On Le Chateau Daddy-O, Rocky features “vintage rock and psychedelic adventure,” and when he hosts The Jazz Show, he spins all flavors of that musical form. We spoke on Dec.18.
Michael A. Brown: When you’re planning each week’s Le Chateau Daddy-O, what music inspires you and how does the play list start coming together?
Rocky: In planning each week’s LCDO, I think back to the time in the late ’60s when FM rock began supplanting AM with album-oriented rock instead of the Top 40 format. On FM, you might actually hear a whole album side from newer bands featuring psychedelic or “acid” rock, as it was often called. I’ll start a playlist with an artist or group which might remind me of another and so forth from there. Sort of a stream of consciousness type affair.
MAB: Who are some of the rock artists and bands you like to feature?
Rocky: There are so many … Cream, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Jefferson Airplane, It’s a Beautiful Day, and others that weren’t normally featured on commercial radio at the time but who gradually began to get airplay. Those are the ones I like to focus on.
MAB: Talk about the prominent psychedelic rock singers and bands in the middle and late 1960s. Who were less well-known but really good?
Rocky: Everyone is familiar with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the like, holdovers from the AM days, but a lot of bands were just emerging on the scene … bands like Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, The Mothers of Invention, and a lot of groups that still remain lesser-known like July, Tomorrow, The Pretty Things, Procol Harum, Mahogany Rush, The Chambers Brothers, and so many more it would be impossible to name them all.
MAB: To what degree does the psychdelic genre endure beyond those years and influence later rock?
Rocky: There are still a lot of relatively new bands on the scene carrying on the psychedelic tradition: Smoking Spore, 1200 Micrograms, Children of the Mushroom, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Black Angels, The Murlocs from Australia, and a ton of more modern bands out there now carrying on the tradition.
MAB: On Le Chateau Daddy-O, are there selections you’d like to play but can’t because of the lyrics or other FCC no-nos?
Rocky: There aren’t a lot of bands or material that I won’t play. Sometimes I have to edit out a word or two to make songs FCC-compliant, but most bands know obscene material isn’t going to make a lot of money so most avoid that type of thing. There are a few things I won’t play that aren’t considered indecent or obscene but tend to normalize things like underage sex, heavy violence etc. Plus, there are a few artists I refuse to play who are known to have actively participated in those types of abuse.
MAB: Talk about The Jazz Show and how the audience for jazz compares and contrasts with the rock and psychedelic audience.
Rocky: The Jazz Show is a wonderful outlet for me to play something I’m passionate about but generally different from typical LCDO fare. In addition to airing vintage rock, I love the classic jazz performers from the ’50s. ’60s, and 70’s. People like John and Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, and others and I like to put those performers out in front of the audience. Between myself and the other three members of the Jazz Show collective, we cover just about anything imaginable having to do with the genre. I’m sure there are folks out there who listen to either LCDO or The Jazz Show, but most people I’ve encountered who listen to KOOP seem to have a wide view of what they enjoy, be it vintage rock, jazz, lounge, world music, or anything else KOOP airs.
MAB: Please tell us about your own radio and musical background, and how you and KOOP got together.
Rocky: I had absolutely no previous radio experience before I came to the station and sadly, I can’t carry a tune in a proverbial bucket. But I was one of those kids who carried a little transistor radio around grooving on the tunes and thought it would be so great to be one of those personalities I heard on air who brought the music to the people, but never thought that it would be possible.
Then when I found KOOP one day on the left end of the dial, I was hooked. I remember hearing The Andean Hour and The Lounge Show and I thought this is so different from other stations and I’ve been a fan ever since. Several years later I showed up to volunteer and found out I could go through training and actually submit an application for a show. I did, and Le Chateau was given a place on the schedule and it’s now entering its 18th year. Words can’t describe how grateful I am to be a part of this community. It is, hands down, the most fun and fulfilling activity I’ve ever been involved in.
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You can enjoy Le Chateau Daddy-O every Tuesday at 4:30pm. Rocky also hosts The Jazz Show one Saturday each month at noon.
Interview by Michael A. Brown