We had an ongoing effort to hunt down good transmitter
sites which were easily accessible and yet hidden from casual view.
I can remember one time, during a rainy night, driving down a muddy dirt road, where
we located a really remote location. My partner who accompanied us in his Willie's
jeep tagged along on this venture. We had an unobstructed view of the Santa Clara
valley on the southwest side up over Saratoga. We set up the antenna and fired up
the transmitter. John, my partner, took the first shift, while Jerry took off to
go out and range check the transmitter. I hung around, trying to keep warm, turning
on the engine every so often to warm up the car. Volkswagen busses never seem to
have very good heaters, but are ideal for housing radio stations.
We numbered this "Spot 4" as our secret location code which we referenced
on the air.
Down in the valley, Dennie, the blind Phone Freak, sat on a loop around number, taking
calls and requests. He would then radio the information up to us on the hill. Dennie
would dial into the tone side of the loop, where he would hear a 1000 Hz tone when
nobody was on the line, doing his homework. This number was 269-0044.
We would give out 269-0045 over the air, asking listeners to phone in for requests.
This way, the FCC couldn't track us down. In the meantime, Dennie would listen for
the tone to go away, and pick up the phone to talk to one of our listeners. He would
then radio our request up to us, high on the mountain.
In the meantime, John was on the air, playing some records that would NEVER get played
on the radio because of the nasty sexual content most of the songs contained.
Dennie was getting swamped with irate callers, complaining about the 4 letter words
and sexual implications of the songs that John played. One dude called up and said
"How can you play such filthy trash?", Dennie would say, "You can
always switch to another station", then the guy would say "But then I would
have to listen to those awful commercials", Dennie said; "We also have
commercials".
Our commercials were rather unusual, and because of Nixon's campaign for anti-drugs,
he banned about 50 songs from getting played on the radio. This caused quite an uproar
among commercial stations and the public in general, because songs like "White
Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane were banned for a short time in the early 70's.
As a protest, we had commercials that sounded like this.... "This music set
is brought to you by Scanderbags Drugs, the leader in providing fine dope of all
kinds. Meth, Hash, Pot, Opium and just about any other drug can be purchased at Scanderbags
Drugs". "Try our GROWERS SPECIAL, Seeds only, but next years crop should
be GREAT!, that's SCANDERBAGS DRUGS... Call today, for immediate home delivery, at
269-1999". Naturally, the 269-1999 number was a "Busy test" number,
used by the phone company to test a busy line, and was always busy. "Don't forget
Cindy Lou's Brownie mix, from her famous cooking show High on the range, for the
finest brownies this side of the Mississippi". Spiked - $5, normal - $2. We
also had many other ads that were really funny.
John played a brilliant set, making it barely possible to identify the transitions
between songs.
In the meantime, I was collecting my records together for MY set. I specialized in
"hard to find" albums that were really good, but not popular enough to
get played on the radio. I also specialized in smooth transitions as well. When I
went on, John stuck around for a while, then left me alone up there to continue my
air shift.
I was on for more than 5 hours, and was having so much fun, bundled up in blankets
trying to keep warm, communicating with Dennie who was taking phone calls and relaying
them up to me.
Before I know it, it was becoming daylight, but the rain was really coming down,
and part of the road was starting to slide away but it was on the other side from
where I had to go to get out, so I didn't yet see the urgency to leave right away.
I finally finished up my shift at about 7 am and finally decided to go off the air
and high-tail it out of there before the rest of the hillside started to slide away.
So I warm up the car as I was putting away the records, signed off, and stowed the
equipment in the coffin box, which doubled as a seat. I put on the cushions which
hid the turntables and the transmitter, and headed out of there.
Just as I left, the rest of the hillside started to slide away, right where I was
parked. On the way out, I almost got stuck in the mud, but eventually got back to
the paved roads and headed down into the valley.
All along the way, trees were down, and the power was out in all of Los Gatos and
Saratoga. It turned out to be quite a storm, but it probably kept the FCC from trying
to track me down.
When I arrived home, I immediately went to sleep. The next day, John said "Man,
you stayed on the air so long", I said "I was having so much fun, I didn't
want to stop until I played my set, which was a 5 hour set".