my career in New Orleans. In the painful aftermath of Katrina in 2006, I discovered that new possibilities for radio had magically appeared. I was patching my roof when a co-worker showed me that a palm-sized digital recorder for interviews could also hold my lifetime of records. And there was more! Editing software had replaced the razor blades, grease pencils, and overflowing ash trays of painstaking, all-night editing. Music players meant no more frustration with the station’s mechanics. The internet offered web sites of record collectors who curated and archived every forgotten song ever created.
My memories of radio were replaced with a new vision. I would trade with record collectors to escape radio’s Achilles heal, scarcity of music. Between songs, I could record quirky sound clips to frame the next song. And with a music player, I could easily preview and retain my notes on the hundreds of new songs I listen to every week from the hundreds of thousands of songs I’ve traded into a reference library of the early days of rock and roll.
All of this history is packed into an hour on Monday nights, curated just for you.
