John Grivas.

When I think back about my time in radio I’m often reminded of the Joni Mitchell song, when she sang,

“Don’t it always seem to go,
you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone…
they pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”

For me it all started when I was 18 years old and working an all night shift at a gas station near the freeway by Beloit, Wisconsin in summer of 1967. In those days there wasn’t much traffic on the roads at 3 AM other than the occasional traveling salesman who was either up early or driving all night to get to his next appointment, or someone getting gas on their way home from the bars.

Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi

So I spent most of the time, sitting at the counter listening to the AM radio. And at night you could hear radio stations from hundreds and even thousands of miles away due to a phenomenon they used to call a “skip”, which meant on clear nights, the radio signals would bounce off the ionosphere come back to earth, and then skip back up into the sky and bounce back to earth, allowing the signal to travel far past it’s regional home.

I was listening to radio stations in Pittsburg, Nashville, Memphis, and even as far away as Texas. It was intriguing how these voices journeyed all of that way to entertain and enlighten the audience with the music and events of the day.

I wanted to be part of that.

Later that summer I went to college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I tried out for the school radio station, but was told that I wasn’t good enough, and in retrospect, I probably wasn’t. Then one thing led to another and I eventually flunked a chemistry class and lost my 2-S status in the draft, and was about to be drafted unless I enrolled in another school, but it had to be a trade school, not a university.

One afternoon I was sitting with some friends pondering my plight in life and someone lit a cigarette. On the matchbook cover it said something like,

“You too can be a disc jockey.”

I read the ad and there was a phone number to call, so I called it. Honest to God, that cliché is how it all started for me.

A week or so later, I was at the school and enrolled in their broadcaster training course. I could have gone to many cities but chose to go to their Hollywood, California school, which had just opened up and it was quite the adventure for a 19 year old boy from Wisconsin. Besides learning about radio, I also saw the old Hollywood of the of the Turner Classic Movies era merging with the Hippie Culture of the present.

Six months later, I had graduated and was working at a small radio station, in the very city where I used to pump gasoline and listen to those far away radio stations. I had taken another step in the journey that I had dreamed about a few months earlier.

Eventually the draft caught up with me and into the army I went on July 22, 1968, the same day that the astronauts were walking on the moon. I was extremely fortunate and ended up working in Armed Forces Radio.

After the Army, I went back to another school to get my first class FCC license, which at the time was a big deal.

By that time, the summer of 1971, AM radio stations were still very powerful, but something new was beginning to shake things up. Small FM stations were playing the music that eventually would end up on the AM dial, but they were playing more of the songs and also music from artists that never made it to America’s Top 40. It really was an exciting time. We were innovating what the others were imitating. I started at WRKR in Racine, Wisconsin using the name Uncle John. At first I did the all night show, but eventually did afternoon drive. They were a pretty solid underground or progressive rock station at the time.

After a couple of years, I decided it was time to move to California. So I packed everything I owned into the backseat of a Volkswagen and drove west.

The year was 1973. I had sent Thom O’Hair the program director of KSAN radio in San Francisco, a number of air-checks, and he eventually wrote back saying something like, “Thanks, but no thanks, we don’t have any openings now, but if you are ever in the area, drop in.”

Now when you are 22 and working for a small radio station in Wisconsin that seemed like an offer. KSAN was the granddaddy of progressive rock stations. It was The Station that all of the others looked at for direction.

It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, as the 18-foot U-haul truck I had driven finally lumbered its way into San Francisco. The radio was blasting “Fresh Air” by Quicksilver. Life can imitate art.

Scott McKenzie “San Francisco”

Everything I owned including the 1967 red Volkswagen was in the back of that truck, swaying every time I turned a corner, or when I went up or down one of The City’s famous hills. The engine had blown a rod near Salt Lake City and it was cheaper to rent a U-Haul truck than it was to get the engine fixed.

I actually parallel parked that truck on Bush Street near China Town and got a room at a fleabag apartment…The next day I went to KSAN, and asked for Thom O’Hair. When he came out into the reception area, he seemed a bit shocked that I had actually driven all of that way after the letter he had written to me.

He said something like; well let’s go for a ride. So we hopped into a cab and went over by Golden Gate Park to a house just on the border of the park. We went inside and I learned that it was The Jefferson Airplane’s house and the current home of Grunt Records…played pool and had some very interesting “refreshments” with the kids… I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my job interview…

About two hours later, Thom said he would call me. He stood up and left me there! So I walked back to Bush Street, probably bouncing off a few walls and doorways, but it definitely was a wonderful stroll.

About two weeks passed and Thom O’Hair called and said that I could start working the overnight shift, filling in for the person who was going on vacation for a couple of weeks. After that, I did other fill in work, and a couple of weekend shifts. There I was, living my dream, working at KSAN radio in San Francisco. This was really the big time. I was making about $100.00 a shift, which was a good sum of money in those days and people like Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters, Randy Newman, and others, would just drop in. A couple of years later, the Symbionese Liberation Army dropped off a tape announcing they had kidnapped Patti Hearst.

Then the energy crisis hit and they cut back some of their staff, and I was out. I was shattered, but I had to go on and I went to work for the Archdiocesan Communications Center of San Francisco. They were like the public relations department for the Catholic Church…creating movies for the schools and commercials for the Campaign For Human Development. They also rented out their space for other events…I used to do the sound for the Isadora Duncan Dancers when they did a performance and the local Buddhists group when they had an event…

From there I went on to work morning drive at KOME in San Jose for about a year until they hired a program director from a Chicago Top-40 station who took our record library of about 10,000 albums down to 225 songs. I couldn’t be a part of that musical genocide and quit and moved back to Milwaukee.

I got a weekend gig at WZMF, which eventually turned into the all night satellite show, doing midnight to 6 AM. I had settled in and was enjoying the ride. In those days some radio stations dumped all of their news obligations into the overnight shift, and I was forced to read 15 minutes of news every hour. But I would try to make it interesting by playing sounds in the background like birds, or whales, or light abstract jazz songs. I would introduce it as “It is time for the rip and read newscast and yes, I am ripped and I’m going to read the news.”

This was 1974 and 1975, the time when The Rolling Stones and then Pink Floyd played at Milwaukee County Stadium. ZMF sponsored The Stones and QFM sponsored Pink Floyd. When the Stones came to town I was at WZMF and we did our shows from the broadcasting booth at the stadium but by the time Pink Floyd came to town I was talking with WQFM about moving over there and was actually going to start the next week but it wasn’t announced yet.

When I did my WZMF show from the broadcasting booth at Milwaukee County Stadium, it was from midnight until 6 AM, so I got to see the crews setting up the stages while I serenaded them and the radio audience with songs. I will never forget the sound of Elvin Bishop’s “Sure Feels Good” playing and him singing, “Never seen such a beautiful day” while the sun rose over the field. After my shift, I left the booth and went down onto the field for a moment and stood on the pitcher’s mound and wound up and threw an imaginary strike to home plate. Elvin was right. It was a beautiful day.

I used to listen to the morning show at QFM when I got home from the all night shift at ZMF. I really liked listening to Bob Branson who was then doing mornings. He had this amazing presence, was very loose and tight at the same time. He truly was a pro.

Randy Newman Sail Away.

When I started at QFM, I did the afternoon drive shift, but eventually they moved me into the morning show, which was difficult because I liked Bob Branson, or Boomer, as he was called. But Boomer was out and I was in.

I remember calling him on the day it all came down, and he was so gracious and generous, saying something like don’t worry about it kid, that’s radio. Years later when I was driving into San Diego to start a morning show on KPRI, I heard him on a radio station, called him, and we got together later that night. We became good friends and hung out for about 6 years until I moved from San Diego back to Milwaukee. We did talk on the phone for a couple of years, but then lost touch, as radio was somewhat of a nomadic life and people tended to move around a lot. I heard a few years ago that he had passed away somewhere in Northern California. He was still working in radio and doing a morning show at a country music station. Boomer was a true free spirit…and I know that he is doing a morning show somewhere in the heavens…

Back to the QFM morning show. At first I was working with Frank Bialeck. Frank too was a pro, but I think it was difficult for him to have me there and not Boomer. I don’t remember him saying that, but it was just a vibe. He and Boomer had worked together for quite sometime and had a rhythm and chemistry that Frank and I were not getting. It wasn’t Frank’s fault. And it wasn’t mine. It just was. So they eventually moved Mary Curran into the morning show in Frank’s place and Frank moved to do the news in the afternoons, and that is when the magic really began for me.

Continued

Mary had a soft, feminine voice, and mine was a bit lower, so our voices harmonized the morning airwaves together. We were one of the first man/woman teams that I knew of at the time.

I always thought the building that housed QFM looked like the Daily Planet building that Clark Kent worked in on the old television series, “Superman”. And when you went up to the 21st floor and got off of the elevator, there was this magical, surrealistic music factory, known as Sunshine Music, 93-QFM. All of us were at ground zero of something that seemed important and had a life of its own. We were merely the caretakers of the fire, as a good friend has told me a couple of times, but what a wonderful experience and delight it was to be one of the people gently tossing logs onto that flame.

The Beatles “Here Comes The Sun.”

That period of time was near the end of the Hippie Daze in radio and the culture. We lived for the moment and were so optimistic about what we were doing. This is when “Flower Power” was still in the vernacular and long before the excesses of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll” came around and probably helped bring an end to it all. It was also long before the out of town consultants began programming stations based on “research”. Research, sometimes done in another city, or research based on what the consultant liked. Our research was based on what we liked and what our audience told us that they liked. Pretty simple method, but one that worked.

But for that short period of time, we did shine brightly. I recently saw the movie, “The Replacements”, again, which is a film about a pro football strike and the replacement players that were hired to continue the season. At the end of the movie, Gene Hackman’s character says something like, “When that game was over, the players had no big endorsement deals for tennis shoes or soda pop. All they could do is clean out their lockers and catch a ride home. But when you are part of something great, even for a short period of time, it stays with you.” How true.
What an ensemble of people we had and we all worked together as a team to create those good times and crazy surprises we used to talk about on the air. There were no ego hang ups, or back stabbings that I would see later in radio. It was true harmony. Mary and I in the morning, Bobbin in mid-days, Joe Benson in afternoon drive, Bob Reitman in early evenings, and then Green The Space Commander for your late night musical pleasures. Early on, we had Jim Thompson doing Jazz music in the over night slot, and then Rich Cleary took over with a reggae beat after Jim left.

And everything was running smoothly because of the guidance and vision of Joe Santoro, the Program Director. Joe had to run interference between the management, sales, and on air staff, come up with promotions with little or no budget, tweak the music, and generally keep that cosmic bus on the road. When he left, that was truly the day the music died at Sunshine Music, 93-QFM. The station went on for a decade or so, and evolved into other manifestations and was successful at what it did, but that magic, the magic of Sunshine Music, 93-QFM, went with Joe, in my humble opinion.

The Beatles Rooftop “Get Back.”

We also had a great group of other people who either did fill in work, news, or weekends. People who would go on to bigger and better things because of their great talent, but at that time, they were in the wings waiting for their chance. Paul Kelly, Bobby Rivers (who both took over the morning show after Mary and I moved on), Susan Wirth, Rick Schroeder, Rich Cleary, and a woman who I only remember as Lee.

Lee was this incredible person who could do an assortment of voices. We would get her, me and maybe Paul Kelly in the production room, turn on the tape and just play. Maybe it would be a promo for an upcoming weekend station event, or just a general station promo. But we would just improvise around the facts of the event. It would be like, “Okay, Lee you are a witch guarding the music library giveaway vault and Paul you and I are trying to get her to let us give some of the music away.” It was that come on kids, let’s do a show kind of thing. We were blending the show biz schmaltz of the 40’s and 50’s with the somewhat hip and awareness schmaltz of the 70’s, which was something that no one else was doing at the time.

But I don’t think we did anything shocking. There was nothing mean or assaulting in the content. We would walk up to the edge but we wouldn’t cross the line. Everything was innuendo and just fun or to use a term that hasn’t been used in 30 years, “Right On”. Okay, so maybe that term should be put back on the shelf. Sorry…

Here are a few memories I have from those days while sitting in the on-air studio’s “Captain’s Chair”…

One Saturday morning in December, Mary and I were doing the morning show. That night the station was having an event called “Sunshine at Sunburst”, which was supposed to be a skiing event at the Sunburst Ski Hill. The only problem was that it had been in the 40’s all week and there was no snow. When I got to the station at 4 AM, a light snow was beginning to fall. As the morning and the show progressed, the snow started coming down harder. By 6 AM it was almost a blizzard outside. Then the station went off the air. Erwin, the engineer came in and looked things over and told me that the wind had caused some wires to become disconnected on the transmitter and he needed my help to solder them back together. So up to the roof we went.

Now, the tower was sitting on a perch on the roof, which was 21 stories above Wisconsin Avenue. We climbed up a ladder, and with the snow coming at us sideways, and the wind blowing at 30 or 40 miles per hour, Erwin and I hung on for dear life, while I held the wires so he could solder them back together.

Maybe you had to be there, and count your blessings that you weren’t, but it was one of the craziest things I ever did at WQFM or anywhere else that I had or since worked. Erwin, having not been to sleep yet, because he had been playing cards with some pals the night before, and I have never been fond of heights, especially at 6 AM, during a blizzard, and a couple of hundred feet up in the air. But we got the wires soldered and the station back on the air, and with all of the snow, the Sunshine at Sunburst was a huge success. Talk about a cosmic snowstorm…

Another time Mary, Reitman, Green and I went to see The Tubes perform at I think it was at the Downer Theatre or someplace like that. It was general seating, and we got in there right away and got our seats. Green headed out into the lobby to get us something to drink. After he left, four of the biggest, orneriest, kids in platform shoes and glitter came in and demanded our seats. Having lost Green, our spokesperson to that crowd to the concession stand, Mary, Reitman, and I were shocked by their behavior and didn’t know what to do except get up and leave. We didn’t have the heart or nerve to tell them that they were bullying the nucleus of the radio station that had brought The Tubes to Milwaukee in the first place.

Right off the on-air studio was an office that we used to call “The Crystal Palace”. It had a very large window that gave us access to the ledge around the building. One morning after our show, Mary and I ventured out onto the ledge of the building, because President Ford was going to speak at a luncheon event downtown. We sat out there thinking we might get a glimpse at the motorcade as it drove by. Mary was opening her mail with a silver letter opener, and I was having a smoke. Suddenly two men with black suits and sunglasses appeared through the window and told us to come inside the building immediately. They said that they were secret service agents and sharpshooters had been looking at us through their scopes for the past ten minutes, wondering what that shiny object was in her hands. The ledge never quite seemed the same after that…

While working at KOME in San Jose, California, we did a promotion where all of the jocks did a 24 hour shift in the studio. I mentioned this to Joe Santoro at one point, and we both thought it would be a great promotion for us to do, since in those days the budget was something like a couple of thousand of dollars and any albums we could get from the record companies. There were no billboards, no signs on buses, and very few television commercials, although I do remember one where I dressed up in a chicken suit, and Tony Smith, our general manager, did a very straight voice-over promoting the station. I sat behind a desk and pretended I was Tony.

We did the 24 hour shift promotion, but added a twist. We called it “6 Days On The Road With Sunshine Music, 93-QFM” and did it from the Rhythm And Blues section of an 1812 Overture Store up by Northridge. In those days, when we did a remote, we took a control board with us and all of the albums, and we had to cue up everything ourselves. That was one of the only times in my life, that I was so aware of every second and every minute of one 24 hour period. It was another one of those good times and crazy surprises.

And then there were the Summerfest shows. We didn’t have a trailer, or air-conditioned booth to work from. We were in a tent, right there on the muddy ground playing the tunes and drinking beer with the crowd. I used to call it gorilla radio. I remember some days it was so hot in the tent, that the records would actually start to warp on the turntable as they spun around. Here is a picture of me from 1975 or 1976 at Summerfest. The mural in the background was something that Green The Space Commander created.

In those days, everything centered around the music. We would talk, and actually say something other than announcing the music, but they were short bursts of information, or “bits”, lasting sometimes 10-20 seconds and up to a couple of minutes and the music would be the “punch-line”, or the song coming out of the bit would relate to what we were talking about. But the music was the star. We were the surrounding cast of characters.

Yes those days in radio were very magical.

We were usually hired based on our musical knowledge and how we would put musical sets together, and how we communicated.

We could create a mood or tell a story with a music set. It was a beautiful thing going from a Joni Mitchell or Ry Cooder or J.J. Cayle or Dylan song into something by The Stones, The Kinks, Van Morrison, or B.B. King, and then finishing the set with The Tubes, The Sons of Champlin, Roxy Music, or Lou Reed.

The songs being connected by either the lyrics, or musically, meaning one song might end with an up drum beat and the next one started with a down drum beat…

We started with a blank canvas and could paint the picture using any color. Then they changed it to painting by numbers in the late 70′s, with play lists that told us what to play and when to play it. It went from an abstract painting to a juke box.

Somehow we all, and I mean those of us on the radio and those of us listening to the radio let this get away from us.

Bob Dylan “Tangled Up in Blue.”

I often thought that we were the “tribal drum” of the sub-culture. But then the sub-culture became the mainstream culture and everybody was banging on a drum and nobody could hear any more because there were too many drums banging in the wind…

Amazing journey when you think of it…

I tell people that being in radio in those days was like being a cowboy in the rodeo. You would come into town, ride the bull, and then leave for the next town and the next rodeo because the show was over. In life we all have passions and dreams. And if at all possible you should follow your dreams and live your passions. Radio was truly the love of my life and something I had, and still have, a passion for.

What a long strange trip it HAS been.

End.

John Grivas Bio
I got off the bus in 1983 and went into the promotional products industry here in Wisconsin selling promotional branded products (pens, caps, clothing, etc.), premiums, and incentives for marketing programs, internet company stores, and mass mailing projects for major corporations. In a way I still do a show, its just that the audience is smaller…I have been married for 23 years. We raised our nephew who is now off on his own and we live “the quiet life” with our two dogs, Thelma and Louise, along with our cat, Hazel, who just walked into our lives a year ago. She was a stray cat that announced herself one day at our doorstep. Kind of like I did all of those years ago at KSAN…

E mail John Grivas here.

Top Photo is Grivas in the broadcast tent at Summerfest in Milwaukee w/Green’s art as backdrop. Circa 1975.

Next is the mansion that The Jefferson Airplane lived in during the 60’s followed by a famous photo of Patti Hearst.

Snapshot was taken backstage by Bobbin Beam at the 1975 Rolling Stones Milwaukee County Stadium concert. It’s Mick Jagger and keyboardist Billy Preston just before the show.

Then, a Bugle Magazine ad from 1975 also followed by the former QFM building at 6th and Wisconsin. Next is Space Commander Green allong with Rich Cleary at the 1812 Overature record store promotion. Finally, another Summerfest tent shot.

~ by Scott on December 3, 2006.