Freeform Follies

When Kenny Weissberg arrived in Boulder Independence Day 1971, he got to know Jason Sherman, who was a deejay at KRNW-FM radio. With his help, Kenny got hired to do the morning show. The pay sucked but it wasn’t about the money. It was all about having a gig on a station in a very hip town where you could play anything you wanted from a very good library of record albums at a time when creativity in music-making was absolutely exploding.

There were other benefits, too, that far exceeded the pay. One was stature, a bit of glamour, a position of some respect in a very tightly knit community. Another was the comely company one tended to attract in a town that loved its music and the folks who played it on stage or on the air.

Then there was the guest list at concert venues near and far, which reliably had your name prominently placed. Meagre pay or not, you got to see and hear a lot of incredible performances at a time when small clubs drew big names in the music business and big crowds to attend an impressive slate of concerts.

Take a look at the list that Kenny, a relentless and conscientious list-maker, kept of the shows he saw in 1971 and 1972 –

Within a few years, Kenny expanded his reach to include regular posts in the Boulder Daily Camera and a little later took the stage himself as leader of the band Kenny and the Kritix. I never had the pleasure of hearing them play, so no first-person review of their work is available. But Kenny in Boulder was making the most of it. It was a great time in a great town to be alive,

Kenny went on to achieve a measure of financial success as a concert promoter in San Diego, where he and his spouse, the noted artist Helen Redman, settled after their Boulder daze. He later wrote a successful memoir about those thrilling days of yesteryear HERE.

Kenny is one of those rare people who took himself and his life experience seriously enough from early on to actually preserve evidence of his journey through that remarkable era of yore. I mean, who else made time in the midst of all that was happening back then to make a list like the one pictured above? And it is merely one of many about the shows he attended. He also kept lists of the songs he played on air, and all the gigs he and his band played, and all the concerts he promoted at Humphrey’s in San Diego. 

Personal narratives like his may well be the true history of our time on this convoluted turf, where so much is muddled and misremembered. Kenny took note. We thank him for it.