How KFML Began

Received this from Herb quite a while ago and did not want it to get lost:

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Malcolm,

Wow! What an incredible treasure you have compiled! I loved Bill Ashford’s summary of Free Form and KFML. Not a day goes by that I don’t recall something about those incredible times (sometimes with horror—lol).

Brian Kreizenbeck was the man who initiated KFML. Thom Trunnell and I were sort of stranded at a station, KOME, in San Jose when Thom and I contacted Joe McGoey for a personal meeting in Denver. The deal would be that everybody would be paid $100 per week and we would split the profits every month. And that’s how it all came together as a sort of “collective”. I was the “sales manager”. I became totally caught up in the marketing and creativeness of Free Form back when KMYR was on the air. That station was staffed by some ex-KMPX air staff, as well as Ashford, Trunnell, Don Bridges, Ed Hepp and Jim Mason. A whole other saga.

I am so grateful that you have created this historic portal.

Best,

Herb Neu



(Picture of Herb courtesy of KFMLNooze.com)

KCUV's Summer of Love

In honor of the Summer of Love, Denver's KCUV is doing an all-day tribute (today only, 6/21/2007 -- available free via Internet) to those days, featuring guest programmers:



Bill Clarke came out to Colorado in 1963 for college at the University of Denver. He became a disc jockey at KLZ-FM -- the first FM in Denver, if not the whole USA, to play album versions of rock hits -- before a two-year hitch in the Army brought him to Vietnam. He's now the Consumer Champ at 7News and a 20-year veteran at the station.




Bill Ashford was on the first full-time airstaff at KFML, Denver's pioneering "free form," or "underground" station. The emergence of KFML-AM and FM was a major influence in the Denver area radio market, a departure from programming tradition -- every disc jockey was free to play whatever music he chose in whatever sequence his ideas suggested.




Max Floyd started the original KLZ-FM along with Bill Gardner. He went to Kansas City and started the original KY102. He left for a bit in 1980 and came back in 1983, and he has been there ever since. Max is included in the group of pioneers in the broadcast section of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.




Jay Cooper was part of the "new crew" on KFML. Jay interviewed and introduced an amazing array of musical up-and-comers during the four-year run of Ebbets Field, Denver's premier concert venue of the '70. Hundreds of the shows were either simulcast live or recorded for re-broadcast on KFML. Jay has the beard.




Thom Trunnell, a free form programmer par excellence, was one of the founding fathers of KFML.