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The Strange Saga of the Bizarro Sisters
Carol Bizarro (Bastoky)
Four in the morning is an in between time, not night, not yet day-a time of transformation that is very elusive. Magical things can happen in this pre-dawn environment, if you’re there for it. Back in 1974 I was working in the Wells Fargo building in downtown Berkeley. We were on 5th floor and when you looked out the windows you could see San Francisco and the bay. I was between things, deciding to return to college or not and I was 23 years old. My family has lived in San Francisco for generations and I lived and breathed KMPX, especially Tom Donahue, when I was still a girl.
My
co-worker and I had the 12-7:00 am shift and we operated a room full of switch
boards, some message lines and some more important things like hospital to
hospital connections. It wasn’t
always easy but the radio kept us company.
KSAN in San Francisco was the one and only station we ever listened to
and at 2:00 am a special man came on the air whose name was Norman Davis.
We loved Norman’s show but wanted to make some suggestions so we called
him to ask for particular music. He
sometimes listened, sometimes not but he always had something to say.
One night I was talking to him and he put me on the air without letting
me know. Well, I came from a show
biz family and to us that is considered a challenge!
I told him, “Next time you do that I’ll sing”, and Carol and Nancy,
two hard working, hard living young chicks decided to create something new for
4:00 am.
Our creation was a joke. We wrote jingles for KSAN, station id’s that were
meant to be weird and off the wall. We
named ourselves the “Bizarro Sisters” and made every effort to live up to
our creation! In between our
shenanigans we were connecting sick people to hospitals and doctors and doing
other serious business but for Norman and KSAN we became the fools.
The id spots on KSAN were an art form in themselves and we thought 4:00 am could
use some new stuff, especially bizarre because by that time, if you were still
awake you were either partying heavy or working or both!
Either way you could use a jolt of something besides what you had already
had to keep you going. Nancy and I decided to rewrite simple tunes and turn them
into little promos.
We
were usually alone in that small room with the wires but our friends could come
up and the janitor for the building used to come in for a few hands of black
jack. He was an older black man
that I never saw do much of anything but once he stood up, pushed his mop back
and forth and sat back down. I
asked him “what was that?” and he replied, “spot moppin.”
Even the hospital business sometimes slowed down that early before picking up
again as the world seemed to take a deep breath. This is when Nancy and I could
work on our little KSAN promos, play cards and still jump up to answer the
lines. Some musicians had their
phones there too because that was the only technology available. The customers
included Taj Mahal and John Lee Hooker as well as about 400 others, people and businesses.
Nancy & Carol "Bizarro"
Our little songs became a ritual and we got to know some of the people at KSAN.
Norman Davis and Phil Charles were my buddies and when we visited KSAN it was a great, creative, chaotic atmosphere. I found it totally amazing that so much good music was coming out of that place in the middle of what seemed like one big party sometimes. Other times it was really mellow and focused. A place full of talent that was open to new approaches to life and truly good music.
By playing the Bizarro twins we tried to capture a little part of it and the feeling of 4:00 a.m., which will always be a fleeting, strange time in the morning. If only for a second we made it sit down, talk to us and lend us some of its self before moving on.
This page is for stories of KSAN. Please send yours. Pictures appreciated.
