~Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers @ Winterland Arena-San Francisco, CA December 30, 1978~

There’s just not enough places in the world where the owner of the joint flies over the crowd…IN A GIANT DOOBIE! … dressed as Father Time and sprinkles them with fairy dust and actual doobies, hitting the stage at the stroke of the New Year (1978-79) in a cloud of smoke, confetti, & balloons as the Grateful Dead strikes up “Sugar Magnolia”, then plays for five and a half hours with breakfast served at dawn for 5500. Winterland’s Bill Graham made a habit of it every New Years Eve, sometimes delaying New Years an hour so he could do it cross town at another venue. Now THAT’S dedication to theater. Not enough places like that.

If you missed San Francisco’s Winterland Arena, HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED.

[In the bottom pic, Bill/Father Time crashes into stage while Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir look on and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) exits stage right (in top of pic).]

“Billy’s Boogie” now runs Friday’s 4-6pm (pdt).
Bill Frater grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and was present during the magical birth of “free-form” FM radio with KMPX/KSAN and the psychedelic music scene of the 1960s. Starting in the mid ’70s, as a respite from his day job delivering mail in San Francisco, Bill began volunteering at stations like Berkeley’s KALX (one of the first stations to play punk music) and weekend shifts at KTIM before eventually moving to Sonoma County, where he hosted a 2-hour roots music show on KRCB for over 20 years. He then took his show to commercial station KRSH in Santa Rosa, which at the time was one of the few remaining stations giving DJs freedom to construct their own music sets in the classic free-form model.
Now retired from the Post Office and living in Salem, Oregon, Bill still hosts radio shows on a few stations nationwide; he is excited to be a part of the Jiveradio family and to continue to celebrate the magic of free-form radio.

Join us for “Billy’s Boogie” and please pass the Jive!

There’s not a radio station in the world that plays more Chuck E. Weiss than we do. For years & years. He was a cat’s cat.

Now, the years of waiting for a new album or a chance to see him live at his favorite dive piano bar in L.A., are over. Here’s the ‘obit’ story in the L.A. Times: [HERE]

His music will live on on the airwaves, at least long as Jiveradio exists. This week will be Chuck E. Week, so plan on loads and loads of real Weiss all week. That knucklehead stuff.

More reading: [HERE]

“He is a distant relative of Houdini’s; he’s a praying mantis riding an egret through a bad neighborhood. He’s a reverend waving a pistol around.” ~Tom Waits

“Thin may be in, but Fats where it’s at!”

If you were around the S.F. Bay area in the late-70’s and knew anything about music, you heard of, and probably listened to, KFAT radio out of Gilroy, CA. And if you listen to the Jive, you may know we have TWO of the original air staff still on the air 50 years later…“Sister Tiny” and “Sully Roddy”. Both of them can be found in this SmugMug collage of pics around the KFAT studio of that era >HERE<.