Wigwam Remembers KFML

[ Stumbled on this posting from Wigwam Jones Wilson entitled "KFML, Wax Trax, and How to Wreck Your Life" about Wax Trax and the last iteration of KFML: ]


A group of us were asked recently if we could name the 'record album' that had changed our lives. Judging from the massive response, a lot of people feel that a given album by a particular band DID change their lives.

But I had to be honest. For me, it was not an album - it was a radio station and a record store.

The radio station was KFML, and driving to Golden High School in 1977 in my oil-burning 1972 Chevy Vega, it was the hippest thing going. I found it by accident, and the DJs were so shocking, I kept it on just to see what would happen next. The first song I heard was one that I had never heard before in my life - "Concrete Jungle," by The Specials.

The record store was a frequent advertiser on KFML - Wax Trax, in downtown Denver. Run at that time by two wonderful women and their many cats, it had not one single LP by any band I had ever heard of, other than what I had heard on KFML. My first visit, I left clutching a copy of "Concrete Jungle" by The Specials, and I soon came back for "Mirror Star" by The Fabulous Poodles.

I could spend hours recalling all the time I spent there - all the friends I dragged in - all the people I met there. It was there that I found out about the "Rocky Horror Picture Show," and subsequently mispent the next two summers, attending every midnight show at the Ogden and trying to dress like Eddie. I used Wax Trax as a Gom Jabbar of sorts - if I took a friend there and they didn't *get it,* we'd never be friends - we were too different.

In every young person's life, there comes a time when he or she must decide if they like bands like Kansas and Boston and AOR music in general (or whatever the current bands are that fill this slot), or if they think those bands suck and thus forever mark themselves as a person who will not accept the status quo; a person who will be always be disliked by the mainstream lamers.

Down the first path is happiness and contentment, and a soul-numbing blandness that soothes while it destroys.

The second path - well, it's all I know. And I would not go back for anything. But it is not for the weak; only for the disturbed.

Thanks, Wax Trax. Thanks, KFML.

posted by Wigwam Jones at 12/11/2006 04:13:00 PM

Buffalo Chip

Last couple of months, a good number of us former KFML staffers have been conferencing via Skype. One sorely missed brother is the legendary Buffalo Chip (RIP):


Image courtesy of Hamilton Agnew

How KFML Began

Received this from Herb quite a while ago and did not want it to get lost:

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Malcolm,

Wow! What an incredible treasure you have compiled! I loved Bill Ashford’s summary of Free Form and KFML. Not a day goes by that I don’t recall something about those incredible times (sometimes with horror—lol).

Brian Kreizenbeck was the man who initiated KFML. Thom Trunnell and I were sort of stranded at a station, KOME, in San Jose when Thom and I contacted Joe McGoey for a personal meeting in Denver. The deal would be that everybody would be paid $100 per week and we would split the profits every month. And that’s how it all came together as a sort of “collective”. I was the “sales manager”. I became totally caught up in the marketing and creativeness of Free Form back when KMYR was on the air. That station was staffed by some ex-KMPX air staff, as well as Ashford, Trunnell, Don Bridges, Ed Hepp and Jim Mason. A whole other saga.

I am so grateful that you have created this historic portal.

Best,

Herb Neu



(Picture of Herb courtesy of KFMLNooze.com)

KCUV's Summer of Love

In honor of the Summer of Love, Denver's KCUV is doing an all-day tribute (today only, 6/21/2007 -- available free via Internet) to those days, featuring guest programmers:



Bill Clarke came out to Colorado in 1963 for college at the University of Denver. He became a disc jockey at KLZ-FM -- the first FM in Denver, if not the whole USA, to play album versions of rock hits -- before a two-year hitch in the Army brought him to Vietnam. He's now the Consumer Champ at 7News and a 20-year veteran at the station.




Bill Ashford was on the first full-time airstaff at KFML, Denver's pioneering "free form," or "underground" station. The emergence of KFML-AM and FM was a major influence in the Denver area radio market, a departure from programming tradition -- every disc jockey was free to play whatever music he chose in whatever sequence his ideas suggested.




Max Floyd started the original KLZ-FM along with Bill Gardner. He went to Kansas City and started the original KY102. He left for a bit in 1980 and came back in 1983, and he has been there ever since. Max is included in the group of pioneers in the broadcast section of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.




Jay Cooper was part of the "new crew" on KFML. Jay interviewed and introduced an amazing array of musical up-and-comers during the four-year run of Ebbets Field, Denver's premier concert venue of the '70. Hundreds of the shows were either simulcast live or recorded for re-broadcast on KFML. Jay has the beard.




Thom Trunnell, a free form programmer par excellence, was one of the founding fathers of KFML.

KFML Homepage Updated

I've added all the external links to the KFML homepage, so as soon as you visit the site, you get to see the locations, with links, for other related pages with even more info. Click on the staff Boulderado pic, below, to get there: