A few people over the years have asked me how I became a columnist at The Denver Post at such a young age. It’s one of those right place, right time tales, but with enough curiosities to make it (hopefully) interesting. Early 1968. You’re just back from the East Coast, with a detour to San Read More
All posts by jmp
Maybe Again
Maybe again. That’s what we were thinking when we considered the subject of this particular article. Maybe we can write about our freeform radio project again. We’ve been at it for a while now and haven’t been especially shy about sharing the experience with you. There’s that. Then, too, we don’t want to overstay our Read More
The Alchemist’s Cookbook
Here’s a recipe for pleasure and one of those glorious moments in life when something you want to believe in is confirmed as scientific fact. It turns out that sex, drugs, and rock & roll are in fact good for you. Well, wow, like tell us something we don’t know. First thought, best thought, and all Read More
Tough Talent
There is so much to say about all the talent that has come our way in this lifetime. We’ve spent quite a bit of time here talking about When the Music Mattered, that classic era of rock & roll, an unprecedented time of proliferating creativity that we enjoyed when we were young. Still do, for Read More
Corporate Underground
Corporate underground? An oxymoron you might say. Yet the origins of underground radio in the latter half of the Sixties was at least partly the result of corporate initiative. Or, perhaps, corporate perplexion. The consequences of that curiosity reverberated through the years in very different directions. New FCC regulations in 1966 were intended to develop Read More
Freeform Radio Archive
We’ve written here in several previous pieces about our project to develop a freeform radio archive. Hopefully, we already answered why we want to do it. Suffice it to say it was a critically important aspect of radio history that is in danger of becoming if not forgotten then perhaps not much more than an Read More
Ephemeral Things
Life as an artist. A career in the arts. It’s a passionate need for self-expression and a challenging way to make a living. Like most areas of enterprise in a capitalist system, a few people make a lot of money and most everyone else barely gets by. Employment for artists is an ephemeral thing, a Read More
Turn Your Radio On
There was a new generation of music coming on and a new generation of people who wanted to hear it. There was a new generation of radio personalities, too, who wanted to play it for them. They had different ideas about how it should be done and what the purpose was. Traditional radio was about Read More
Radical Radio
Radical what? Radio. Yeah, that’s what we said. There was a time, you know. And it mattered! Here’s why. It was called underground radio. Freeform was a better name for it. Radio without walls. No separation between different genres or types of music. No restriction on what you could play if you were at the Read More
Artistry
Art and artistry. Thank the gods and goddesses for blessing us so. Can’t imagine life without it. So many problems in this world of ours. Nothing but bad news. Gloom and doom. A global pandemic. Government everywhere in crisis. One American political party in the grip of a madman. The other in a maelstrom of Read More