HISTORY OF KFMLNOOZE

I started this mess back in July of 2005 after perusing Malcolm Gault-Williams Freeform Radio Blog, I got so stirred up I decided to create another website and named it kfmlnooze.com to try and restore something thats been missing for 35 some-odd years of my life. I was feeling like I had left a piece of my heart back "in the mile-high city of Denver, Cod-derado", as the Persuasions so poignantly i-deed us. So I thought I'd throw some stuff together and see if I could get one more ride out of that "cosmic car" that this bunch of freeform radio pioneers had built so long ago. Many say you can't live in the past but it seems to me like you ought to be able to visit from time to time.


After running little ads on craigslist Denver \ Boulder for some time asking for (old) KFML radio fans (their aren't any young ones) to send along any air-checks or reel-to-reel tapes or whatever that sampled our programming back in 71-72, a fine fella' name of Lloyd Hanson, sent me a DVD with some High Street skits, a simulcast of a band named Cross, and an 18 minute air check of Brian Kreizenbeck which includes a bunch of ads and even one of my news pieces. Brian ( Super Warthog ), one of the pioneers of freeform radio in Colorado, had the 10 pm-2 am shift.

So come on and we can mosey on down this old trail together, for what it's worth, I feel a whole lot better, I hope it will do a little something for you.


Here's a 28 minute clip taped in September of 1971, we'd been on the air for about 5 months and already the sales guys, Scott, Herb, Don, & Howie were selling ads like there was no tomorrow, we were pretty much a hit right out the gate. Everybody else in town, and it was the 2nd most saturated readio market in the U.S, was playing the same old tired short list of "hits" as prescribed by the record companies...check us out...




Early in 1971 my neighbor, and new best friend, Brian Kreizenbeck (The Super Warthog) got me started in radio at KMPX FM in San Francisco and in a few short weeks of taping "shows" in the production room, skipped through and graded at the end of his shift, my brand new friends all got fired. My little heart was broke. But, in a couple of weeks time Brian called and told me if I wanted to come to Denver he could get me plenty of week-end work, no pay, so I could finish getting my 3rd Class Radio License, which was required back then, and once I got my license I could start getting paid.


I packed my stereo, and some clothes into my pristine, 1964 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce and followed them to clean and fresh Denver, Colorado, and a brand-new start at counter-culture living with the added benefit of a seasoned sizzling psychedelic history in my kit. KFML AM\FM “in the mile high city, Denver, Coderado” as the Persuasions so poignantly “id’ us.

I first saw the Persuasions at one of our sponsors clubs we were running ads for, and I got in free, My personal taste in music has always skewed towards rich black voices, having grown up in Detroit, Cleveland, and Houston where passionate Top 40 radio exploded over the airwaves, and I never lived anywhere that I couldn't hear the The Wolfman. ( listen to The Wolfman here )

I was into Bo Didly, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Platters, Laverne Baker, Paul Anka and had seen all of them in live performances at Houston's Central Auditorium in 1957-1958, I can still sing along with the hits of Dion and The Belmonts, Curtis Mayfield andThe Impressions, The Ink Spots Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Drifters, The Cadilacs, The Flamingos.

In 1956 I was 14 years old and living in Detroit with my grandparents when Hound Dog, by Elvis came out and I bought it to take to school for our weekly sock-hop in gym....I soon transplanted to my mom's home in Houston and attended my first concert at the Houston Auditorium, where I had a job selling peanuts, popcorn, and cracker-jacks at the wrestling matches. Since the rock & roll concerts were held at the same auditorium, and I knew that all the doors would be open all day on the eve of concerts, my buds and I would head down there in the late afternoon and sneak in and hide under the stage. My first concert was one of Alan Freed's shows.

I saw many shows at the auditorium for the next 2 years returning to Detroit in 1958. Chuck Berry, Laverne Baker, The Coasters, The Platters, Bo Diddly, and Paul Anka. (the little prick was about our age at the time and tried to run us off from back stage as The Coasters were coming in with their suits over their shoulders and doo-rags on their heads...they told Paul Anka that we were with them and let us hang out with them in their dressing room).

I was in Houston when "Further On Up The Road", Bobby Blue Bland, went to number one ) the first black artist to cross over from what they had called "Race music"and crack the Billboard list. This was long before sterophonics, but the "wall of sound" roared out of those Wurlitzer juke boxes, and AM radio that had no line of sight issues, playing the same 40 records over and over in no time, you could sing along with a thousand hits that could be heard from coast to coast, and seen on American Bandstand every afternoon after school...and they played them loud when I was a kid.


These materials, a bunch of slides I had shot back in Denver in 71'-72, the KFML website that Sandy Phelps had put together, and finally, access to Malcolm Gault-Williams research at Freeformradio.orgblogspot that gave birth to kfmlnooze.com. Sandy's show kicked off each day from 6 am-10 am.


The Persuasions - Gypsy Woman





One of our best loved showmen was Bill Ashford, up to just recently, he was single-handedly programming and operating a freeform station on the web. The Rock Garden, runs 24 & 7 and Bill did a live show daily, Monday thru Friday, 8 am to noon Eastern, Somehow, that bunch over there have figured out a software program or something that clones Dump Truck O'neils magic at selecting, not only what cut to play now, but how best, with the available library, to continue set after set without a clue that Bill isn't there, hands on, heart on, soul and spirit...on. Bill's shift at KFML was 6 pm-10 pm...now it's 24 & 7 as one of the phantoms of KFML plays on through...you can listen right here...



Here's our glorious leader, Thom Trunnell,
Thom would take the helm from 2 pm-6 pm daily. Thom had been up in Chicago with Herb Neu at WLS, and as far as I know that was his last big mis-adventure in the Majors. Thom isn't just another pretty face, he'a gifted copy writer and comercial producer and Herb is a world-class salesman, so the boys had big fun with the "suits" of the Chicago fast-lane. Most times the ad agencies won't let radio stations produce their own spots for "big-time" sponsors like Ford or GM but that didn't slow the boys down,




Thom was cranking out first cabin spots for any account Herb put in front of him and they did well for a time. With their deep- disregard for all corporate monsters, as they do run the world, you just had to know this wouldn't last forever and a difference of style brought the boys back to Denver, in time to help launch KFML. They played an environmental album of the ocean for a week while putting the necessaries together and early in April, 1971 an assortment of the paramours of freeform radio, set forth broadcasting on KFML AM, FM, 24 & 7in Denver, Coderado' till' they dropped.



In a few weeks time I had kfmlnooze pretty well laid out, choosing to follow in Malcolm's footsteps and create a blog. In three more weeks I had twenty some-odd videos up in some semblance of a structure and that's how I got to where ever I am now. One of my chief regrets is that I didn't think to do this while Buffalo Chip was still alive. He was our all-night man and had worked at Tracy's Doughnuts on Haight Street back when I lived around the corner on Cole & Haight back in the mid-60's.
Buffalo probably had the most contagious laugh of anyone I ever met.

In 1975, I rejoined my old radio bud's, Buffalo and his wife Cathy at KSML, The Secret Mountain Labratory in Kjngs Beach, North Shore, Lake Tahoe for a couple of months before I had to move on. Bill Ashford, The Warthog, Bob O'lear, Reno, and many another freeform refugee fell in and out of there by the time it crashed and burned by the late 70's..

By 1979 Buffalo and Cathy had migrated to Lake County and a gig as house parents to six wayward "yutes" in a nice little house on Clear Lake. I had limped up there from San Francisco in my Barracuda with little money, a heavy heart, and no drivers door window. I was there to kick back and charge my batteries. Within a week, I had contracted pneumonia. The "yoot.s" showed up and as planned I moved into a tent in the back yard. Within a few days the antibiotics kicked in.." (you can continue this tale at A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIAMOND ED) Buffalo was a joy to listen to whether he was playing records or jokes, or laughing at all of the above. All of us that knew him, love and miss him dearly...


Jerry Mills shift began at 10 am and ended at 2 pm, in addition to being KFML's authority on bluegrass, folk, old-timey, and country music, Jerry is a premier mandolin player and has fronted many a bluegrass band, not to mention appearing over the years in many of the genre's finest bands. Jerry is currently hosting The Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Show on KOLT-FM out of Cheyenne, WY ("It's a 100,000 watter country station and goes all over Northern Colorado and into Denver. You can stream it at www.koltfm.com on Sundays 8a-10a (Mountain time). The PD has a Sat show called The Saturday Night Roadhouse from 7-10p that has one foot into our old format. Skynard, Grateful Dead, Allman Bros, etc. I'm grateful to still be doing this program. (25 years counting the time on the air at KFML") He can be heard here playing with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and, as of our last conversation he's with the Southern Exposure Bluegrass Band. Denver hosts one of the finest folk music and instrument stores in the world, The Denver Folklore Center. and it's owner and founder, Harry Tuft did radio programs and filled in as a part-timer when needed.


...and speakin' of kfml alumni, Dan Fong official kfml photographer has an official website, The Creative Eye, where you can view thousands of candid shots he's taken over a 35 year career. He'll be celebrating his 60th birthday soon so "Happy Birthday Dan, and if your cooking I'll come all the way back to Denver to feast on the spread"...


Dan's an extroardinary cook, just ask The Rolling Stones...
"Dan Fong cooked and served a 14 course sit down dinner for 100 people. And it was awesome! There was a little of this and a lot of that and oysters and duck and a roast pig the size of a small Mercedes cooked over an open pit. There were intoxicants of every sort, beer and wine, tequila and whiskey, and all sorts of other stuff, too; and there was that most ethereal of drugs: the bending of elbows with real celebrities, the once and future royalty of rock & roll."

James Pagliasotti




Bill Szymczyk, producer of The Eagles, B B King, and many great early jazz artists on ABC Impulse did wonderful free-form shows. He and his partner, Larry Ray, had Tumbleweed Records at 13th &
Gilpin. Larry did some air work at KFML, too. Jim Pagliasotti, Jr. Cabus, Butch Grayer, Michael Muirhead, & Steve Thoreson were all there, too. Here's a short list of his accomplishments...



One of my KFML alumni, Jim Clancy is working for CNN International now and I'm the "old crypt keeper" down here by myself tendin' to kfmlnooze and bebopvideos...When they sold KFML out from under us, Jim eventually migrated to the bay area to see what I had been raving about when we worked together back in Colorado. While he was shopping another job in radio, he taught banjo lessons at my friends' music store, Amazing Grace Music, in San Anselmo and played gigs all over the S F Bay Area with his brother, the guitar picker, earning way better money than he had ever made at KFML..


And bringin' up the rear we have Scott Coen, or "Quinn" as Joe McGoey had nick-named him. Scott was a transplant from Laguna Beach who had just graduated from CU Boulder and having worked with some of the guys at KMYR eased right in having done air work and even had some experience selling ads. We have maintained a friendship over the years and when I returned from my big adventure in Louisiana, I just happened to roll up when he was finishing up a remodel of his house and it was time to paint.


The house is right across the street from the Pacific Ocean. It's so close, you can hear the breakers at night from his front yard. I stayed in the guest house for a couple of months and put back some dough, Laguna Beach is paradise, the weather reminds me of Hawaii, but it is expensive.



Once I had finished his house, one of his neighbors hired me to re-paint her five buildings and light house. I shot some video of Scott's house and the spread up the street. When Scott and his wife moved into the house , I moved into the motel, my room was $140 a night, winter rates and no dogs. I soon arranged a trade out for re-painting the entire motel, which got into the better part of a year and I never did get to finish it.


Here's a 20 minute air-check of the Warthog on KFML Denver, fall, 1971'

Savoy Brown--will be at Shapes this weekend, tickets are $3.50 at the door or you can pick them up at The Folklore Center on Pearl Street..."





Here's Junior Cabus simulcasting the band Cross from Summit Studios in Denver. We did these simulcasts pretty much weekly and as soon as Ham can sort out the legality of re-broadcasting them, I'll have them up on this blog. We join them now as Brian Kreizenbeck, The Super Warthog, passes the torch to Junior..




I was hired by Lynnette Shaw, who owns our local pot club, to help organize and tape an Obama-Thon for Barack Obama at the 19 Broadway night club where I do most of my taping of bands,


I got the bright idea of Jerry Lawson doing a jingle for Barack and I called him and ran it by his wife Julie. She in turn ran it by Jerry and this was on a Monday, and Thursday Jerry had to be in the studio anyway, so he knocked out the audio for me and they emailed the MP3, and we were off to the races. I assembled a slide show of public domain shots of the Obama's and laid it over the audio.

Here's Jerry Lawson and The Talk Of The Town and the tribute he wrote and they recorded for Barack Obama in general and our Obama-Thon in particular...thank-you Jerry and Julie Lawson and The Talk Of The Town...





We've come a long way since I first got into free-form radio as a rookie "nooze" man...the bebopvideo nooze links list on your right gives a glimpse of the vast assortment of up-to-the mnute information available to you these days...


Sadly, we lost Bill this last December. His programming was so entertaining that they still run his program to this day. I listen to it often when I'm surfing my news sites for the latest calamity and I keep waiting for his voice to break in and back announce the set I was grooving to, I'm listening to it right now. For me, The Rock Garden is a womb-like experience. and It’s easy to keep “my eye on the prize” with Bill playing the tunes in the back ground-- sometimes taking me back, sometimes catching me up, sometimes taking me forward, but always taking me higher. R.I.P. Bill Ashford, a Colorado pioneer in the underground "free-form radio" genre best remembered for his years as a disc jockey at Boulder's KRNW and Denver's KMYR and KFML, he died December 10th in Ocala, Fla., his home since 1993. He was 66.