KPPC
Encyclopedia
KPPC-FM was a Pasadena, California
FM
radio station
best known during the period 1967–1971, when it was one of the leading "underground" radio stations in the United States
, presenting a freeform
mixture of experimental and historical music with countercultural
ideas. In contrast to the dominant Top 40 format, each KPPC disc jockey
selected his own music, which would veer between genres, including rock and roll
, folk music
, blues
and comedy
.
Hosts included B. Mitchel Reed
, Steven Segal (aka "The Obscene Steven Clean;" not related to the similarly named actor), Susan Carter (aka "Outrageous Nevada"), Barbara Birdfeather, Jeff Gonzer (aka "Bonzo" Gonzer), Tom Donahue
, Program Director and deejay Les Carter, novelty music historian Dr. Demento
, Charles Laquidara
, Ted Alvy (aka "Cosmos Topper"), Elliot Mintz
(whose late-night Sunday show played everything from Baba Ram Dass lectures to listener-created recordings), blues archivist Johnny Otis
and comedy troupes The Credibility Gap
(featuring Harry Shearer
, Richard Beebe
, David L. Lander
, and Michael McKean
), and The Firesign Theatre
. Station promos were sung by the a cappella singing group The Persuasions
. Other staff members included: Don Hall, deejay and production wizard Zachary Zenor, Mississippi Fats (Joe Rogers), Sam Kopper, The Pierce Family, and Dr. Sound (Ron Johnson).
KPPC-AM was also a Pasadena, California
AM
Christian radio
station from 1924 until September 1996.
and the Wednesday night prayer
meeting. The station had just 100 watt
s of power, and barely covered Pasadena. In 1941 the station acquired its frequency of 1240 kHz, where it shared time with a station in San Bernardino
. In 1962 the Church wanted to expand the hours and coverage, but other stations had filled in the remaining AM time allotments, so the Church started KPPC-FM, on 106.7 MHz. The studios and transmitters were located in the basement of the church (which later became part of the station's claim to being "underground"), with the antenna on the roof of the Pasadena Star-News
building (a newspaper) next door at 585 East Colorado in Pasadena. The FM station had terrible broadcast coverage from this location. The station even distributed plans for an "Super Signal Sucker" antenna made of a broomstick and coathangers for listeners to build and get better reception.
In 1968, the church sold the stations to Crosby-Avery Broadcasting, and in 1969, they were sold to the National Science Network; the church retained the right to broadcast its services over both stations. In April 1970, the studios were moved out of the basement to an office building at 99 South Chester in Pasadena. In September, the transmitter was moved to Flint Peak, a mountaintop adjacent to Pasadena, and the power increased to 25,500 watts.
KPPC-FM was the first station in Los Angeles to broadcast a stereo simulcast
with a television station. (A one hour program with 'Leon Russell and Friends' in collaboration with PBS station KCET
), and the first to broadcast with Sansui
quadraphonic
sound. It was also the first FM station in Los Angeles to use two transmitters simultaneously to produce sufficient power.
The golden era of KPPC ended October 24, 1971 when the entire airstaff was fired, replaced overnight with a new line-up that reflected little of the previous freewheeling spirit. In 1973, the stations were sold to Burbank Broadcasting. Because the purchaser already had an AM (KROQ, 1500 kHz, Burbank), KPPC AM was sold to Universal Broadcasting, a religious broadcaster. The AM station continued to carry the services of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church until its last broadcast in September 1996. The FM station eventually became the well known KROQ-FM
, which is still on the air.
The KPPC call sign
was assigned to an FM station in Pocatello, Idaho
which changed their call sign to KEGE
in early 2008 to match their name "The Edge".
KPPC is now located in Amarillo, Texas.
There is a tribute to the original KPPC-FM currently on Live365
called "KPPC.FM revisited".
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
FM
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
best known during the period 1967–1971, when it was one of the leading "underground" radio stations in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, presenting a freeform
Freeform (radio format)
Freeform, or freeform radio, is a radio station programming format in which the disc jockey is given total control over what music to play, regardless of music genre or commercial interests. Freeform radio stands in contrast to most commercial radio stations, in which DJs have little or no...
mixture of experimental and historical music with countercultural
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
ideas. In contrast to the dominant Top 40 format, each KPPC disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
selected his own music, which would veer between genres, including rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
, folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
.
Hosts included B. Mitchel Reed
B. Mitchel Reed
B. Mitchel Reed was a successful American disc Jockey for both Top 40 and album-oriented rock radio, who worked in New York and Los Angeles in a career spanning 25 years.-Career:...
, Steven Segal (aka "The Obscene Steven Clean;" not related to the similarly named actor), Susan Carter (aka "Outrageous Nevada"), Barbara Birdfeather, Jeff Gonzer (aka "Bonzo" Gonzer), Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue , was a pioneering rock and roll radio disc jockey, record producer and concert promoter....
, Program Director and deejay Les Carter, novelty music historian Dr. Demento
Dr. Demento
Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....
, Charles Laquidara
Charles Laquidara
Charles Laquidara is an American radio disc jockey whose show, The Big Mattress, was broadcast in the Boston, Massachusetts area for nearly 30 years on WBCN. He spent four years doing The Charles Laquidara Radio Hour on WZLX...
, Ted Alvy (aka "Cosmos Topper"), Elliot Mintz
Elliot Mintz
Elliot Mintz is American media consultant and publicist whose clients have included the John Lennon Estate, Bob Dylan, Paris Hilton, Chris Brown, Yoko Ono, Christie Brinkley, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Diana Ross, Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith and others.-Early life and career:In the late 1960s,...
(whose late-night Sunday show played everything from Baba Ram Dass lectures to listener-created recordings), blues archivist Johnny Otis
Johnny Otis
Johnny Otis is an American singer, musician, talent scout, disc jockey, composer, arranger, recording artist, record producer, vibraphonist, drummer, percussionist, bandleader, and impresario.He is commonly referred to as The Godfather Of Rhythm And Blues.-Personal life:Otis, the son of Alexander...
and comedy troupes The Credibility Gap
The Credibility Gap
The Credibility Gap was a satirical comedy team comprising Harry Shearer, Richard Beebe, David L. Lander and Michael McKean. Lew Irwin, John Gilliland, Thom Beck, and Len Chandler also performed in their early days...
(featuring Harry Shearer
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Shearer is an American actor, comedian, writer, voice artist, musician, author, radio host and director. He is known for his long-running role on The Simpsons, his work on Saturday Night Live, the comedy band Spinal Tap and his radio program Le Show...
, Richard Beebe
Richard Beebe
Richard Beebe was on the air for five decades in Los Angeles and won two Golden Mic Awards. A founding member of The Credibility Gap, his experience and wit that moulded into its famous four man group. He was an original Beatnik still working and being creative in the late 1960s when he discovered...
, David L. Lander
David Lander
David L. Lander is an American actor, comedian, composer, musician, and baseball scout. David is also the Goodwill Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.- Biography :...
, and Michael McKean
Michael McKean
Michael John McKean is an American actor, comedian, writer, composer and musician, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Squiggy's friend, Leonard 'Lenny' Kosnowski, on the sitcom Laverne and Shirley; and for his work in the Christopher Guest ensemble films, particularly as David St...
), and The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre is an American comedy troupe consisting of Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Philip Proctor. Their brand of surrealistic humor is best known through their record albums, which acquired a cult following in the late 1960s and early '70s.The troupe began as live radio...
. Station promos were sung by the a cappella singing group The Persuasions
The Persuasions
The Persuasions are an a cappella group that began singing together in Brooklyn, New York in the mid 1960s. They have performed interpretations of both secular and non-secular music, and have covered a wide range of musical genres....
. Other staff members included: Don Hall, deejay and production wizard Zachary Zenor, Mississippi Fats (Joe Rogers), Sam Kopper, The Pierce Family, and Dr. Sound (Ron Johnson).
KPPC-AM was also a Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
AM
AM broadcasting
AM broadcasting is the process of radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation. AM was the first method of impressing sound on a radio signal and is still widely used today. Commercial and public AM broadcasting is carried out in the medium wave band world wide, and on long wave and short wave...
Christian radio
Christian radio
Christian radio is a category of radio formats that focus on transmitting programming with a Christian message. In the United States, where it is more established, many such broadcasters play popular music of Christian influence, though many programs have talk or news programming covering...
station from 1924 until September 1996.
History
KPPC was founded by the Pasadena Presbyterian Church in 1924 (hence the PPC). Starting as an AM station, it was authorized to be on the air for just 22 hours a week (6 a.m. - 12 M Sundays and 7 - 11 p.m. Wednesdays). This was to carry the Sunday servicesChurch service
In Christianity, a church service is a term used to describe a formalized period of communal worship, often but not exclusively occurring on Sunday, or Saturday in the case of those churches practicing seventh-day Sabbatarianism. The church service is the gathering together of Christians to be...
and the Wednesday night prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
meeting. The station had just 100 watt
Watt
The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...
s of power, and barely covered Pasadena. In 1941 the station acquired its frequency of 1240 kHz, where it shared time with a station in San Bernardino
San Bernardino, California
San Bernardino is a city located in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area , and serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States...
. In 1962 the Church wanted to expand the hours and coverage, but other stations had filled in the remaining AM time allotments, so the Church started KPPC-FM, on 106.7 MHz. The studios and transmitters were located in the basement of the church (which later became part of the station's claim to being "underground"), with the antenna on the roof of the Pasadena Star-News
Pasadena Star-News
The Pasadena Star-News is the local daily newspaper for Pasadena, California. The Star-News is a member of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, since 1996. It is also part of the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, along with the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Whittier Daily News.Ridder Newspapers...
building (a newspaper) next door at 585 East Colorado in Pasadena. The FM station had terrible broadcast coverage from this location. The station even distributed plans for an "Super Signal Sucker" antenna made of a broomstick and coathangers for listeners to build and get better reception.
In 1968, the church sold the stations to Crosby-Avery Broadcasting, and in 1969, they were sold to the National Science Network; the church retained the right to broadcast its services over both stations. In April 1970, the studios were moved out of the basement to an office building at 99 South Chester in Pasadena. In September, the transmitter was moved to Flint Peak, a mountaintop adjacent to Pasadena, and the power increased to 25,500 watts.
KPPC-FM was the first station in Los Angeles to broadcast a stereo simulcast
Simulcast
Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...
with a television station. (A one hour program with 'Leon Russell and Friends' in collaboration with PBS station KCET
KCET
KCET, channel 28, is an independent, non-commercial public television station licensed to Los Angeles, California, USA. KCET's studio is located on West Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and its transmitter is atop Mount Wilson. Al Jerome is the current CEO and President, serving since 1996.KCET was...
), and the first to broadcast with Sansui
Sansui
) is a Japanese manufacturer of audio and video equipment. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, it is part of Grande Holdings, a Chinese Hong Kong-based conglomerate, which also owns Japanese brands Akai and Nakamichi....
quadraphonic
Quadraphonic
Quadraphonic sound – the most widely used early term for what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals that are independent of one another...
sound. It was also the first FM station in Los Angeles to use two transmitters simultaneously to produce sufficient power.
The golden era of KPPC ended October 24, 1971 when the entire airstaff was fired, replaced overnight with a new line-up that reflected little of the previous freewheeling spirit. In 1973, the stations were sold to Burbank Broadcasting. Because the purchaser already had an AM (KROQ, 1500 kHz, Burbank), KPPC AM was sold to Universal Broadcasting, a religious broadcaster. The AM station continued to carry the services of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church until its last broadcast in September 1996. The FM station eventually became the well known KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM — branded 106.7 KROQ — is a commercial modern rock radio station licensed to Pasadena, California serving the Greater Los Angeles. The call sign is pronounced "kay rock." It is the flagship station of Loveline hosted by Dr...
, which is still on the air.
The KPPC call sign
Call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations...
was assigned to an FM station in Pocatello, Idaho
Pocatello, Idaho
Pocatello is the county seat and largest city of Bannock County, with a small portion on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in neighboring Power County, in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. It is the principal city of the Pocatello metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Bannock...
which changed their call sign to KEGE
KEGE (FM)
KEGE is a commercial radio station located in Pocatello, Idaho, broadcasting on 92.1 FM. KEGE airs a news/talk format, simulcasting KID 590 AM. The call letters were changed from KPPC to KEGE on March 7, 2008 to match the station's previous "Edge" branding.-External links:...
in early 2008 to match their name "The Edge".
KPPC is now located in Amarillo, Texas.
There is a tribute to the original KPPC-FM currently on Live365
Live365
Live365 is an Internet radio network where members can create their own online radio station or listen to other Live365 broadcasters' online stations. As of October 2006, there were about 6,500 active stations, some of which play niche genres seldom heard on AM/FM radio...
called "KPPC.FM revisited".