Just Listen

There was not a lot of rock and roll to listen to on the radio when I was a mere slip of a lad.  I have very vivid memories of calling the request line at KIMN to beg them, at my older brother's insistence, to play "Yellow Submarine" one more time. KIMN was 950 on your AM dial, because what else was there? If you lived in the Denver Metro Area in the sixties, and I did, if you wanted to hear pop music, you listened to KIMN. 

Back then, the only people listening to FM radio were beatniks and hooligans of some sort. It wasn't until the mid 1970s that real rock and roll came to airwaves that I could access. There was a lot of fuzz out there on the dial, but if you twisted it all the way to the right, you would run into KBPI, and then KAZY, 105.9 and 106.7 respectively. 

If you were the safe, commercial type, you could feel comfortable listening to KBPI, who claimed to "rock the Rockies." You would get a steady diet of Bob Seger, REO Speedwagon and the occasional throwback to the Beatles and Stones. KAZY didn't have a lot of use for TV ads. They were out there on the edge of the dial, playing Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Rush. For my money, KAZY rocked a little harder than their neighbor. I liked to imagine the DJs at KBPI were probably tossing back a few beers while they were playing music for the masses. The jocks at KAZY were probably toking up during those Album Side Weekends.

No matter, for my purposes when one went to commercial, I would flip on over to the other until my needs for background music for my teenage ambitions were no longer being met. And every so often, when I was feeling the need for something more melodic or heaven help me romantic, I might spin all the way down to 103.5 for a little bit of the softer sounds of Q103. This is also where I might on occasion find Doctor Demento's show on Sunday nights, only to return to my home base of KAZY to start my week. 

And somewhere in there around the turn of the decade, my music tastes changed, or rather they expanded. I was listening to DEVO and Elvis Costello and Jimmy Buffett and Queen and all sorts of things in between. There was no format that fit my palate, so I began programming my own playlists with the aid of cassette tapes. I used this machinery to inculcate my friends and even my mother, imagining that I was providing a service that FM and AM could not. My car radio was supplanted by my cassette player. 

Somewhere in there, I got old. I started listening to a station out of Boulder, 97.3 KBCO. Their free-form programming eventually became packaged and sold across the country as "World Class Rock." When I landed in Oakland, I was surprised to discover that just across the Bay a station called KFOG had bought that package and was spreading it across Northern California. A hop skip and a jump up the dial from them was the "Modern Rock" of Live 105, KITS. Now I had my comfort music like Barenaked Ladies on one channel and scarier stuff like Jane's Addiction on the other. 

Eventually, I stopped listening to the radio. Because it was predictable. Because of commercials. Because I didn't know what I wanted anymore. 

Now, every so often, I find myself seeking out a station that I can stand for that trip across town. The one that won't make me sad. There are a lot of those.