KAUM brings the 70's to a close

Rick Lambert hosts the countdown to the edge of the '80's.

KAUM, Houston, December 31, 1979-1, Rick Lambert
KAUM, Houston, December 31, 1979-2, Rick Lambert
KAUM, Houston, December 31, 1979-3, Rick Lambert
KAUM, Houston, December 31, 1979-4, Rick Lambert

According to XM Radio, here is what happened to Rick Lambert at KAUM:

After relocating to Houston, TX, to be music director of 97 Rock, Lambert was run out of town when he started playing "odd" bands like the Cure and the Smiths.

And so it goes . . .

Roger Reini sent this material from Michigan.

KRBE, Houston, Summer of 1975

Former Houston area resident Roger Reini sent this material from Michigan. Reini states that he appreciated "the clip of Buddy MacGregor" even though he is "too young to remember him in his heyday."

Reini recalls hearing that "Garner State Park" anthem on an oldies show around 1979 or 1980. According to Reini, that could have been either on a program MacGregor had on KQUE or on another oldies show on KULF.

Reini's continues:

I want to make something available to you . . .It's a short audio clip from KRBE from the summer of 1975. . . The main attractions are a national ad for National Lampoon and a local ad for a contest to see the Stones in Dallas.

Web master's commentary: It's hard to image the 70's without the National Lampoon. I was a long time subscriber, and I've managed to keep a few issues. I still have the issue with "Sargent Shriver's Bleeding Hearts Club Band" as well as the Lemmings and Radio Dinner phonograph records.

They contain materials which wouldn't pass muster for today's Political Correctness. The publication took shots at all parts of the political spectrum and always managed to reach new heights in low taste.

I remember that 3-D issue. The 3-D idea is a fad that comes back from time to time but never seems to stick.

A few days before I received this aircheck, I saw the 3-D movie Beowulf (2007). Unlike the old 3-D glasses, the theater gave me ones with light grayish lenses. The old kind of glasses used a red lens and a cyan lens. (Cyan is the color of the border around the column you are now reading . It is also called aqua.)

The National Lampoon had a real radio program for a time. I remember hearing it on KLOL in 1974.

For many years KRBE has been the main top 40 station in Houston. This recording shows the station in a transition phase. The format is more free-form than top 40. The DJ is Ritch Bryan.

Album rock comes to Houston

KFMK, Houston, August 24, 1968, Steve Nagle

Or, click here for just the newscast featuring Steve Nagle

Free form music with rip and read headlines for heads. Recorded at the time when Flower Power was in flower, the DJ sounds very relaxed. "Yeah . . . Here we are."

Before there was KLOL and before there was a Houston Pacifica station, KFMK was the city's first album rock station. The bumper sticker read, "Wow."

The announcer heard here, not identified in the recording itself, is Steve Nagle, now an attorney in Austin. He wrote to me in 2006 after another former KFMK DJ surprised him by playing this recording over the telephone.

I remember the morning I made this recording in some detail, and I describe it in the memoir below.

Below are some KFMK items I didn't know I had until recently. I found these short segments buried on tapes of TV audio. The voice on them is probably Jay Thomas, an early album rock DJ whom I phoned numerous times and visited on at least one occasion.

KFMK, Houston, 1967 or 1968

Fragment No. 1. An invitation to meditation. The KFMK DJ introduces a brief excerpt from an Alan Watts recording. A typical Zen word play. I was very pleased to discover this little gem.

My large library of educational audio includes many long Alan Watts lectures. None of them are quite like this. In his old phonograph recordings, Watts tended to address the listener more directly than in his lectures. Please send me a note if you know of the name of this LP or the name of a current CD with the same material. I tend to listen to Watts more for amusement rather than any serious dedication to Zen or meditation.

KFMK, Houston, December 6, 1967

Fragment No. 2. Recorded during its early album rock period, the station was aiming for an audience in Spring Branch Memorial. One KFMK announcer told me at the time that they were thinking of changing their call letters to KSBM.

Listening to KFMK during my first drive to Galveston (without having an FM radio in the car)

A memoir by the webmaster. Saturday, August 24, 1968, 3:00 A.M. A house near the Gulf Freeway on Houston's southeast side...

While drinking a first cup of coffee, I started taping KFMK on my recently acquired Tandberg reel to reel unit. I then began to simultaneously record the same broadcast on a portable cassette unit. My intention was to drive to Galveston and to take the cassette along.

Before leaving, I stepped into the front yard to take in the refreshingly damp pre-dawn air. I was suddenly approached by a young man who lived nearby.

He told me that he had been up all night. He told me that there was a prowler on his roof.

This is the Edgebrook - Almeda Mall area we're talking about. It's not much to look at today, but in 1968 it was the epitome of the clean, suburban dream.

Nowadays, a prowler on a roof might seem like an everyday thing in Houston. But in 1968, we didn't tolerate that sort of nonsense. It hardy ever happened.

I saw no phantom prowler perched atop his home. I saw nobody around but the young man and me.

He also told me he had taken LSD. That helped explain things a little.

Assuring myself that the area was secure, I got into my flat-finned '59 Chevy Impala convertible and headed to Galveston on the Gulf Freeway. It was the first time I had ever driven a car outside of the immediate Houston area.

As you might expect , the Chevy had no FM radio and no cassette deck. However, I would make good use of my portable cassette player. Cassettes were still a novelty, but I had already carried them here, there, and everywhere for over two years.

As I hurled the Impala cautiously toward Galveston, I made that KFMK recording my soundtrack. The cassette also had a short segment from KILT-- a recording of a newly released song called "Hey Jude."

It was by some band that was somewhat well known at the time. I rewound that tape repeatedly. The KFMK segment had "Revolution," the flip side of the same single.

At that age, a song like "Hey Jude" might seem to embody all the hopes that the future had to offer. Cassettes allowed you to take your audio inspiration anywhere and to play it over and over. That is exactly what I did on the way to Galveston.

I was a bit nervous driving, encountering a thunderstorm as I approached the island and passing an accident on the causeway.

As the storm let up, I headed down Broadway and made a right on Seawall Boulevard. I stopped the car at the Flagship Hotel, a building which rests on a pier.

I took down the top of the '59 Impala. I stood there drinking some Constant Comment iced tea.

I shot a picture of the storm clearing over the water. (Photo below.) I also took pictures of some surfer girl types. (Unfortunately, the girl photos have not survived.) These were the first of hundreds of pictures I would eventually take in Galveston.

I then walked onto the Flagship Hotel pier. I noticed a car marked "just married" with a bunch of tin cans attached. Until then, I had only seen that in the movies.

A sign on the couple's car said, "Now it's legal." I assumed that meant an existing cohabitation now had the full endorsement of the government. I never even saw the couple, but I have often wondered whether that particular marriage lasted.

I went into the hotel coffee shop just for a cup of coffee.

After that, I went to Saint Mary's Hospital. I had a delivery to make there for the family business. That was the real reason for the trip.

I headed home. When I got back, I listened to the playback of the reel to reel tape. Somehow that Elvin Bishop song had an effect on me. It was something about "Drunk again." I had never actually been drunk, but the song made me realize that I was tired. I went back to sleep for a while.

A few days later, I made a similar trip to Galveston, again parking by The Flagship. That time I took a friend along.

At St. Mary's, we found that we couldn't open the trunk of the car to get the package out for delivery. A hospital maintenance man came to our assistance.

This trip followed several days of turmoil at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. After he rescued our package, the maintenance man looked at us and asked with a straight face, "Are you some of them there Yippies?"

That was the way life was late in the summer of 1968.

That KFMK recording for August 24, 1968, is available above.

— G.M.