Post by bossradio93 on Oct 1, 2003 14:02:39 GMT -5
Ghost Radio (Part 1 of 3)[/b]
Who's behind Arizona's nonstop oddball rock time capsule?
BY JIMMY MAGAHERN, Phoenix New Times, 9.25
Adam Marsland, an indie rock singer-songwriter who, by his own accounts, spends most of his life on the road, discovered KCDX purely by accident one day while riding in his tour bus across the Arizona desert.
"I usually don't listen to the radio because it seems like it's always the same old crap, no matter what city you're in," says the 30-ish guitarist from L.A., currently on tour with John Mayer and the Counting Crows. "But one day I was flipping around the dial, and I heard a song that I never heard before that was kind of odd. Then I heard another song I didn't know, then another one, then a song I kinda knew, then a couple of songs by some bands I recognized, but they weren't the songs you usually heard by those artists. And it was really weird. I was calling up my friends in L.A., saying, Who does that song called "Creature From the Black Lagoon"? Was that Dave Edmunds? Well, they're playing that on the radio here!' And they're like, No way!'"
Weirdest of all, Marsland heard absolutely no commercials on the station, all the way from Globe until nearly New Mexico, where the signal finally faded out. "It was like Internet radio, but on the airwaves," he says. Marsland figured the station was a bizarre fluke, sure to be gone by the time his tour circled back to California.
But sure enough, when Marsland passed through Arizona again weeks later, there it was, "still commercial-free and still playing one classic rock obscurity after another," he recalls. The only interruption Marsland heard was a recorded station ID that flew by once on the hour, announcing "103.1, KCDX, Florence." Finally, the rocker was so intrigued he decided to make a long detour to Florence to find the secret control booth where all the magic was purportedly coming from. It was a pilgrimage that echoed the young Richard Dreyfuss' search for the Wolfman in American Graffiti.
"I just got as far as the guy at the Chamber of Commerce, who photocopied an article from the local newspaper that only deepened the mystery," Marsland says. "It said the station owner was a pharmacist who had the opportunity to acquire a radio license in Florence. And I'm thinking, How does a pharmacist get into buying radio stations?' Was he dealing drugs out of Osco?"
Marsland laments he never actually got to meet the wizard. "I had to get back on the road to go do another show, so I never got to pursue it any further," he says. "But I don't think anybody really knows where this guy's operating from. It truly is a mystery."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of KCDX's biggest listeners are hesitant to tell anybody about the amazing little commercial-free radio station they've discovered. The signal, which blankets the entire East Valley and has been heard as far as 93 miles west of Phoenix, broadcasts a continuous stream of forgotten underground FM wowzers that replicates someone's quirky personal record collection more than anything on the commercial airwaves (see accompanying story).
"Sometimes I think I'm getting the station illegally," laughs Gerald Thurman, a bearded, bespectacled 46-year-old Jerry Garcia ringer who discovered the station after his car stereo was ripped off during a Tom Petty concert and a curious-looking fellow from the insurance company showed up at his home to install a new unit.
"The guy who installed the stereo left it on 103.1," Thurman says. "And I listened to the first few songs, and they were all these rare album tracks that I hadn't heard in years that I really loved. So I just left it on. Now it's almost like I'm afraid to change it!"
Thurman, a computer sciences teacher at Scottsdale Community College, is half convinced he's erroneously receiving someone else's Sirius satellite radio subscription on his regular car stereo. The music, a wildly eclectic mix of deep album tracks from mostly '70s and '80s rock and pop greats, is like the B-side of conventional classic rock radio.
"Why am I getting this very customized stream of music on my radio?" Thurman wonders. "Don't I need, like, a special radio and a monthly subscription to be receiving this kind of thing?"
Other baffled KCDX listeners figure the signal is a glitch in the airwaves, some kind of station-sitting maneuver by Clear Channel while the broadcasting behemoth readies another frequency for its chain of focus-group-formatted superstations.
"If you have a radio license, you have to keep the station operating a certain minimum amount of days a year or else you lose it," says Gary Pfeifer, an auditor in Phoenix who collects tapes of classic radio "air checks" as a hobby. "So some of these guys who own a frequency but don't have a station operating yet will put it on for, say, a few weeks a year, just playing some CDs, and then shut it back down."
Dwight Tindle, the local radio legend who in 1971 co-founded KDKB -- at the time, one of the most adventurous freeform FM rock stations in the country -- is at first unimpressed when told about all the interest the mysterious commercial-free broadcast is generating.
"A lot of new stations do that kind of thing when they're changing formats and want to get some media attention," he sniffs. "In fact, before we went on the air with KDKB, we broadcast a tape loop of all the weirdest stuff we could find: Zappa, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Captain Beefheart. It was mostly a tactic to tune out the old listeners from the bad beautiful music' station that used to occupy the frequency and draw in the curious new audience, who knew something different was coming."
But the curious thing is, KCDX hasn't changed formats, nor has it shut down. Even more amazingly, this baby-boomer album fest has yet to be interrupted by a single commercial for -- how's this for a nonstop music block? -- more than 18 months.
"You're kidding." Tindle snaps to attention when told that little kicker. "Well, then, something really is going on here. Because if someone's operating even a bare-bones automated station, that's got to be costing a minimum of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year."
Tindle shifts in his office chair and immediately tries to tune in the frequency on his desktop boom box. "He's got to be paying an engineer to maintain the equipment," Tindle says, running down the basic operating costs in his head. "He has to be paying the licensing fees on all the music that he plays. Then, of course, you've got to pay the electric bill, you gotta pay the rent. And if you've got no revenue coming in from advertising, that can all add up to some pretty significant out-of-pocket costs."
Failing to tune in the station on his office radio, Tindle pledges to try it on another receiver and call back later with his critique. "Whoever's doing this has got to be either the most magnanimous music fan in Arizona," he says, laughing, "or totally insane!"[/i]
End of part 1.
Who's behind Arizona's nonstop oddball rock time capsule?
BY JIMMY MAGAHERN, Phoenix New Times, 9.25
Adam Marsland, an indie rock singer-songwriter who, by his own accounts, spends most of his life on the road, discovered KCDX purely by accident one day while riding in his tour bus across the Arizona desert.
"I usually don't listen to the radio because it seems like it's always the same old crap, no matter what city you're in," says the 30-ish guitarist from L.A., currently on tour with John Mayer and the Counting Crows. "But one day I was flipping around the dial, and I heard a song that I never heard before that was kind of odd. Then I heard another song I didn't know, then another one, then a song I kinda knew, then a couple of songs by some bands I recognized, but they weren't the songs you usually heard by those artists. And it was really weird. I was calling up my friends in L.A., saying, Who does that song called "Creature From the Black Lagoon"? Was that Dave Edmunds? Well, they're playing that on the radio here!' And they're like, No way!'"
Weirdest of all, Marsland heard absolutely no commercials on the station, all the way from Globe until nearly New Mexico, where the signal finally faded out. "It was like Internet radio, but on the airwaves," he says. Marsland figured the station was a bizarre fluke, sure to be gone by the time his tour circled back to California.
But sure enough, when Marsland passed through Arizona again weeks later, there it was, "still commercial-free and still playing one classic rock obscurity after another," he recalls. The only interruption Marsland heard was a recorded station ID that flew by once on the hour, announcing "103.1, KCDX, Florence." Finally, the rocker was so intrigued he decided to make a long detour to Florence to find the secret control booth where all the magic was purportedly coming from. It was a pilgrimage that echoed the young Richard Dreyfuss' search for the Wolfman in American Graffiti.
"I just got as far as the guy at the Chamber of Commerce, who photocopied an article from the local newspaper that only deepened the mystery," Marsland says. "It said the station owner was a pharmacist who had the opportunity to acquire a radio license in Florence. And I'm thinking, How does a pharmacist get into buying radio stations?' Was he dealing drugs out of Osco?"
Marsland laments he never actually got to meet the wizard. "I had to get back on the road to go do another show, so I never got to pursue it any further," he says. "But I don't think anybody really knows where this guy's operating from. It truly is a mystery."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of KCDX's biggest listeners are hesitant to tell anybody about the amazing little commercial-free radio station they've discovered. The signal, which blankets the entire East Valley and has been heard as far as 93 miles west of Phoenix, broadcasts a continuous stream of forgotten underground FM wowzers that replicates someone's quirky personal record collection more than anything on the commercial airwaves (see accompanying story).
"Sometimes I think I'm getting the station illegally," laughs Gerald Thurman, a bearded, bespectacled 46-year-old Jerry Garcia ringer who discovered the station after his car stereo was ripped off during a Tom Petty concert and a curious-looking fellow from the insurance company showed up at his home to install a new unit.
"The guy who installed the stereo left it on 103.1," Thurman says. "And I listened to the first few songs, and they were all these rare album tracks that I hadn't heard in years that I really loved. So I just left it on. Now it's almost like I'm afraid to change it!"
Thurman, a computer sciences teacher at Scottsdale Community College, is half convinced he's erroneously receiving someone else's Sirius satellite radio subscription on his regular car stereo. The music, a wildly eclectic mix of deep album tracks from mostly '70s and '80s rock and pop greats, is like the B-side of conventional classic rock radio.
"Why am I getting this very customized stream of music on my radio?" Thurman wonders. "Don't I need, like, a special radio and a monthly subscription to be receiving this kind of thing?"
Other baffled KCDX listeners figure the signal is a glitch in the airwaves, some kind of station-sitting maneuver by Clear Channel while the broadcasting behemoth readies another frequency for its chain of focus-group-formatted superstations.
"If you have a radio license, you have to keep the station operating a certain minimum amount of days a year or else you lose it," says Gary Pfeifer, an auditor in Phoenix who collects tapes of classic radio "air checks" as a hobby. "So some of these guys who own a frequency but don't have a station operating yet will put it on for, say, a few weeks a year, just playing some CDs, and then shut it back down."
Dwight Tindle, the local radio legend who in 1971 co-founded KDKB -- at the time, one of the most adventurous freeform FM rock stations in the country -- is at first unimpressed when told about all the interest the mysterious commercial-free broadcast is generating.
"A lot of new stations do that kind of thing when they're changing formats and want to get some media attention," he sniffs. "In fact, before we went on the air with KDKB, we broadcast a tape loop of all the weirdest stuff we could find: Zappa, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Captain Beefheart. It was mostly a tactic to tune out the old listeners from the bad beautiful music' station that used to occupy the frequency and draw in the curious new audience, who knew something different was coming."
But the curious thing is, KCDX hasn't changed formats, nor has it shut down. Even more amazingly, this baby-boomer album fest has yet to be interrupted by a single commercial for -- how's this for a nonstop music block? -- more than 18 months.
"You're kidding." Tindle snaps to attention when told that little kicker. "Well, then, something really is going on here. Because if someone's operating even a bare-bones automated station, that's got to be costing a minimum of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year."
Tindle shifts in his office chair and immediately tries to tune in the frequency on his desktop boom box. "He's got to be paying an engineer to maintain the equipment," Tindle says, running down the basic operating costs in his head. "He has to be paying the licensing fees on all the music that he plays. Then, of course, you've got to pay the electric bill, you gotta pay the rent. And if you've got no revenue coming in from advertising, that can all add up to some pretty significant out-of-pocket costs."
Failing to tune in the station on his office radio, Tindle pledges to try it on another receiver and call back later with his critique. "Whoever's doing this has got to be either the most magnanimous music fan in Arizona," he says, laughing, "or totally insane!"[/i]
End of part 1.