Los Angeles. 1978.

Time to lift the veil, and reveal Radio Retrofit's newest inductee!

QSKY FM, Los Angeles

I don't know why I do this... I mean, you guys are a much bigger audience than I've ever enjoyed before, but it's still a pretty big assumption to think anyone's on the edge of their seat, wondering which station I'll pay homage to next...

I guess it's just for me, then. A little theatricality! This is, after all, a serious labor of love, done for the joy of it. I love to edit.

So, drumroll, please! ...The newest station is QSKY-FM, Los Angeles... from the movie with the almost completely unsearchable name.

Online search engines are stymied by this one, as you can imagine. No one was too worried about calling their movie, simply FM, in 1978. That was before the advent of online, and its search engines, and now, nearly fifty years later, the internet has little idea what you're after, when searching for "FM." ha. Try adding "1978."

The poster which unfolds from the soundtrack LP.

I'd never seen this movie, but figured I'd have to get around to it, eventually, and last summer, I finally did.

After recording all the breaks, while watching, and a bit of extraneous dialogue to repurpose, as well, I realized this was honestly going to be my biggest challenge, to date.

As always, there were hurdles to jump. I'll proceed gently here, as I don't want to dunk on the movie I'm paying homage to, but the truth is, it's not my favorite. Largely, I think, because it's depicting a hugely successful commercial radio station...

And what would I know about that?

In fact, that's the plot of the film. The DJs have made it something special, and now the owners are swooping in, on the heels of some impressive Arbitron ratings, to capitalize, like crazy.

This, of course, threatens the integrity, and the success of the whole thing, and the DJs take a stand. And, because this is a movie, they actually get the attention of the moneyed interests. It's a fantasy, in that way.

But I won't give any more details away, in case you haven't seen it yet.

And I didn't use the plot in my mix, anyway. Ultimately, it's just a fun movie, one which modern day audiences are turning into a little bit of a cult favorite, so I just created a fun mix out of it. I hope people will enjoy it.

newpaper ad for FM

The main issue for me, for the purposes of Radio Retrofit, wasn't just that I couldn't relate to the working environment, having never worked at a commercial radio station (let alone a critically AND financially successful one).

It was the soundtrack. The movie was panned, at the time, and hasn't really recovered, either (Rotten Tomatoes rating is still a 20% among critics), but it was a HUGE success, for its soundtrack.

I think the record sold like a billion trillion copies or something. People loved it. I like some of it, too, but it doesn't really fit my personal tastes, exactly. Not always.

And since this series is being run through the filter which is my personal taste (after a diligent effort to properly represent the DJs featured, of course), that made for a problem, re: music direction.

Blah blah blah - I did a previous version which I sat on for awhile and didn't like - You've heard all this before. The long and the short of it is that eventually I gave up trying to represent the movie's soundtrack, and instead focused on the 3 (or more) DJs who anchor the thing. The results are electric. To my ears, anyway...

my recreation of the logo from the poster...

It's hard to say who the star is, but I'd point to these three, at least:

"Mother" represents the old guard, as played by Eileen Brennan, with a kind of Mae West quality, almost. An assured, confident tone which attracts her a big following. She's my favorite, with her prodigious mellifluousity.

I think I might have made up that word, but she deserves a word, in her honor.

"Swan" is also my favorite, as played by one of my many comedy heroes: Martin Mull. I had a lot of fun working with his DJ breaks and story lines, to flesh out a good portion of the middle of the show.

Finally, "The Prince of Darkness," is yet another fave. The great Cleavon Little plays the late night DJ, quite a bit differently from his other DJ character (Vanishing Point), and with an enviable smoothness. It was fun assembling his missives, from a variety of sources.

Then, there's "Laura Coe" interviewing Tom Petty, "Doc Holiday" (who comes and goes, about as quickly as he did in the movie), and "Jeff Dugan," the station manager who's somehow dedicated enough to have led this team to #1, while also being the laid back rebel who barely makes it to his shifts on time.

As always, I tried to stay true to the radio personalities at play, first and foremost, but I used a different inspiration, beyond that. I didn't follow the movie so much as I did the stations which inspired it... There were some legendary stations in LA in the seventies, playing current hits and rock & roll, alongside comedy records and even entire sides.

Can you imagine that, today? A practically freeform commercial radio station? The people loved it, in stereo. On their FM dials.

Speaking of which, there's a fairly major error which I've decided to own, rather than try and change... I put a lot of work into this and only TODAY realized my mistake.

The only time the station is identified - at all - in the movie, by its frequency, is a single break where “Mother” says they’re at "seven, eleven FM." Now, what was that supposed to mean, I wondered... as FM radio frequencies only broadcast between 88 and 108...

I came to the assumption that it was a stylized way of saying "One-Oh-Seven Point Eleven," which might be a way of saying "108.1," which isn't an FM radio frequency, but after all, this was a fictional radio station, so maybe they weren’t pinning it to an actual place on the dial? I didn't know.

Then, when I was going through the movie again, looking for images for the playlist, what did I see? A billboard for the station, right outside the studio, and it clearly says the station is at 71.1 on the FM dial! 

7-11

That’s a facepalm, for me, for sure. Turns out, it wasn’t a real frequency, just as I’d assumed, but it was way down at the other end of the dial where they were doing their pretending, and not up where I'd imagined mine. 

As I’d already had a lot of fun, creating dozens of station IDs which painted the station as being heard at 108.1, I decided it just adds to the fact that not only is this a fictional station, it’s a creative reimagining of that fictional station. 

I based my QSKY much more on the real-life L.A. stations which inspired the QSKY in the movie, less than on the QSKY which is depicted in that movie, so it's kind of a happy accident. That's how I'm choosing to look at it. Works for me.

So, MY QSKY's at 108.1, and it's my reinterpretation of the fictional station, which took its inspiration from some legendary L.A. radio. In the '70s.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 

Part One debuts on The Sheena's Jungle Room stream, at WFMU on June 2nd. Parts 2 and 3 will debut every two weeks, after that (June 16 and 30). Looking forward to putting them all together in July, here at awphooey.com. Stay tuned.

Thanks for listening!