The Music Pages 

Music comin through on the electric radio has been a real memory stamp in my life. Listening to grandma's kitchen radio tuned to KMBY (click for a flashback!) in the early 60s was the first influence. I listened to KMBY from then - the Beach Boys, Beatles, all kinds of pop, to the psychedelic Monterey Pop Festival era - Mamas & The Papas, Hendrix, The Who to the hippie country-rock - Commander Cody, CSNY, Byrds and Creedence Clearwater, to all the way to about 1975, when disco/soul was all that was played.

 

After that there was my KLRB heavy on Zep and electronic euro-rock, and the National Lampoon radio hour.

 

When I started hanging out with a few older friends in an auto shop in Pacific Grove I first heard KFAT and was hooked on the hippie country I had remembered and the southern rock. Add the off the wall comedy and I was permanently planted in the FAT entertainment style. I bought records at Do Re Mi and Logos. I went to any local event that had FAT artists performing - Sidesaddle, Norton Buffalo, Jill Croston, Larry Hosford, Mary McCaslin, etc, etc. I took the Fat one everywhere I could until it's demise.

When KFAT went Wuss I was saying that I'll never listen to music again. But I couldn't do that. I searched for a source to put my ears to.

I drifted to plain old C&W from KTOM or KWST, with a supplement of about 25 tapes that I had made of KFAT in the final weeks of it's existence (you can listen to them and more over at www.kfat.com ).

 

I knew what I would do - I will build my own collection of FAT music and make my own music mixes. I listened to the tapes and set out to buy up all the records I could identify off those tapes. The KFAT song/artist/title list is my log of those. Started in a steno notebook, I used it to keep track of what I had & wanted when buying records at garage sales, used record stores and mail order. I found a real use for my first computer - a PC XT clone - it was used catalog all the songs, artists and record catalog numbers in a PFS First Choice database.

Then I got on line. Now, this was 1994 not much of an Internet them. But I found FATheads out there on Prodigy and we kept a KFAT topic up on the country music message boards, playing trivia and tapping each other for more information. On a 2400 dialup we could hardly exchange songs - but we did trade titles and lyrics that would resuscitate memories of what we used to listen to and wanted to hear again.

There was a short piece of time in which KHIP out of Hollister had the FAT crew in charge, but it did not last, I think the signal form that station was not strong enough to break through the fog. I bought a digital car stereo to attempt to lock in on 93.5 over in earthquake prone Hollister.

Then KOCN came along. KOCN was a little daytime FM station with a good signal that covered the Monterey area. They were one of those stations that followed whatever fad came along. Formerly an FM rock station they switched to C&W when the Urban Cowboy fad came out. On weekend evenings KOCN would broadcast Oakland A's baseball. At the end of one season, when I was accustomed spinning the dial to over to KWST (another C&W station, this one on the frequency of the former rocker KLRB) I thought I had a flashback, for I heard a mellow FM lady DJ begin a new thing, the Fat Back weekend show with Laura Ellen Hopper!! It was great! Three hours a night, two nights a week of FAT. Soon KOCN realized it had struck an audience. The expanded the Fat Back program to the whole station, I was in heaven again. But like many good things, money and maybe greed sets in. The owners of KOCN used the format's popularity to increase the value of the station and sold it to new owners, who switched to a format that was the definitive of "dentist office music", boring soft rock. That was a scary time - I had been teased by two radio stations only to be stood up in the end.

By then the record collection had grown to about 4000, I made my own mix tapes for tunes in the car and the radio was only for listening to talk radio - A little Bill Wattenberg in the evenings and Ronn Owens on KGO in the days.

Finally out of the air of a failed classical station came a tune - Chuck Berry singing Roll Over Beethoven - KPIG was born. Many FAT DJs re-appeared. The greatest blend of music once again filled the airwaves.

Ahh, but there are lessons to be learned, for the PIG did suffer the HEAT for a short period. With little notice and none of the long farewells that KFAT gave, the PIG signal spewed out pop music delivered over satellite, with no live DJs and nothing worth listening to. After that failed, the PIG came with a little less country, but seemingly solvent and stable. The DJs would make comments to the owners on the air when they spun a Beach Boys song. The signal is spreading. There was a short lived translator station to Carmel Valley repeating KPIG. Today there are several stations simulcasting the swine - KPYG in Cambria and KPIG-AM in The Piedmont. Piedmont? Just say 'Frisco since that's where the signal points to. New to the pork network is KPYG in Chico.

What is needed next is to inject the SF signal into Comcast's digital cable FM lineup in the Bay Area. The cable TV company has several Bay Area FM stations being carried in the digital music package - KPIG should be there. Either side - Comcast or Mapleton can contact the webmaster of this site for more information. I'm watching and waiting for one of those Digital Cable delivered stations to go dark or switch to a duplicated format, then we begin a letter writing campaign, eh?

All this music collecting and radio taping has resulted in a fine collection of data. It is listed here as one of the true wonders of the Internet, sharing of information. Blow out some of the cobwebs and revisit your younger days. Take off to Amazon.com or some used record brokers and get that tune like you heard it before. Here for all to use as help in finding who sang what is my list of songs & artists - my favorite tunes. Note that none of these songs exist on this web site in any form. I can tell by the access logs that someone pokes around looking for them - could be just a desperate fan or the RIAA. They are just not there. So quit trying, and please don't ask ok? Barovelli.com is not a music swapping site.

Big Lists Of Songs

The KFAT Catalog - It's one big list, began in a notebook and later on PFS First Choice (the text file that is pasted into the html is the First Choice database report). Search for a song title and get the artist & album it was on. Know if the FAT favorite is on some album selling on eBay that does not list the titles. Some things duplicate since I tossed in the CD collection. I bought my first CD in 1990 - New Grass Revival's "On The Boulevard". This list has not changed in a few years. I have since boxed up most of the records after digitizing them.

The Whole iTunes List - over 10,000 songs

iPod Playlists

Bluegrass - Bentgrass Newgrass Dog Grass

California Dreaming  - Tunes about my home state.

Chicken Songs - Finest Fowl Music

Elvis List - The Discfuntional Elvis Set

Instrumental List - Shut yo' mouth, there's no vocals

KAMP List - A fictional radio station in a Big Sur campground

KFAT List - Two requirements: must be pre 1983, then must be something I have and like.

KPIG List - Later day Americana and timeless older stuff that lives on. Thrown in are the shortlived KOCN & KHIP eras.

KTOM List - Sometimes you need a little mainstream C&W

Leisure Suite - Where the innocence of Summer of Love meets Booty Shaking reality.

Oldies 1 - The Birth of Rock & Roll. Nevermind that Big Daddy was not even born then.

Oldies 2 - My ears opened up to music on this set. Used to be called "Grandma's Kitchen Radio"

Oldies 3 - Summer of love and bubblegum.

Oldies 4 - The Carter years.

Oldies 5 - The MTV Era

Summer of Love List - Flower power. Peace, man.

Outer Space List - Sci Fi Tunes.

Surf List - Drive down Lighthouse Avenue with this cranked up.

Swing - Old or new. Glen Miller or Asleep At The Wheel, all good

Truck Driving Detours - My first love of country music was truck driving songs. These are my favorites. Slightly on the shoulder of the road, often on a side road to avoid the scales, and never going 55.

Work List  - Songs often heard at the beginning of conference calls.

Rainy Day List - The Weather Channel to tunes

Earthquake Songs - in progress

Halloween Songs - Seasonal Treat (or trick)

Xmas Songs - Happy Holidays, I bet.

How Tos

How to digitize your old LP records or kay-set tapes - People ask "Barovelli, how DO you do it?" It's really not too hard to do. If you've ever made mix tapes you can do the recording. If you ever edited a document with cut & paste, you can edit it.

Barovelli's Want List

The ones in my library are good only for reference, either a scratchy record, poor radio recording or a poor radio recording of a scratchy record. You know how it went . . .

Looking for clean copies of :

Big Shorty & the Piledrivers - The Whip