Two vintage air checks from The Los Angeles area featuring KPPC and KMET FM.
KPPC FM was the second progressive rock station in California, the first being KMPX in San Francisco. Both stations were founded by ex San Francisco top 40 jock Tom Donahue in 1967. Donahue brought another ex top 40 legend, B Mitchell Reed, to the station. KPPC ‘s initial progressive lineup left the station in a dispute with management and many of them including Donahue and B Mitchell Reed soon found a new home at Metromedia station KMET.
Both stations employed a number of well known free form era jocks including Charles Laquidara who worked at KPPC before joining WBCN.
The first clip features DJ Cosmos Topper on KPPC from September 1971 and though the founders of the station had left by this time, the station retained a free form format. You will hear plugs for shows by The Firesign Theater and Dr Demento and both of these acts also worked with KMET. The history and personnel from the two stations are intertwined.
KPPC’s time as a progressive station came to an end during the fall of 1971 but KMET carried on with the format. The second clip features B Mitchell Reed on KMET FM from June 1975. The station’s format was beginning to tighten and you can hear mainstream AOR creeping in but there was still some creativity and eclecticism left to make for an interesting listen. KMET, during this era, featured Shadoe Stevens and Jimmy Rabbit who also worked at the a third interesting LA station KROQ FM.
KMET was broadcasting a Quadraphonic signal at the time of this air check.
I have more tape from KPPC and KMET that I will upload in the future.
The third clip consists of one song that I found on a a tape that may be recorded off a Canadian radio station sometime in 1973. Can someone ID the artist ?
Thanks for posting this, I was living in LA at the time (Culver City on Palms) and KMET was a frequent listen on my stereo system. The KMET news gives the date as June 18, 1975 …. I got married 4 days later on June 22 in St. Augustine Church in Culver City right across the street from MGM studios.
Thanks for the memories.
“A little bit of heaven …. 94.7,
KMET.. a-tweedle-dee !”
Give me XERB, Wolfman Jack!
Thanks for posting these airchecks! I was at KMPX in San Francisco in 1971 when Les Carter became program director for both KPPC & KMPX, sister stations owed by a New York company, oddly named the Nation Science Network. Maybe appropriate because there were science experiments of a sort on both stations by the experimentally-minded djs on a daily basis. I almost accepted a transfer to KPPC from San Francisco but declined because I couldn’t afford to start as a part-timer in LA. Some of the KPPC personalities were moved to KMPX – Don Hall and a couple of other jocks. Barry Hansen, a/k/a Dr. Demento, came up too with his massive collection of novelty records. I hope you can dig up some airchecks from that late KMPX period (post-KSAN migration of the original staff). There was some great, but unheralded work done there.