Full Moon Edition December 2025

Here we are once again at the holiday season and an anniversary, maybe the fourth or fifth now, I can’t remember for certain, since we began the Freeform Radio project at radicalradio (HERE). We’ve had the pleasure of converting a tremendous amount of material from reel to reel tapes into state of the art digital files, including live cast concerts, freeform radio air checks, station IDs, celebrity endorsements, even some very clever commercials and other material – some 6,700 minutes in all – which can be found on Sound Cloud (HERE).

We’ve also recorded fifty-seven interviews on Vimeo with people who made freeform radio happen, and some, like John Kay of Steppenwolf (HERE) and Steve Postell of Immediate Family (HERE), who told us how important it was to their careers and the musicians they became. Most recently, we worked with art directors to create a pitch deck with a very cool video (HERE) with music from Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane, and the Doors that gives a taste of what it’s all about and where we’d like to go with it.

All this comes to mind because 1) I’m proud of what we’ve done and happy to tell you about it, and 2) to say it all costs money, so every anniversary I come to you, hat in hand, to ask for your financial support. This time of year, everybody asks for money and I wish we were different but we need your help to pay the freight. Your donation (HERE) is fully tax deductible to the extent permitted by law and will be a big help in paying for the website, Vimeo, Soundcloud, professional sound engineering (another 29 tapes just re-engineered and posted on Soundcloud), and all the other bits and pieces of creating and maintaining this archive. We are very grateful for your help!!!

Teaching is learning, something I’ve realized while trying to impart ideas and information in a formal educational setting. During a recent session of a class I’ve taught numerous times over the past few years at various universities, a student asked a question that whacked me right between the eyes and I suddenly saw the entire subject in a way I’d never considered before. It was a very cool experience and made for a form of compensation that greatly exceeded the meager pay.

Another class led to a debate about my premise that freeform radio was an ultimate example of art prioritized above commerce, and that the Classic Era of Rock Music birthed during that brief period was the result of artistic control today’s artists were denied by the corporate dominance of media. A student disagreed, positing that opportunities for expression were greater than ever because anyone can broadcast their work on the Web. Ah, I asked, How does one make a living in that construct? Where is the curation, the audience, and how does that audience find the music?

“If you like that, you might like this,” she said. Algorithms! (HERE) The wicked wizard behind the curtain of our digital experience. Her fervent response was at the heart of difference between the freeform approach and the tight constraints programming our world today. The former is founded in broadening your experience where the latter reduces it to ever narrower channels of sameness. If you like vanilla, you’ll probably like vanilla mocha. Maybe it’s another version of the generalist and the specialist, where you try to learn ever more about your world or choose to learn everything you can about a single subject. Make mine freeform, please! And skip the mocha.

What is there to say about this iconic event that hasn’t already been said? We’re about to find out when OLLI at the University of Pennsylvania hosts a 90 minute retrospective on December 15. Moderated by Dale Harmon and featuring two people who attended the three day event, along with yours truly as a cultural commentator, the celebration of peace and love will be discussed in the context of a slide show of music and images that immediately come to mind when Woodstock is mentioned.

Perhaps no other event better personifies the upside of that moment in time when Boomers were coming of age and big dreams sustained us, dreams that seemed to be manifesting right before our eyes. Breakfast in bed for 400,000, as Wavy Gravy summed it up. Anything and everything seemed possible, a gathering the size of a city raised up from the imagination and adventurousness of a generation.

And there was the music. Not the biggest names in the newly burgeoning business, no Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Led Zeppelin or Traffic. But there were The Who, Janis, the Airplane, the Dead, the Band, BS&T, Creedence, Sly, and, of course, there was Jimi. For some of the bands, at least on the big stage, it was a dazzling debut: Santana and Joe Cocker, as an example. Woodstock was realization and prelude, a magic carpet ride that later the same year would crash and burn at Altamont. When Jimi Hendrix played the National Anthem, though, everyone present and everybody who witnessed it later knew that something incredible came to be.