Another Station Bites The Dust...

I was in my car yesterday afternoon, heading to the school to pick up my kids. I had been listening to a CD instead of the radio for quite a bit, so I decided to listen to the stereo for a change. I had the number 1 button programmed to KKSF out of San Francisco, a very cool smooth jazz station. Imagine my surprise when the music started pouring out of the speakers, and it was Led Zeppelin. Last time I checked, they were hardly a smooth jazz group. I thought that maybe I had pushed the wrong button, so I punched the number 1 button again.

Still Jimmy Paige screeching.

What the?......

My first thought was there had been a format change, so when I arrived at the school, I fired up my iPhone and looked on KKSF's website to see what was up. It was as I feared...KKSF smooth jazz had become 'The Band', playing classic rock similar to what can be found on any one of about 50 other Bay Area radio stations. Crap.

I had listened to KKSF since Day 1, when it switched formats to smooth jazz from the old KFRC-FM "Yes/No Radio" genre. The station would play songs, and listeners would call in and vote yes or no to add the song to the station's library. Pretty cheesy, but the station was popular with the little old ladies sitting at home with nothing better to do, or the unemployed people who were too lazy to dial the 1-800 number for any of the high priced tech school commercials aimed at just that demographic. KKSF brought a new format that was rare in the Bay Area; the only other jazz type station was KBLX, and they played too much R&B and Soul for my taste. KKSF had real live DJs playing songs, and their names quickly became familiar with listeners. At night, after 7pm, they ran a show called "Lights Out San Francisco". Very few commercials, all instrumental music, aimed at the tired worker bee home from the office, kicking off his or her shoes, tippling a glass of wine and relaxing after a long work day. Being a paramedic, I was a huge fan of "LOSF", and since I was up a lot at night working, the station was always on in the ambulance. I purchased many CDs based on the music I heard over KKSF. I attended a few concerts sponsored by the station; Special EFX, The Rippingtons, The Yellowjackets just to name a few. I even won one of their "Loyal Listener" promotions...a cool $1000 dollars after I heard my name called on the radio. For more that 20 years, KKSF was *the* home for smooth jazz in the Bay Area.

Then, things slowly began to change. Long time DJs left for other stations. Overnight programming became automated; no live people, only computer-played tunes. More and more pop music leaked into the format. Really now...is Alicia Keys jazz?

Hardly.

KKSF became more like the KBLX I detested. When the morning and evening drive-time slots switched to shows broadcast from other markets, I knew the end was near. I just wasn't expecting it to be so soon. Remember Whoopi Goldberg's show? Didn't think so. Is Ramsey Lewis really a radio show host? Nope. He's a world-class jazz piano player. And finally, on May 18, 2009 at 3pm....KKSF smooth jazz died.

In its place...."The Band". Nope. Won't listen. Radio button number 1 will be re-programmed after all these years. KDFC is moving up in the world. I always did like classical. Just not as much as smooth jazz. And, I still have XM...71 is a great channel playing smooth jazz....called "Watercolors". Plus, I like Lily....her voice is awesome.

RIP KKSF Smooth Jazz. You had a great run.

It's A Small World After All.....

Last summer, I was part of an ambulance strike team that was sent to the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast region when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike came to town. Our team was made up of some really cool EMTs and paramedics from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. Our strike team leader was a guy named Brian, who is a Field Supervisor in Contra Costa. I had never met him before; actually I had never met most of the people on the team until we gathered in the ticketing area of SFO the night we were deployed to the Gulf.

Fast forward a week or so to a truck stop somewhere outside Katy, Texas. Our team was sitting down to a nice hot meal in the restaurant located within the truck stop. We had been running back and forth all over southern Texas for a few days, and it was going to be great to sit down and relax for a bit with some real, hot, almost-home cooked food. As we all settled in around the table, our waitress accidentally spilled most of our beverages all over poor Brian. He was good about it, joking with the waitress as she cleaned up the mess. After Brian was dried off, we got to talking about his recent employment at AMR. He came from the ambulance service in Fresno, and I mentioned my in-laws lived there. We chit-chatted about the Fresno area, and I asked him where he had moved to when he came to Contra Costa. He said he had settled in Concord, and I mentioned I had lived in Concord when I graduated high school back in 1989. He asked me which school, and I mentioned it was Concord High. He said that he lived very near Concord High. I said we had lived close to the school too, and I asked which street he lived on. When he told me the street, I laughed and said it was the street *I* lived on. I asked him the numbers of his house, and my jaw almost hit the floor. It was *my* old house! My parents had lived there until a few years ago, when they sold the house and moved up to the mountains. I didn't tell him that right away, but I said things about the details of the house only a resident could know; the HUGE King Arthur style fireplace in the family room addition, the tiny upstairs bedroom, and the big old bar in the family room. He looked at me like I was some alien from another planet, so I let him in on the secret and told him I lived there before he did. He still looked at me like I was insane, but we got to talking about the house, and all of the improvements he had recently done to it. I had seen photos of the house on-line when it was on the market a while back, and the house looked great! We had a great laugh about the coincidence of it all, being more than 2,000 miles away from home and all, and never having met before. Weird....and kind of cool.