PDX: 94.7 and their "25 Years" of Alternative Music
May 9, 2008
94.7 KNRK has a little bit they play sometimes about how they’ve been around for over 25 years. 25 years of alternative music.
Except that’s not…possible, unless I have a really messed up recollection of things.
As I remember it, we had 970 AM The Beat until the early- or mid-90′s. This is how I remember high school, or what passed for high school for me (mostly moping around Lincoln High, where I did not even attend).
I remember 970 The Beat as a lot of “Mexican Radio” and “99 Luftballoons” and the more alternative side of Duran Duran. Natalie Merchant. Siouxsie and the Banshees. Blessedly non-grunge.
As I recall it, 970 AM didn’t have a real DJ, and definitely did not have commercials. Or is that just a weird quasi-memory-fantasy of mine? Why is all this so watery when I listened to that station pretty much exclusively at the time?
Then sometime in the mid-90s, it magically migrated to the FM dial. I can’t remember the exact order of things. I think they may have moved it first to somewhere high on the dial, like 107.5, before moving it to 94.7.
Does anyone remember this with more clarity than I do? What heritage gives 94.7 the “right” to claim 25 years? Do the 970 years count? Help me out here.
7 Comments
Related Posts
- The PDX Remember-When Game!
April 17, 2008 - PDX Remember-When Quiz: The Answers
April 24, 2008 - PDX: My Ongoing Obsession with the Fremont Bridge
April 28, 2008 - PDX Remember-When: Life Before the Eastbank Esplanade
May 12, 2008 - PDX History: Chew on This–Our Foreign Origins
May 19, 2008
i have also found this claim to “25 years” questionable. i assume they are counting those 970 days but as far as i can tell the only continuity was the fact they were sending their call letters from Banks.
Hmm. I always thought they were simply referring to 25 years of the existence of alternative music in general, not on their station in particular. But then, I was unaware of this 970AM fellow.
Yes, tODD has it right, it’s 25 years of music not us. We’ve only been around 13 years anyway.
And a side note us and 970 have never been 1. The beat was what we remember on AM, then 94.7 KNRK came along on FM and then 970 the beat moved from am to 107.5 the beat and it has changed formats and music every 18 months since.
Wasn’t that the station (when they were switching over to fm) that they played the same techno kind of beat over and over…and every now and then you would hear an announcer say “The Beat goes on, May 18th.” Damn that seems familiar. That would have been 91 or 92 I think. I can remember listening to it in my high school’s big science lab.
970 AM appeared in the early 90′s and they played tape loops that over time were identifiable and I remember knowing what songs were coming next. I even still have my bumper sticker from their first meet and greet in 1991.
Within a year they started rotating in a DJ to do ads and station identification, but still played tapes and within a couple of years started rotating DJ’d music with tapes in the prime hours.
Sometime mid-nineties they moved to 107.5 and I stopped listening because they lost that cheesy 80′s feel which I enjoyed so much.
That is all I know about 970′s history.
I miss 970. They had a lot of good artists on rotation (Talking Heads, Morrissey, Psychedelic Furs, New Order, Tori Amos, etc.) and somehow got it all right.
Anyway, I always assumed that 94.7 meant “25 years” in terms of post-punk art rock/alt rock/stuff that sewed the seeds for the 90′s ‘Alternative’ movement.
I loved 970! It was extremely formative for me in high school. I remember that, as John recalled, they played the first 16 bars of La Tour’s “People are Still Having Sex,” followed by an announcement that they would soon start broadcasting “alternative rock” (which still meant something at the time) around 1990. Their playlists were a bit repetitive, but I don’t think they had much money to work with, and they still supplied an EXCELLENT soundtrack to my high school years.
By time 94.7 came around, grunge had completely edged out all other forms of alternative, even on 970, and it took me a few more years to find new music that I actually liked! It’s that problem that prompted me to go into radio, I figure I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t finding anything worth listening to on the dial…
PS – Hi, Lyza! I haven’t seen you since that party at your house six years ago. Hope you’re doing well!