Differences between version 2 and predecessor to the previous major change of KcprHistoryKenLerch1968-69.
Other diffs: Previous Revision, Previous Author
@@ -1,19 +1,19 @@
!!!Ken Lerch remembers KCPR, 1968-1969
-I
+I'
ve been asked to write down remembrances from the early days of the KCPR.
-I wish I had more information about how the station actually started but I was just a 3rd year, long-haired architecture student in 1968 who found a notice that a bunch of engineers were going to start a little campus radio station and were looking for people who knew something about music to be DJs.
+I wish I had more information about how the station actually started but I was just a 3rd year, long-haired architecture student in 1968 who found a notice that a bunch of engineers were going to start a little campus radio station and were looking for people who knew something about music to be DJs. I went over to the journalism building and confirmed the story and was told that I would have to go to San Francisco, study and pass a test to get a federal 3rd class license before I could go on the air, all of which I did. So this isn'
t so much a description of how it all started as much as a portrait of the times.
-I don
+I don'
'
'
t know anything about popular music.
-The space was just two rooms, a transmitting station and a studio on the other side of the glass that only had a table, two chairs and mike in it, nothing else. The Studio didn
+The space was just two rooms, a transmitting station and a studio on the other side of the glass that only had a table, two chairs and mike in it, nothing else. The Studio didn'
t even have any shelving because the station owned nothing, no records, no books, nothing. There wasn'
t even anything on the walls except our license. The only furniture in the place was 3-4 metal chairs. I keep hearing about the infamous couch. We didn'
-It was 1968, the height of the music scene in both LA and San Francisco. We had brought Ike & Tina Turner and Janis Joplin on campus for music. We were hitchhiking to Santa Barbara to see the Mothers of Invention, and spending every few weekends at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco listing to all the music and bringing back the latest albums bought at Tower Records. I had grown up in the San Francisco area listening to Elvis and the early rockers in the 50s, was there for the British invasion in
+It was 1968, the height of the music scene in both LA and San Francisco. We had brought Ike & Tina Turner and Janis Joplin on campus for music. We were hitchhiking to Santa Barbara to see the Mothers of Invention, and spending every few weekends at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco listing to all the music and bringing back the latest albums bought at Tower Records. I had grown up in the San Francisco area listening to Elvis and the early rockers in the 50s, was there for the British invasion in '
64 and was around when Dylan went electric in '
65. My sister attended the Beatles last concert at the Cow Palace. I hitchhiked to Monterey for the Pop Festival in '
'
66 & 67 listening to David Crosby & Stephen Stills singing ballads before they met Graham Nash and formed CSN, and heard a new folk singer there who had just driven down from Canada with some friends in a VW bus to sing with friends, Joni Mitchell.
-So, by the time I saw the notice to be a DJ at KCPR I had grown up listening to Tom Donahue at KMPX in San Francisco, the first
+So, by the time I saw the notice to be a DJ at KCPR I had grown up listening to Tom Donahue at KMPX in San Francisco, the first "
alternative,"
free-form, album-oriented rock station. And I was determined to be just as hip and laid back, which meant that I was going to say as little as possible, lower & slow my voice and just play music, the longer the cuts the better. I remember one one-hour stretch where I played just two-30 minute cuts, or maybe two separate sides of two albums, separated with me only saying "
KCPR"
'
Hopkins, Howlin'
-There were others at the station that did more folkie type of things. They knew even less about radio than I did. We all had absolute freedom since there was no such thing as a music director, or if there was, I wasn
+There were others at the station that did more folkie type of things. They knew even less about radio than I did. We all had absolute freedom since there was no such thing as a music director, or if there was, I wasn'
t aware of it. The folkies brought their friends into the studio and sat around the mike and played guitars. I was usually always alone late at night. I once got intensely hungry, likely from having earlier ingested something that made me hungry and said on the air that whoever was the first to bring me a pepperoni pizza, I would let them stay with me in the studio for the rest of the program. Two nice guys from the dorm showed up about 40 minutes later.
I was there from the beginning, somewhere around the Fall of 1968 and went to the end of the term in 1969 when I left town to work and head off to Italy for a year. It was a great few months.
[Ken Lerch|http://kcpralumni.org/alumni_by_year/1968-69.html#1]
version 2
Ken Lerch remembers KCPR, 1968-1969
I've been asked to write down remembrances from the early days of the KCPR.
I wish I had more information about how the station actually started but I was just a 3rd year, long-haired architecture student in 1968 who found a notice that a bunch of engineers were going to start a little campus radio station and were looking for people who knew something about music to be DJs. I went over to the journalism building and confirmed the story and was told that I would have to go to San Francisco, study and pass a test to get a federal 3rd class license before I could go on the air, all of which I did. So this isn't so much a description of how it all started as much as a portrait of the times.
There were others at the station that did more folkie type of things. They knew even less about radio than I did. We all had absolute freedom since there was no such thing as a music director, or if there was, I wasn't aware of it. The folkies brought their friends into the studio and sat around the mike and played guitars. I was usually always alone late at night. I once got intensely hungry, likely from having earlier ingested something that made me hungry and said on the air that whoever was the first to bring me a pepperoni pizza, I would let them stay with me in the studio for the rest of the program. Two nice guys from the dorm showed up about 40 minutes later.
I was there from the beginning, somewhere around the Fall of 1968 and went to the end of the term in 1969 when I left town to work and head off to Italy for a year. It was a great few months.
Ken Lerch
