Three Quick Things
New Moon Edition February 2025
Does it seem to you that the world is in an uproar so far this year? Airplanes crashing, politicians thrashing, fires, floods, huge piles of snow on the ground for days on end in temperate Ashland, Oregon. Something’s going down, all right, although exactly what I do not know. Like that big rock rolling down the chute toward Harrison Ford in The Temple of Doom. Or maybe it was Raiders. Whichever, you get the picture. 2025 is sending up big question marks. Folks are ducking left and right, looking for the exit.
We’re reminded though of times when transposition occurs, a dramatic turnabout of what seemed to be inexorable momentum in a given direction that suddenly reverses course. The film A Complete Unknown reminded us that the decade of the Sixties was two distinctly different time periods, the first few years from all the rest. The see from the saw, the pend from the ulum, one side of the mirror from the other. Changes like that actually happen, dramatically at times. So there’s hope.
Sometimes it seems as though giving rein to the worst in us eventually reinvigorates the best in us as a society. Maybe we have to see how bad we really can become to be reminded of why we seek and honor our better angels. The eternal optimist in me inevitably runs into a blizzard of events that makes putting a positive light on it all a serious challenge. And it has been snowing like all hell of late. Perspective, I keep reminding myself. Big picture. The winter won’t last forever. Will it?
After four years of telling the Freeform Radio story at www.radicalradio.media and wending our way through the punishing process of chasing a celebrity to help us grow the scale beyond our modest reach, superstar guitarist Jimmy Page makes the case in a big way in Becoming Led Zeppelin. He’s talking about what was happening on the airwaves in America when they were getting ready to launch the band in 1968.
He says (paraphrasing here and big thanks to our pal Bruce Allen for this): "All these FM stations were proliferating, with deejays playing music that was nothing like top 40 AM hit single radio. The pursuit of hit singles was what killed bands. These FM guys played whole albums, or at least a full side of them, without interruption. That's how we wanted our music to be played and heard. That was our target: American FM radio and its listeners."
That’s how their music was played and heard, theirs and hundreds of other bands that came our way in an explosion of creativity. There now was a venue that allowed them to be heard the way they wanted. Freeform radio opened up the pathway those bands travelled in creating the Classic Era of Rock Music. We know their story, the talented singers, songwriters, and musicians. What hasn’t been told, not on the big screen, not as the national story it is: the seminal moment in broadcasting history when artistry preceded commerce, when knowledgeable and creative people were in control of the microphone and the turntable, that tale of all those mesmerizing voices on the FM dial who brought the brilliant music to us. Help us get it done! (HERE)
Nicky Angelo passed a way last week, or maybe the week before. We only learn of these things anymore on Facebook or some other social medium and information is sketchy. I know he’d been in a serious automobile accident late last year. Perhaps he never recovered. I only know he’s gone.
We are at the age where friends and acquaintances are expiring in astonishing numbers. It pulls at our heart strings to one degree or another, reminding us each time of our own inevitable destination. It is the ultimate transposition, after all, living and then dying, so there’s that. But Nick’s death has stuck with me for days since I learned of it, much more so than most. I believe it’s because he so exemplified what we all hoped to be in this life when we were young and on our way: someone of integrity who made his own way and in doing so made a difference in so many peoples’ lives.
He was a friend since high school, a classic hustler of the honorable sort who got his start working in pawn shops and recognized very early on the value of fine musical instruments in the coming wave of classic rock music. He established a shop on Pearl Street in Boulder that became the center of the music scene where every musician who lived in town or just passed through could be found on any given day. Later he dealt in fine art and artifacts both in Boulder and then in Lyons, Colorado, where among his many civic accomplishments he was mayor on three separate occasions. He was a wild man, a gentleman, a scholar, a generous, loving person and among the very best of us. May his beautiful soul rest in peace.