Customer Reviews

Voices in the Purple Haze: Underground Radio and the Sixties (Media and Society Series)

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One of many things the 1960s brought us was the advent of "free-form" or "underground FM radio." As a young teenager growing up in this era in Los Angeles, I had the chance to listen to KPPC-FM and later KLOS, KMET, and KWST-FM. I even had a chance a few times to listen to KSAN in San Francisco in the early to mid 1970s. In some ways I look back and think those stations were likely the best I ever heard.

This book chronicles that era and describes the conditions that brought it about: social unrest and tumultous times, along with extremely restrictive radio programming. In interviews with numerous former "underground DJ's," they talk about what it was like to be a part of them. The book also goes on to describe the evolution of, and ultimately what "killed" them. It was again the same culture that spawned them in the first place, the "children of the 60s" who later became the "working class heroes and yuppies of the 70s and 80s." Reading this book brought back memories of an era that most likely will never exist again.

As a former college and briefly "pro" disk jockey who still is intrigued by the wild and wooly side of radio, this book was a nostalgic trip back in time.

Having grown up on "underground" FM radio during the 60's and 70's, this book was extremely enjoyable. More than just a book about a bunch of hippies running radio stations the right way (ie, playing good music as opposed to corporate-pushed excrement), "Voices in the Purple Haze" also delves into the history of rock and roll radio, from AM right up until the first FM stations started taking a chance with the new musical genre.

Keith shows the cultural and financial reasons for the growth of the underground format as well as its mutation into what eventually became AOR (Album Oriented Rock). He does this with pages and pages of interviews with the actual DJ's and executives who invented, drove and changed the underground radio scene. A case for and against the idea and ideals of the freeform format eventually appear, with both cases getting equal time right up until the end of the book. The final product is a fairly well-balanced document that gives the reader enough data to understand the history and genesis of FM radio and form their own opinions.

All in all a great book about a very important and fun period in the history of radio. By the end of the book, you'll understand why modern radio [is] so bad.