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106.5 KPRI FM memories
- Thread starter SDRadio
- Start date
One of the DJ's was Bree Walker, under the name Bree Bushaw (Booshaw?)
D
doublecashkgb
Guest
Chris: San Diego was unlike today a very innovative market in the late 60's & early 70's. KGB Went Album ROck in APril 1972 & added FM simulcast in AUgust
KPRI was still the hippest station in town. Studios at 7th & Ash on first floor, Jerry Lubin, Peter Franklin, Joe Chandler, Adrian Bol, Jim McCIness was OB Fillmore (DJ's 1972) Progressive Rocker, very hip. I remember Blues shows & some community type shows.
Different station by mid 70's (prototype AOR bland) programmed by Mike Harrison. Jocks had effected deliveries
Yes His Radio was programmed by Gary Allyn 90.7 Fm-OB Ranger produced by Allyn & Neil Ross. Adult Rock station Circa 1972
Also Progressive AM Radio: Radio KDEO RIck Phelps, Mark WIlliams, Sam Schwan, Royce Johnson
& The SD Chargers & SD Aztecs all on 910-AM. Circa 1971-1974
KPRI was still the hippest station in town. Studios at 7th & Ash on first floor, Jerry Lubin, Peter Franklin, Joe Chandler, Adrian Bol, Jim McCIness was OB Fillmore (DJ's 1972) Progressive Rocker, very hip. I remember Blues shows & some community type shows.
Different station by mid 70's (prototype AOR bland) programmed by Mike Harrison. Jocks had effected deliveries
Yes His Radio was programmed by Gary Allyn 90.7 Fm-OB Ranger produced by Allyn & Neil Ross. Adult Rock station Circa 1972
Also Progressive AM Radio: Radio KDEO RIck Phelps, Mark WIlliams, Sam Schwan, Royce Johnson
& The SD Chargers & SD Aztecs all on 910-AM. Circa 1971-1974
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Bob_Hudson
Guest
In 1967-68 when I was in high school, KPRI started broadcasting "underground radio" during the overnight hours. I used to set my reel-to-reel recorder to tape it so I could listen to it the next day (man do I wish I had those tapes!), and sometimes I used those small speakers designed to go under the pillow to sneak in a listen when I was supposed to be getting rested up for school the next day.
The original program director of the underground format as I recall (and this is all real fuzzy) was a guy name Steve Brown, who went by the air name of OB Jetty, because he lived near the jetty in Ocean Beach. He was either in the Navy then or had just gotten out. It wasn't too long before the whole station went underground. Gabriel Wisdom worked there (I think he was Okmod the Revolving). They were in the basement of a medical building on 6th Avenue across from Balboa Park, directly beneath a pharmacy. Thus, as one announcer put it, "the entire station is under drugs."
Sometime in the late 60's San Diego's famed blues radio/used record sale guru Lou Curtiss started doing a Sunday night blues show on KPRI.
KPRI really was an innovative FM radio station, being one of the first stations on the West Coast to go with the hippy psychedelic freeform underground programming, and for a long time they did it very well. It continued to be a fairly hip place until the late 70's when Jesse Bullet (formerly of KGB-FM) became PD and started dumbing down the station.
I recally that the Dead were doing two nights of concerts in San Diego when they were touring for Shakedown Street. Bob Weir came into the station and I did a taped interview with him. I used segments of it during my afternoon newscasts including one bit where he was talking about playing with the Dead and beneath that I used the long intro to Playin' With The Band and just as Weir finished talking, the band jumps in singing, "Playin....playin with the band." It sounded way cool.
Well Bullet calls me on the carpet for that, says we "gotta think about that 24 year old media buyer at the ad agencies....is this the kind of thing she wants to here?" KPRI at the time was doing very well and it was because it was still a hip radio station, but Bullet always got scared whenever any station of his became successful and kept "fine tuning, fine tuning," which meant he screwed with it so it was no longer the station that people had flocked to. If you look at his later record as PD it's hard to find any lasting success: he could turn a station around, yes, but he could not sustain success.
KPRI really started to slide when the folks who owned it purchased KOGO and the corporate/focus group/computer-generated-playlist mentality started to infect the place.
Oh: a fun sidenote to the Bob Weir interview. Those of at the station who wanted them had tickets to the second night of the Dead show. Weir told me they were having a little party after the concert and did I want to come? Gee...party with the Dead??????? That's a tough choice
I took a friend to the concert and he brought along some big old doobs rolled from the finest homegrown and there was a full bar at the concert so we sat there groovin' on the Dead, tokin' big numbers and sippin' Jack Daniels on the rocks (kids do not try this at home). After the concert I'd arranged to meet Bob Weir in the bar at the Westgate Hotel across the street. The three of us hung out there for a while, listening to members of the Civic Light Opera (which also a had a concert that night) singing show and light opera tunes to the accompaniment of the piano bar guy. Then we went up to a suite and a small party attended by every member of the Dead, except Garcia, a few of us from KPRI, some Deadheads and various relatives and crew from the dead touring party. Needless to say, after Bullet's lecture on not being hip, I did not mention any of this on the air.
The original program director of the underground format as I recall (and this is all real fuzzy) was a guy name Steve Brown, who went by the air name of OB Jetty, because he lived near the jetty in Ocean Beach. He was either in the Navy then or had just gotten out. It wasn't too long before the whole station went underground. Gabriel Wisdom worked there (I think he was Okmod the Revolving). They were in the basement of a medical building on 6th Avenue across from Balboa Park, directly beneath a pharmacy. Thus, as one announcer put it, "the entire station is under drugs."
Sometime in the late 60's San Diego's famed blues radio/used record sale guru Lou Curtiss started doing a Sunday night blues show on KPRI.
KPRI really was an innovative FM radio station, being one of the first stations on the West Coast to go with the hippy psychedelic freeform underground programming, and for a long time they did it very well. It continued to be a fairly hip place until the late 70's when Jesse Bullet (formerly of KGB-FM) became PD and started dumbing down the station.
I recally that the Dead were doing two nights of concerts in San Diego when they were touring for Shakedown Street. Bob Weir came into the station and I did a taped interview with him. I used segments of it during my afternoon newscasts including one bit where he was talking about playing with the Dead and beneath that I used the long intro to Playin' With The Band and just as Weir finished talking, the band jumps in singing, "Playin....playin with the band." It sounded way cool.
Well Bullet calls me on the carpet for that, says we "gotta think about that 24 year old media buyer at the ad agencies....is this the kind of thing she wants to here?" KPRI at the time was doing very well and it was because it was still a hip radio station, but Bullet always got scared whenever any station of his became successful and kept "fine tuning, fine tuning," which meant he screwed with it so it was no longer the station that people had flocked to. If you look at his later record as PD it's hard to find any lasting success: he could turn a station around, yes, but he could not sustain success.
KPRI really started to slide when the folks who owned it purchased KOGO and the corporate/focus group/computer-generated-playlist mentality started to infect the place.
Oh: a fun sidenote to the Bob Weir interview. Those of at the station who wanted them had tickets to the second night of the Dead show. Weir told me they were having a little party after the concert and did I want to come? Gee...party with the Dead??????? That's a tough choice
I took a friend to the concert and he brought along some big old doobs rolled from the finest homegrown and there was a full bar at the concert so we sat there groovin' on the Dead, tokin' big numbers and sippin' Jack Daniels on the rocks (kids do not try this at home). After the concert I'd arranged to meet Bob Weir in the bar at the Westgate Hotel across the street. The three of us hung out there for a while, listening to members of the Civic Light Opera (which also a had a concert that night) singing show and light opera tunes to the accompaniment of the piano bar guy. Then we went up to a suite and a small party attended by every member of the Dead, except Garcia, a few of us from KPRI, some Deadheads and various relatives and crew from the dead touring party. Needless to say, after Bullet's lecture on not being hip, I did not mention any of this on the air.
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Ben Shaton
Guest
I remember it didn't last much longer after 91X signed on. I think it became an AC station like half a dozen other ones during the mid-80's period.
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doublecashkgb
Guest
Bob-What a great story. I have a Bullet Story that isn't half as fun as yours. In one of my first PD gigs Bullet was the consultant. I thought cool, this is the guy who almost overnight went from the journeyman late night KGB Boss Jock to the laid-back AOR cat. He shows up my first day on the job screaming about the fact that I need to make a statement to the staff. I said "Yea Jessie I have some things to say", he's like no "fire somebody", that always get their attention."If anybody is late for the meeting can their ass". He was disappointed that I didn't can anybody.
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Bob_Hudson
Guest
Ben Ston said:
91X stumbled in its early days trying to compete against KPRI. They had a lame morning show "John and Mary." Mary had done news at KPRI and later became San Diego Union Tribune reporter Mary Curran Downey: she was not a rocker.
We had some good people at KPRI into the late 70's including Raymond Banister - better known for his work on KROQ. 91X didn't hit its stride until it went with a New Wave KROQ-type format that was totally unlike anything being done at KPRI. KPRI self-destructed. (trivia: Jim McInnes' wife Sandi Banister got her last name when she was married to Raymond while he was at KPRI). Ernie Gladden (Ernesto) was also at KPRI around that time. I think he had earlier been at KGB-FM. He was a great FM jock. If you ever research Bob Dylan you will come across many, many references to a Bob Dylan interview recorded in November 1980 by KPRI's "Ernesto Bladden." That's right, someone somewhere wrote down Ernesto's last name as Bladden instead of Gladden and the mistake is repeated a thousand times.
When I was at KPRI mornings were done by Harry Scarborough, who used to constantly post fliers on the bulletin board about TM, Rolfing and all these other new age self discovery gimmicks. I put a little sign above one that said, "TO FIND YOURSELF THIS WEEK, HARRY RECOMMENDS:"
I did morning news on Saturdays. The news guy and jock sat face-to-face divided by a window. One Saturday morning Harry sat there wearing sunglasses indoors at six in the morning. Knowing Harry, that did not surprise me at all, but he felt compelled to press the intercom button to let me know, "You probably noticed I'm wearing shades this morning. I'm not trying to be hip....it's just that I'll be weeping a lot."
Harry got out of radio eventually and apparently found work in the comparatively sane travel industry.
Bob Hudson, 91X actually did mighty fine against KPRI after signing on in September 1978....In the October-November 1978 ARB, 91X had a 2.5 in 12+ in their first book. Probably didn't scare KGB & KPRI all that much, but in April-May 1979 after they had a chance to get rolling, 91X's 4.9 beat KGB's 4.4 and KPRI's 4.1. Prior to 91X, KGB had a 7.1 and KPRI had a 5.9. In that Spring 1979 book, 91X was #1 18-34, KPRI was #2, KGB down at #6. In 18-34 dayparts, KPRI was #1 91X #2 in AM drive, and in PM Drive, 91X was #1, KGB was #5, KPRI was #9...
Did not John & Mary do AM drive at KPRI just prior to joining 91X? As I recall, KPRI paid them a whopping $500/mo each...
Did not John & Mary do AM drive at KPRI just prior to joining 91X? As I recall, KPRI paid them a whopping $500/mo each...
B
Bob_Hudson
Guest
GeorgeJ. said:
That may be: I know Mary was at KPRI, mostly doing the news. I remember the rolodex of phone numbers she created for the newsroom had very very entries until you got to the "W's" and then it was full of "Women's Center," "Women's Counseling Office" women's this and women's that and this for a supposed male oriented FM rock station. I remember going to a party at John and Mary's with a bunch of other KPRI folks after J&M had started at 91X and at that point I don't think anyone at KPRI considered 91X as any sort of competition. That must have been late 78 because it seems like I spent most of 79 at KCBQ until about November when I went to KHJ. I would not be surprised that they made $500 a month each at KPRI. My pay double when I went from KPRI to KCBQ even though KCBQ by then had squat in the ratings (and it doubled again when I went to KHJ). In those days the best money was made at the old AFTRA affiliated AM stations even if they were rapidly losing most of their audience to low-paid FM jocks ($500 a month and all the records you could steal).
KPRI was making money though: we on air folk drove Ramblers, but GM Dex Allen and the sales people down the hall all had hot brand new cars and were always walking out the door with big televisions and other goodies they apparently traded out with advertisers. These were the arroganty a-hole sales people who always liked to give jocks the "Hey I pay your salary" speech. We had a bunch of them to at KCBQ, but at least we got paid decently. At KPRI they just screwed us.
As an aside on John & Mary, they had the worst-ever hours for AM drive in San Diego because of the 6-hour tape delay on 91X at that time....
They recorded their 6-10AM show from midnight-4 and then 4 reel were driven down to the transmitter across the border to be played back at 6AM.... They would come in at 11PM and watch the news & half-hour of Carson & then do their show....
They recorded their 6-10AM show from midnight-4 and then 4 reel were driven down to the transmitter across the border to be played back at 6AM.... They would come in at 11PM and watch the news & half-hour of Carson & then do their show....
J
jimmythebassett
Guest
The dumbing down actually started in 1973 with PD Mike Harrison and the move to Soledad Canyon from 7th and Ash. He bagan competing with Tom Yates at KLOS to see who could wreck a "progressive station". He began playing Gladys Night and Spinners songs with Jethro Tull and Skynyrd. The Bullet stuff came about when the station was at Balboa and Genesee with The Superstars format.
J
jimmythebassett
Guest
The funniest thing is some of the Drake jocks at KGB and some of the Buzz jocks at Q all came through KGB and KPRI as "AOR" jocks. Some of the Drake jocks tried to go through the format change with Jacobs and Schroeder at KGB after the April 72 fromat change from Top-40 to AOR. Eric Chase, Jessie Bullett to name a few - then when KGB-FM started remember when the AM went back to chicken rock Top-40, the whole reason the CHICKEN started as the mascot, because it was called chicken rock. Wizzard Lou Rogers, Ernie Gladden, great stuff. I grew up in San Diego and worked on the air at KCBQ 75-76. I was a huge KPRI, KGB and KCBQ fan. Seeing the mock studios in ALMOST FAMOUS reminded me of watching the jocks through the window in 1972 as a kid on my bike at 7th and Ash. Great stuff.
On the bright side it should be noted Jesse Bullett has retired from radio and is living in the very remote town of Desert Center following a GM/ morning drive stint at KEZN in Palm Desert. After CBS fired him he fled to work for old cronie Dex Allen as GM at a station Dex owned in Lake Tahoe until it was sold.
This might better come under a Memories of KGB heading, but I recall KGB being such a smooth operation in the early 1970's, again with San Diego as a very hot, innovative market, that basically the whole staff got hired to move to KLOS where it succeeded as well. Is that correct?
The mother of a friend of mine was an English teacher to Ted Gianolus (sp?), the KGB Chicken. Inevitably, they ran into each other in public, at a Padres game, and there was this this very proper, conservatively attired English teacher yucking it up in the stands with the KGB Chicken.
The mother of a friend of mine was an English teacher to Ted Gianolus (sp?), the KGB Chicken. Inevitably, they ran into each other in public, at a Padres game, and there was this this very proper, conservatively attired English teacher yucking it up in the stands with the KGB Chicken.
I worked at KPRI briefly in 1975 under Jack Lane. I was hired to do over nights part time, then got put on mid-days for about a week full time, then afternoon drive for the rest of my short tenure up against JM in the PM. Guess who won that contest. After Lane was ousted I was blown out by the PD because I was one of Jack's boys. I was also very green and pretty much sucked. I was out of radio for about a year then went to work at XTRA-AM as a production guy, then was heavily involved in the startup of 91X and the change to "Rock of the 80's" but had migrated more to engineering by then. The last air shift I ever worked was filling for Cecille for a couple of days. I recall going in at 4:00am to tape until 8:00am to get the reels to Mexico for the 10:00am start.
I was paid $800 a month during my time at KPRI, living at the beach with three room mates, and taking home boat loads of LP's. Free tickets to shows, trade dinners, chicks a'plenty. Them was the days. Until of course when John Lynch hung the pager on my belt and started calling me when the transmitters belched. Ah, the glory of it all.
I was paid $800 a month during my time at KPRI, living at the beach with three room mates, and taking home boat loads of LP's. Free tickets to shows, trade dinners, chicks a'plenty. Them was the days. Until of course when John Lynch hung the pager on my belt and started calling me when the transmitters belched. Ah, the glory of it all.
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Bob_Hudson
Guest
jimmythebassett said:
The Chicken was the mascot for the FM, not the Top 40 AM. Ted got the job being the chicken simply because he fit in the suit (I think he was some sort of promotion assistant before that).
D
doublecashkgb
Guest
Bob_Hudson said:
Not true. He was the spokesman for AM & FM. I know because I listened a lot more to Wizard Lew
than I did to the FM at that time and the Chicken was all over KGB-AM. I thought it was Chicken S***
that they chose Chicken Rock instead of Top 40 to go up against KCBQ. They had some great jocks though.
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