"We did some unconventional things. And we played local artists. We played their albums."
--Roger Agnew

"The buzz was all over town. This was an AM station that was doing something that nobody in town was doing." From the beginning, program director Roger Agnew's plan sounded crazy: play underground rock album tracks on an AM radio station. Crazy, because it just wasn't done that way. Up to that point in the span of broadcast history, Top 40 pop dross and Boss Jocks and all-news-all-the-time was the only manner of programming thought suitable to blast from the tops of AM radio broadcast towers. Even then, in the 1970s, AM radio was still king.

Around the country, the emergence of the new underground rock, and the drugged-out hippie lifestyle mentality and politics that came along with it, was entombed in the far less lucrative but high-fidelity hallways of FM radio stations.

"What was originally branded as 'Underground Rock' was invented by Tom Donahue, a deejay at KSAN in San Francisco," Agnew says. "It was all these records by Cream, the Doors, Grace Slick, Big Brother and the Holding Company." He says that Underground Rock eventually was re-branded as Progressive Rock, a name that advertisers thought carried fewer anti-establishment implications, and then became mainstreamed as Album Oriented Rock, a name coined by Jeff Gelb.

That's the manner of music that Agnew would program for KDEO AM 910, Album Oriented Rock, during a little slice of local radio history that maybe lasted a year. Neil Ross, a deejay who would eventually work the morning shift summarized KDEO this way in his ReelRadio the Neil Ross Collection:

"Actually licensed to San Diego suburb El Cajon, 'Radio Kaydeo' was the 1,000 watt David battling the 50,000 watt Goliaths."

In the day, those goliaths were KCBQ AM, KGB FM and AM, and KPRI FM. Agnew's plan of attack from the little cinder block building on Fletcher Parkway was like trying to take out the Emerald City with slingshots and homemade fireballs.

At the time, KDEO was for sale but only two people knew it. They were Mortimer Hall, the station's New York-based owner, and Agnew. "Mort needed the ratings to improve in order to get the price he wanted," Agnew says by phone from Austin, TX, where he now lives. "He hired me to program it."

The power output was limited but when the stars aligned and the atmospheric conditions were just right, the little thousand-watt transmitter at AM 910 punched through the stratosphere and songs fell like invisible rain on communities throughout San Diego. "The signal covered San Diego pretty well," Agnew says with a small measure of surprise in his voice.

"I used to do my paper route early mornings with my transistor radio." Steve Roche is a guitar player and a former San Diegan who now lives in Louisiana. He recalls the improbable blend of underground rock, blues, pop, and jazz that KDEO jocks were tracking: "Listen Here," by Brian Auger; "Glad," by Traffic; "Compared to What," by Les McCann & Eddie Harris, and "Talkin' About Jesus," by Delaney & Bonnie.

The first wave of air personalities on Agnew's Music 910 were Neil Ross, mornings, Bill Moffitt, mid days, Les Tracey, afternoons, Ernesto Gladden in the evenings, "and whoever we could get to come in that wanted to have fun doing all-nights" says Agnew. Some remember a deejay-turned-lawyer named George Manning in the all-nighter slot.

"I pretty much gave these guys latitude to do whatever they wanted. I gave them free reign with the chatter," Agnew says. "My philosophy is this: hire good people who are entertaining, and let them do their thing." Unlike the card-reading jocks of the present era, a large part of deejays 'doing their thing' in the 1970s was informed by the politics of the day.

"I got stopped maybe three times a week going from Lotus Avenue [in Ocean Beach] to the KGB studios on Pacific Highway. Maybe a distance of five miles. Why?" Ernesto asks. "You tell me. Things were hot back then in San Diego. The Republican convention was coming. Kent State had just happened. Things were hot." The year was 1972.

At that time, Ocean Beach was considered the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego and things indeed were hot. A local attorney and grassroots activist named Frank Gormlie wrote a three-part series about it, published in the OB Rag in 2009:

"Ocean Beach had become the front line in the Establishment’s cultural war against hippies, a clash manifested in the increasingly politicized mass confrontations between youth and police by the early seventies, and in the daily contact between young people and cops. This daily contact – in the form of traffic stops and “field interrogations” exacerbated tensions – as many felt rights were being systematically violated. On top of that was police spying and harassment of community activists, as the movement against the Vietnam War intensified and as community organizing took root in Ocean Beach."

The anti war movement was fueled by the draft and nourished by pop music. Bob Dylan, the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and dozens more artists stood at the front of the protest movement. Radio was all-important then, as were the deejays that played those records and mirrored the anti-establishment politics of the day.

"There was an awareness of who we were and what we were responsible for that was paramount," Ernesto says. "Ken Kesey and Tom Wolfe were documenting this. Art became an avenue for social awareness. FM rock radio, coming up from the college campuses, considered itself a part of that. Deejays were segueing records to make a statement, to accomplish something."

When news came that the Republican National Convention, set to arrive in San Diego, had mysteriously been derailed, "We were all jubilant at KGB," Ernesto recalls, "because it wasn't coming after all."

Three months before the event was to launch, the GOP abruptly pulled up stakes in the wake of a potential scandal that involved a lobbyist named Dita Beard, a big amount of money, and a potential favor from the Department of Justice.

To celebrate, Ernesto played "Billy Don't Be A Hero" that afternoon on his radio show. He announced the record by saying (and I paraphrase) that "The San Diego tourism council had decided it would be better to move the convention to Miami. Good news for us all. Here's Billy Don't Be a Hero, backed by the Marine Corps Marching Band."

After his show, he was called in to the general manager's office. He'd been joined by station owner Millet Brown. What did Ernesto mean, they wanted to know, by that comment?

"Well, if I gotta tell you, it's too late."

They handed him his severance check.

"I'm out of work in San Diego. The phone rings. It's Roger Agnew. You don't know me, he says, but I'm over at KDEO. I'm starting a new format. Would you like a job? I said yeah. I don't have one right now."

For what it was worth, Agnew's plan worked. KGB was Billboard's Station of the Year in 1974 but at KDEO, it was mission accomplished. By the time of the next ratings, the AM 910's stake had doubled. "KDEO continued to grow. The buzz was all over town. This was an AM station that was doing something that nobody in town was doing."

Ernesto thinks it was music and attitude. "What do you think, what do you believe, and what are you saying to me about it? That was a reflection of the Music 910. We wanted to make sure that it was genuine, and that the artists [we played] believed what they were saying. The concept was of free speech carried over into lyrics, and that being a genuine statement of art."

Roger Agnew may also have been first to play records by San Diego rock bands in regular rotation. (It's a tossup; KGB's first Homegrown Album of local artists was produced in 1973.) One of the bands favored by KDEO was an outfit from Spring Valley called Leroy Zeke.

"George Manning was the first deejay to play our stuff on the radio. We were still in high school," says guitarist Thom Landt. "We were just kids."

KDEO upped the ante by producing a series of outdoor concerts that featured area bands. "I went to Balboa Park with the idea of doing more things for the community," Agnew says. "We were playing local artists on the air, and we wanted to put on free concerts too." The concerts grew in popularity.

Then, one day, the Hells Angels showed up.

"Six weeks into this thing," Agnew says, "I got home turned on the news: riot in Balboa Park. Hell's Angels from L.A. came down and turned a fight into a riot. The park said we had to take a break after that. We never did another concert again. But my dad taught me that good publicity is good for you, and bad publicity is good for you too. Our ratings soared."

Those days are long gone. KDEO is now a religious broadcaster, and San Diego radio in general has become an impotent byproduct of corporate conglomerations. If the medium comes back as Ernesto believes, it will be on the Internet.

"I think we've come full circle. No longer do you have to have a giant (and expensive) FM transmitter. The concept of free speech is more accessible now than ever." He points to the success of a local jazz radio station as an example of the power of the Internet in broadcasting. "Look at KSDS Jazz 88. They were jazz station of the year, and not because they broadcast only in San Diego. You can stream them all over the country."

Roger Agnew is equally sanguine on the future of web casting. At present he is building his own Internet radio station in Texas, Austinmusicradio.com.

"When we launch this thing," he says, "it's just gonna explode." He chuckles. "It's the same thing we were doing in the '70s."

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