Grounded Grid said:
Interesting.
That's not music I would have associated with KEZX. KNUA, maybe, but I'm not even sure about that.
Sounds like surface noise on a couple of those cuts... or what you can make out through the noise. I wasn't aware that the station played records after they dropped their background music format.
<ramblings of an old man alert>
KBBX / KEZX was one of Bill Yeend's early gigs in Seattle. As I recall, he was the PD who moved the station from live-jocked (if you could call it that) 98% instrumental music to being completely automated. From that point, progressively more emphasis was placed on the main audio channel. Prior to that, it was pretty much all about the SCA.
The early station was pretty simple... two Gates tables, a Gates stereo Yard console and two or three cart decks. It fit into one of the hotel's guest rooms fairly easily. The room was set up so that firing off a cart deck would mute the SCA subcarrier, dropping out the background music accounts during commercial breaks. they returned with an "oceans of beautiful music" liner, during which the announcer would unmute the SCA and start another set of music. It was fairly uncomplicated.
</ramblings>
KEZX did air a lot of "new age" instrumental music in the mid '80s (before KNUA tried to make a full blown commercial format out of it.) Until then, I think they ran something called Musical Starstreams on weekends. In fact, The KEZX Album Project covers (both editions) looked a LOT like Windham Hill album covers (and the content inside was fairly similar - but more vocal tracks than Windham Hill's output - as well.....)
When KEZX went AAA (and how they pulled it off for nearly 10 years without Roy Park knowing is still one of Seattle radio's most amazing legends), there
were more instrumentals originally. But not so much the Ray Conniff/101 Strings variety than acoustic guitars and piano tracks. But little by little more soft rock vocals began to be added and the instrumentals began to disappear......