KRAB was a ground-breaking, eclectic community-owned radio station that was on the air in Seattle at 107.7 FM from 1962 to 1984. For many, KRAB was practically a life-altering experience. If you were one of them, now you can relive some of the sights and sounds of KRAB-FM.
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Local resident, and longtime KRAB volunteer and employee, Chuck Reinsch has developed a great KRAB-FM website, which includes photos of the KRAB years - including pictures from the very last KRAB broadcast - and archived audio from many of the KRAB shows.
You can visit the website here.
There are great photos, like the ones you see here, many provided by former KRAB volunteers Paul Dorpat and Dave Rowland. The man many credit as the father of KRAB, Lorenzo Milam, is seen in the picture below on the last KRAB broadcast, April 15, 1984.
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| Bob West; Phil Bannon; Lorenzo Milam |
KRAB was operated by the Jack Straw Foundation which ran into financial challenges and ended up selling the frequency to a commercial broadcaster. It's now owned by Entercom of Pennsylvania and is branded as "The End". That name must seem ironic to many of the KRAB faithful.
One of the cool things about KRAB was it's truly free-form format. The hosts, mostly volunteers, played the music they wanted to play and talked about the things they wanted to talk about. One of the not-so-cool things about that format was that it failed financially.
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| Seattle Times; April 17, 1984 |
After several years of trying to regain a broadcast facility in the Pacific Northwest, the same group was able to secure the rights to another broadcast signal, 90.7 FM And today 90.7 is operated by the KSER Foundation.
If you loved KRAB, or you just want some insight on the birth of community radio in the Pacific Northwest, you should spend some time at Chuck Reinsch's KRAB website. KRAB's 'last night' even has it's own page.
And Chuck is hoping there are more people who might have photos, clippings or audio from the glory days of KRAB. Chuck has an email link on the website.
Happy KRABBING!
Tom:
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to say thank you, and let you know that I really appreciate your letting people know about the web site, and that much of what you say is "right on". And I really don't want to be picky, but part of the motivation for creating the site was a desire to correct the many stories that depict KRAB as free-form free-wheeling, with programmers free to do just about anything that came into their heads. The original concept was "free-forum" - a forum for sharing of ideas and arts that was free from the commercial and political bias of mainstream media. (I don't think we called it "mainstream" then.) Music programmers were expected to be knowledgeable about their material, and within their expertise were allowed considerable latitude. Some programmers would push or stretch the limits, and then be reigned in by the program or music director or manager. Some would lose their programs entirely. It really wasn't a wild and crazy quirky little hippy station except in the view of Vic Stredicke at the Seattle Times and those others of the Seattle establishment that sought to marginalize KRAB's significance.
Now I have to admit that during the 22 years that KRAB was on the air there were periods when some programmers (and staff) were less disciplined than I have described above, but those were exceptions of relatively short duration, punctuated by endless discussions of how to best orient and train volunteers in program standards.
Thanks again, and keep up the good work at KSER.
Thanks, Chuck, for your time and effort in keeping the memory of KRAB-FM alive and well, especially with the archive at www.krab.fm where many music and spoken word programs can be heard once again. It once again is filling a void that is important and has been missed by many for some time.
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