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KHJ Boss-93 Countdown NOW
- Thread starter skyrocker
- Start date
A FEW COMMENTS from that 1965 Boss-93 Countdown, run online recently on The Aircheck Channel...
"Brilliant...How truly lucky we are...for Ricky, who NEVER presents
anything less than a complete production.'
"Thank you Ricky, thank you Peter, thank you Bobby & thank you
all at 93KHJ. HAPPY BIRTHDAY REELRADIO - "Tina Delgado Is Alive!"
"Had I not read the description of this listing I would of swore
it was 100% off the air..."
"This great aircheck is a very special look at KHJ in its first year.
I also can’t recall of any other...as being of such pristine quality."
"This countdown has also put me into a time-warp, too. While
listening to this, I have to keep reminding myself that it is
February 12th, and not December 31st. [chuckle]"
"A great listen on a cold, snowy day here in Ohio, and
thanks very much..."
"Happy 16th birthday, Reelradio...for the wonderful 1965 countdown."
"This was a truly outstanding surprise....and it really hammered
home the fact that 1965 was a fantastic year for music."
--and they go on and on. This was YOUR station, L.A., one of the
biggest and most legendary. Try as they may, few others in the
Southland will ever come close to KHJ's pioneering success.
"Brilliant...How truly lucky we are...for Ricky, who NEVER presents
anything less than a complete production.'
"Thank you Ricky, thank you Peter, thank you Bobby & thank you
all at 93KHJ. HAPPY BIRTHDAY REELRADIO - "Tina Delgado Is Alive!"
"Had I not read the description of this listing I would of swore
it was 100% off the air..."
"This great aircheck is a very special look at KHJ in its first year.
I also can’t recall of any other...as being of such pristine quality."
"This countdown has also put me into a time-warp, too. While
listening to this, I have to keep reminding myself that it is
February 12th, and not December 31st. [chuckle]"
"A great listen on a cold, snowy day here in Ohio, and
thanks very much..."
"Happy 16th birthday, Reelradio...for the wonderful 1965 countdown."
"This was a truly outstanding surprise....and it really hammered
home the fact that 1965 was a fantastic year for music."
--and they go on and on. This was YOUR station, L.A., one of the
biggest and most legendary. Try as they may, few others in the
Southland will ever come close to KHJ's pioneering success.
I was 13 when the Boss version of KHJ premiered. Teens in those days were under social pressure to choose sides - you were a "surfer" or a "greaser"...and you had to pick a favorite radio station...and many kids put bumper stickers on their binders in school. Actually, we listened to all 3 - KHJ, KRLA, and KFWB...and KBLA in the short time it existed...hitting those preset buttons for the other stations every time a "bad" song, the commercials, or the news came on.
But the fact was - KHJ blew everybody else out of the water within a month of its premiere in 1965. If you spent any time on SoCal beaches, 90% of the radios were tuned to the Big 93.
But the fact was - KHJ blew everybody else out of the water within a month of its premiere in 1965. If you spent any time on SoCal beaches, 90% of the radios were tuned to the Big 93.
I'm a few years older than you Mr. Keller and by the time KHJ premiered in '65 I was enjoying the sunny beaches of Vietnam courtesy of my politically-motivated uncle. Prior to that time I was stationed in Long Beach where KFWB and KRLA ruled the roost. I don't remember which one was more popular but do remember KRLA a little better so it must have been my personal fav. Both, IMHO, were excellent T-40 stations.
M
MsMusicRadio
Guest
I read about the pending flip in Billboard magazine while hanging out at the Carnegie Mellon library. I didn't think that it could compete with KRLA and KFWB. Got to LA in June of 65 and immediately realized it was definitely Boss. Spent my summer on Sunset trying to hang out with the Turtles and Sonny and Cher. Best I could do was a wanted embezzler hiding from the RCMP in Ontario------bummer
I did however see Dave Diamond strolling down Gower St. by the Desilu Studios
I did however see Dave Diamond strolling down Gower St. by the Desilu Studios
landtuna said:
Though I listened to all 3, KRLA was my favorite, too - even after KHJ premiered. They generally had a longer play list, for one thing, and didn't censor songs for content or length, like KHJ. Me and my snobby high school friends decided KHJ was the "bubble-gum" station, and kind of looked down on it, though it retrospect, it was, by far, the best formatted Top 40 station.
M
MsMusicRadio
Guest
I thought they all censored songs
MsMusicRadio said:
I can think of a few songs that had "radio" versions where some bad words had been replaced.
More often, I think, entire songs were just eliminated from the playlist. AFRTS would not play, for instance, Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction". They also tended not to play any Folk-Rock songs either as that genre was usually anti-war instead concentrating on the early 60's girl groups.
MsMusicRadio said:
KHJ mostly edited long songs for length, but KRLA would not. Examples I can think of were MacArthur Park and Those Were the Days, and I don't think they were official 'short versions," like Light My Fire because I never heard them anywhere else. So I think they were probably edited by somebody in the Drake organization.
KHJ would not play some songs with supposedly objectionable content - one example being The Ballad of John and Yoko, which was never played on the Boss stations - I assume because of the line "Christ, you know it ain't easy..." Some stations would play it with the "Christ" edited out (which was awkward), KRLA played it without edits.
Interestingly, KHJ did play Itchycoo Park which was about cutting school and taking drugs. Never understood that.
Lkeller said:
The KHJ edits were done by Ron Jacobs' production folks. The "Drake Organization" was, until they went into syndication with Hit Parade in about 1968, just Bill Drake and Gene Chenault for all practical purposes.
It was also pretty common for radio stations of the importance of KHJ to get labels to make them a version that fit in a certain time limit "or we won't play it." That "whooshing" sound in LA was not the Santa Ana winds... it was record ducks rushing to produce a short version.
Some years later, KRTH wanted "better" copies of the oldies they played, and got the labels to pull the masters so they could make second generation copies for KRTH. That's the power of a major market station in that era.
Seems that the RKO stations continued making their own versions of hit songs into the 70's. KFRC made their own version of ELO's "Turn To Stone" by mixing a lift from another song on the album with the intro so that the song had a distinctive and much louder start, rather that fading in like the original. Many stations tried to come up with edits of "Do You Feel" by Peter Frampton when it started to get airplay as the album track at just over 14 minutes was just too long for the mostly AM Top 40 stations of the era. While the record company did eventually come up with their own edit to bring it down about 7 & a half minutes or so, KFRC's edit was far superior to that of A&M/PolyGram. It preserved parts of the song that A&M edited out and actually sounded cleaner.
When I arrived in LA our sister station was KFI in it's Top 40 incarnation and they were at that point in the habit of "asking" for reel to reel dubs of the master from record companies to get clean sounding product. We did as well. Oh and we had edits and mixes of our own at 103.5. I recall being asked to edit a Hollies song that had just been released and I heard later that Graham Nash called the station wanting to know why we did it? I was told that his response was very positive. He was apparently receptive to our reasons. Guess it was a form of research for him.
I see the practice of doing your own edits as being a lot more common than many think it is.
When I arrived in LA our sister station was KFI in it's Top 40 incarnation and they were at that point in the habit of "asking" for reel to reel dubs of the master from record companies to get clean sounding product. We did as well. Oh and we had edits and mixes of our own at 103.5. I recall being asked to edit a Hollies song that had just been released and I heard later that Graham Nash called the station wanting to know why we did it? I was told that his response was very positive. He was apparently receptive to our reasons. Guess it was a form of research for him.
I see the practice of doing your own edits as being a lot more common than many think it is.
Bryan Simmons said:
Interesting insider info - thanks, Bryan. What I could never understand was why stations didn't edit American Pie by Don McLean. Now there was a song (IMO) that needed editing.
Funny, hadn't thought about American Pie much in that respect Lew, but it did beg for a short version didn't it?
When I was at KROY in Sacramento in the late 70's we actually had two versions of many of the newer releases. The short version was played during the day with the album versions getting airplay at night. But what was aired for that long version wasn't always the exact album cut. Again at KROY we played Boston's "Long Time" and although we played the album version we didn't start it with Foreplay, the cut that segues into it as most AOR stations did. We actually started our long version with the light synthesizer that plays between the two cuts for a minute or so. I felt it really killed the forward momentum of the station as it had no beat and little energy. It was a somewhat experimental time for Top 40 stations as they endeavored to sound as hip as their FM rock counterparts.
When I was at KROY in Sacramento in the late 70's we actually had two versions of many of the newer releases. The short version was played during the day with the album versions getting airplay at night. But what was aired for that long version wasn't always the exact album cut. Again at KROY we played Boston's "Long Time" and although we played the album version we didn't start it with Foreplay, the cut that segues into it as most AOR stations did. We actually started our long version with the light synthesizer that plays between the two cuts for a minute or so. I felt it really killed the forward momentum of the station as it had no beat and little energy. It was a somewhat experimental time for Top 40 stations as they endeavored to sound as hip as their FM rock counterparts.
landtuna said:
That's a very good reason and brought on a chuckle! We had a competitor in Sacramento that had to operate from their transmitter site. It was in a double wide trailer on stilts. It was built that way to stay dry when the whole area would flood as it did every winter. They had to use an outhouse across the dirt road. We knew when they would take their breaks. It was usually when "Freebird" or "Stairway To Heaven" came on. I can't even imagine what they did in the flooded season as you had to take a boat to get there.
"American Pie" has a special meaning for me.
Back in '72 I was living in Queens, NY and working 50 miles away in Rye. I had just bought a brand new '71 Triumph TR-6 and was really enjoying that long drive when.....on a Friday evening during rush hour the bottom water hose popped off the radiator just as I cleared the toll booth. No place to pull over so I decided to try to make it to the top of the Whitestone Bridge then I could coast off the freeway and get it fixed.
"American Pie" was playing as the old TR started a knocking and I knew it wouldn't be long. It died just short of the top.
The song finally ended when the radio jock announced, in very serious tones, "a stalled sports car in the right lane of the Whitestone Bridge IS BLOCKING TRAFFIC!"
I just waved at the helo. Whatta gonna do? ;D
Back in '72 I was living in Queens, NY and working 50 miles away in Rye. I had just bought a brand new '71 Triumph TR-6 and was really enjoying that long drive when.....on a Friday evening during rush hour the bottom water hose popped off the radiator just as I cleared the toll booth. No place to pull over so I decided to try to make it to the top of the Whitestone Bridge then I could coast off the freeway and get it fixed.
"American Pie" was playing as the old TR started a knocking and I knew it wouldn't be long. It died just short of the top.
The song finally ended when the radio jock announced, in very serious tones, "a stalled sports car in the right lane of the Whitestone Bridge IS BLOCKING TRAFFIC!"
I just waved at the helo. Whatta gonna do? ;D
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