MOD to FAT

Driving out of Modesto the first city of significance you hit is Turlock. Some might say Ceres is the first, but like Salida to the north, it has no media outlets of it's own and thus blends seamlessly into Modesto proper. Ceres does have 920 KVIN-AM "Vintage AM" a nostalgia station with a great brand, that only mentions Modesto in their ID... But Turlock, they have their own radio stations.

So I got another burrito from Jessica #4 and headed off South on Route 99. The first notable station is 91.9 KCSS comes out of out of California State U./Stanislaus. It runs 4oo watts on a 32 meter stick. They cover Turlock handily but no further north than Ceres, and peters out to the South long before Merced. I caught the Modern Rock Lunch box, a weekday 2 hour program of Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon etc. Ho-hum. The rest of their schedule is far better. they even run radio dramas at night. On 90.9 KBDG runs Assyrian news much like KBES. 100.5 KEFC-LP is also out of Turlock but runs more christian satcast programming...

In Merced is another LP station, KGDM-LP on 105.5 also satcasting Jesus. Loud and clear in Merced (even louder and clearer than even it's city of license) is 88.7 KMPO the Radio Bilingue station here. They were rocking some Mango Santamaria this evening proving their worth as public radio en espanol. I tried to stop at a truck stop, but they were closed at 6pm. On one side of the road was grapes, on the other side dates.
I stopped in Madera for a bite at Farnesi's. KVPR was playing no music at all but instead broadcasting a reading of Winnie the Poo. It was unexpected and amusing. The AM dial is overwhelmingly Spanish, but on 620 it switches over to Portuguese for 620 KIGS-AM and 900 KBIF-AM which seems to be all Asian. It's a shame that 90.7 KFSR only has a 20 meter antenna. Even in Merced, they're inaudible. Now at 10:20pm PST they're rocking some fine indie rock: Antlers, Cursive, and Racelegs... etc.

Fresno is also the home town of one of my favorite authors, William Saroyan. It's also home to Spinners records, and despite all my best efforts... I don't have time to stop there.

The Rockabilly history of California Radio

Rockabilly was not inveted by Johnny Cash contrary to popular belief. I've seen the man play and I'd like to think it myself, but it just aint so. Please refer to the Arhoolie 447 release as exhibit A: I'll start with a version straight from the Rockabilly hall of fame:
"Rockabilly may have started with a Modesto, California based family when a man named Fred [Maddox] got sick of pickin' cotton, sat down on his cotton sack and made the announcement to the family, "We're going into the music business.."
www.rockabillyhall.com

The maddox family were migrant workers traveling the San Joaquin Valley durring the great depression. It was the year 1937 and Fred managed to convince Rice's Furniture Store to sponsor them on the radio station KTRB-AM from 6:30am to 7:00am every weekday as the trio "The Alabama Outlaws."

Fred, was the announcer and the bass player, Cal was on harmonica and rhythm guitar and 11-year-old Rose doing lead vocals. All three sang back up. It was the country version of the Partridge family. Early the following year, they began playing at KFBK-AM in Sacramento, and their show was syndicated throughout the West Coast in cluding KGDM-AM. Over the next decade, their fanbase steadily grew, as their blend of music and comedy played well not only in concert, but on the radio as well.

KTRB spent from 50 years as The valleys country & western music station then really ticked off their long time fans with a sudden flip to spanish in the mid 1990s. by the end of that decade they were running extremist right-wing talk, which though popular in the south, did as well as you'd expect in the bluest of blue states. With a ratings book dragging in the bottom 1% Pappas Radio decided to leave town. Literally. http://www.netfeed.com/~jhill/860.htm

860 KTRB-AM is emboiled in a atempt to move from Modesto to San Francisco. In May of last year owner Pappas Radio submitted another minor engineering amendment to their proposed move of 50,000-watt KTRB-AM at the same time, submitting a corresponding engineering change on their "replacement" station in Modesto, 5000-watt 840 KPMP-AM to sweeten the deal. The station is currently silent awaiting execution of the final move. It is rumored that Pappas will then immediatly sell off the now far more valulable peice of RF real estate, engineering chatter Here.