the equine bovine: tune in and rock out

I recently found this grey cropped KZAP shirt at a local thrift.

Since I am a total old fogie rocker that in in complete denial that time pressed on after 1985, I got super excited to find this gem.

KZAP 98.5 was formed in the mid 60's as a free form radio station in the Elks Building in downtown Sacramento. From psychedelic rock, funk, jazz to soul, the DJs would pick anything they wanted to share with the audience. They focused on making a beautiful synergy of all types of music for one complete experience. These groovy tunes filled your ears until '72 when the owner of the station passed away. In '73 KZAP became more rock focused.

The new hands of KZAP decided what was best for the station is to develop a 'Super Star' format. This would take down the music library from thousands of amazing songs, to a mere 400.

So this would guarantee the listener would always be in the comfort zone of the Top 40 rock songs. This method was very successful for them as it took listeners from other stations and it built strong customer base.

The swiping of the listeners was crushing surrounding radio stations until 1990, when KROY entered the picture. KZAP got annihilated by KROYs classic rock tunes. On January 20 1992 at midnight, the DJs of KZAP flipped the switch to a fresh country station. But before leaving us, they graced the listeners ears with Harvey Mandels 'Cristo Redentor'

The grand finale of Harvey Mandel playing gently in the background of the listeners minds as they relive their memories of their favorite rock moment, made me think of of one of my favorite movie scenes from Pirate Radio.

Pirate Radio Rock is sinking, DJ 'Gorgeous Gavin' leaves us with Procol Harum 'Whiter shade of pale'

The scene leads into the devastation of the boat, the listeners and the hope of the Radio Rock crew living thru this tragedy .Watch this movie!