If I hadn’t known rock radio was cool before I saw Gentleman Jim Hunter, drivetime disc jockey for KRKT Radio in Albany Oregon, lean out and wave to the crowd which had gathered beneath the huge T&R sign, I would have known it then. The sign was HUGE, the main section trucked in on a double-flatbed , and was the talk of the Willamette Valley as it was erected right next to Interstate 5, then a fairly new project itself.
When I wrote this past week’s column about the Pacific Northwest music scene (read it here), I left it feeling as if it wasn’t quite done. You may have gotten an idea of what it was like but unless you lived it, you don’t. I knew my little corner of the Willamette Valley and I am sure that Seattle people my age knew Seattle and Portland people knew Portland, but if you weren’t there it was a different planet. I came to that realization while re-watching the documentary which highlighted the aforementioned column— the one laying out EJD Enterprises and the part Ed Daugherty played in the lives of so many musicians and teens back in the sixties’ Willamette Valley of Oregon.
One thing about history. Given enough time, it is a shadow of its former self. No matter what happens, importance of virtually everything is either magnified or diminished depending upon a number of factors. By the time it has been filtered over the years, it is not even remotely what it started out to be. The Twenties obviously weren’t all Gatsby and The Thirties weren’t all dust bowl and depression. There was so much more than the War (that would be of the Second World variety, sports fans) and recovery from to the Forties and if the US had lived the Fifties like Hollywood said, we would have fought like hell to stay there. Of course, by the time it got to us, it was Cliff’s Notes all over again.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 