CHAPTER 21 If You Miss The Earthquake, Try to Get Here For The End Of The World

The place I picked to move to was cheap. It had to be. I was making next to nothing as a part-timer at KRUX. There was little left over for luxuries like food. I spent most of my time at my little one-room shack sitting in front of the air conditioner, trying to survive the furnace that was early summer in Phoenix. My major comforts were my music, Barbara and surprisingly, sympathetic visits from Gone John and others who had already endured the soul-scrubbing heat of a first summer in Phoenix. Two months of it were enough for me. Poverty was a wonderful character builder but I was almost to the stature of Gandhi in that department. I decided to call it quits and go back to San Fransisco. I don't know why I didn't think about going back to Texas, other than I didn't feel welcome there. Phoenix was a dead-end for me and I felt I should be honest about it. I loaded the car, turned in my keys and drove out to KRUX to say goodbye to Bill. Lo and behold, he had one more option for me. A pathetic little AM day-timer that was currently broadcasting in a spanish format was on the ropes and headed for bankruptcy. Bill arranged a meeting between myself and a loveable bug-eyed little guy named George, for that following evening for drinks. I crashed at Barbara's and confirmed the appointment for the next day. I liked George. He was the kind of man who was usually successful because he was usually honest and usually lucky. This was George's lucky day with KCAC.

Since I was without a roof and Hank and Peggy had found a place of their own too, Bill found digs that gave us both privacy. We wound up with two of four individual cabins at Starbright Ranch on the west end of South Mountain park at what was more or less "the end" of 35th Avenue. He had the south cabin, I had the north. Between us in the center cabin was a fine country family with a couple of fine young farmer's daughters. All in all, the ranch had all the charm and seclusion of a UFO base. I mean that figuratively and in the literal sense. There was an other-world feel to it that was indescribable.

In short order Bill and I were joined by another friend from KRUX, Ray. Ray was an incredible radio and sound engineer. He was also a music nut like us. It was a cordial and close alliance of very stoned and high-energy male egos. Egos in radio can become monstrous and uncontainable. The emotional stress was raw and intense. Stress in those days however, was something unheard of. The nearest comparitor was how much of life you could handle in one day. The ranch got too heavy at a psychic level, for ordinary people. However, it brought out the best in all of our extraordinary friends. "Strange Days" by The Doors had just come out.

The "Living Room" was a free-form construct of junk located about a quarter-mile from my cabin, south and east of Ray's place. It was the product of a very fertile mind inhabiting a lovely body that was Ray's sister, Betty. Betty was a true artist working in abstracts. A quite magical person, she was into mime and illusion. One of her creations called "Multiplications" was on display at the New York Museum of Modern Art. It was like a clear Rubick's cube that unfolded instead of turning. The Living Room was an old couch, a chair or two an old tractor tire and a bedframe that served as a coffee table. All that junk had been dumped at various places around the ranch. Betty had assembled the pieces into a retreat that was cordial and comfortable to all. It belonged to no one, had no earthly value and thus, was a holy place where we could all be ourselves no matter how stoned or crazy we happened to be at the time.

There had been several new girlfriends for me, one night stands at the ranch. Betty was one of those. Although there was no real attraction for either of us we went along with what the gods had planned for us and pretended we didn't know. Neither of us expected anything from the other. We drew closer, enjoying the fact that there was no reason for it. I became aware of having become something of a challenge to my friends. We were all such stinking individualists that Kerouak would have been hard pressed to describe it. What had been good between us all was so good that it needed to be propped up and talked to, long after having died. Vestiges of it remain to this day.

The pace of living moved to the fast lane both on the air and off. Our egos clashed dramatically and we found it difficult to hold a fulfilling conversation with mere words. The radio station became our philisophical sounding board and an underground cult hit of enormous proportions.

What Bill and I and the other KCAC DJ's were doing was was holding a kangaroo court against ourselves - and society in general - on the air, using the music as our basis of communication, our indictment of one another's philosophies. It was a kind of DJ street fight - a Poet's Brawl if you would - on the airwaves. I would sign on in the morning with whatever was in my heart and on my mind musically. Bill would come in on the afternoon shift with his musical reply. I would pick up from there the next day. We were literally battling out our egos and differing points of view with each other, sometimes with accompanying comments from other DJ's, in their own shows. Sometimes, DJ's on other radio stations would kick in on it. Really.

Time spent on the board was creative orgasm from signon to signoff. We listened to each other when not on the air and that pretty well took the whole day. Phoenix itself was trying to hug these crazy dinosaurs who were bent on destroying each other through musical collage. It was like two or more insane lawyers trying to prove in court that the other did not exist. Schizophrenia trying to commit suicide. Nothing like it had ever happened in Phoenix radio. The Spring that gave birth to our Summer Of Love 1969 saw and appreciated, war fought with music. The rating services (and other radio stations) were screaming; KCAC was pulling top numbers at night - hours after signoff.

You have to be a God or a Devil (thanks, Alvin Lee) to live at that pace indefinately. I was neither of those, I was just young. After a three day-and-night stretch of girls, pot and ego tripping on the radio, I was at the point where I needed to find out if I were one or the other. Five hours sleep out of 70 is not enough to remain a functional part of this world. Peggy, in one of her sweet (and seductive) moods, invited me over to the apartment after work. It was the story of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest (see Bob Dylan). I was feeling omnipotent at the time and accepted the compliment the way a puppy would accept being scratched on the tummy. You betcha. Driving up 19th street, a small group of fairies came and performed an ancient, lovely dance in front of my eyes. While watching, I sodomized the back end of a ten-wheel truck with the old Pontiac Ventura that my dad had traded me. The fairies left and I found I was neither a god nor a devil, I was just another fool who was lucky to be alive.

There was a girl in Phoenix at that time, that everyone called Crazy. John Stewart (formerly of the Kingston Trio) wrote a song about her on one of his albums, it was as beautiful as Crazy herself. She was indeed a beautiful lady. Right around Christmas, Crazy made and shared with us all, some of the damndest brownies I have ever had. Betty and I had a few one evening and the next morning, I woke up clear-headed and more crazy than I had been in a very long time.

Betty seemed to sense that I was caught in the doorway of being out of my mind, or in my right mind - or in a dimension in between. She took me for a walk to the crest of the nearest of the South Mountain foothills adjacent to Starbright ranch. There we strolled along the crest, not involving ourselves in meaningless conversation so as not to spoil this very clear day. Nearby was a lovely cloud - a white puff of popcorn in the sky. "Watch this" I said. It took only a minute of effort and the cloud was gone. It happened so fast that I heard Betty gasp. It surprised me, too. Darn nice brownies those had been. I got the recipe later but it is too lengthy and involved to print here. Suffice it to say, they were magic.

Interestingly, there were some pictures taken on that day out by the Living Room, that remain unexplainable. There were lights in various places on the hills in the background of some shots of Bill, that did not belong there. Patterns of lights. Lights that were not noticed, save by the camera. There were other oddities in other pictures of us as well. We were all different people now. None of us appeared to be ourselves.

Given that, it did not seem likely that any of us knew each other. Time had moved. We were catching up.
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SIDEBAR COMMENT FROM THE AUTHOR
I most humbly appreciate your attention to this particular chapter. The PayPal button has been modified so that your donation should you choose to do so, will be routed to Radio Free Phoenix. KCAC you see, had children and grandchildren. KDKB was one of those but there have been others as well. Since this was written at least four of the powerful personalities that made that radio station, have died. They are William Edward compton, Hank Cookenboo, Gary Kinsey (Toad Hall) and Dwight Tyndall... good friends, all.

Radio Free Phoenix - destined probably for satellite eventually - dances in the spirit of KCAC. Totally Free Form, for a whole new generation of growing and freely formed Creative Spirits that refuse to let a wall or a box define their existence.
In that respect, Radio Free Phoenix represents Hope and that too, represents Faith.

You are free to listen online right now -- http://radiofreephoenix.com/

Bill is gone, now. So is Toad. So is Hank and Dwight. Others have been eaten by the monster that is our society's Correctional System. So someday, shall I be gone also in some way or another.

I think I must have been left behind to show you where the spirit resides now, and invite you to join the dance....... A dance that is now, over 35 years old.

You are free also, to participate in a blog of surviving KCAC veterans and fans who as you might imagine, are fun to be around and to read and write to and even hear again. There is a growing collection of audio clips all over the blog, of old tapes of Bill particularly and others, that have been donated from the closets, cassettes and tape reels of many "old timers" like us. -- http://kcaclives.blogspot.com/

You are encouraged also, to add life via financial support, to this spontaneous movement of what I can only describe as the Spirit Of The Phoenix.