NEWS

SAN FRANCISCO – More than 200 hours of The Gay Life, a public-affairs radio series from the 1970s and '80s, have been made available for free listening at the website of the GLBT Historical Society. The offering is the opening salvo of a campaign to preserve the society's vast audiovisual collection and make it available to the public. The project to build an electronic Gayback Machine (apologies to TV's Mr. Peabody) is led by volunteer John Raines. It can be directly accessed from any browser at http://www.glbthistory.org/gaybackmachine The digital files will serve the needs of archivists, researchers and the just plain curious. The interface allows visitors to search for media content by date, topic, or speaker. "Aside from their historic significance, I'm amazed at the quality of the recordings," said Raines, who spent countless hours capturing reels of audio tape. "Voices from the past, such as Harvey Milk and Del Martin, come alive and sound as if they're in the room with me. These master tapes were professionally produced and have weathered storage in great shape."

The Gay Life aired locally on KSAN-FM from the late '70s through 1984. It was produced and hosted by veteran journalist Randy Alfred, who is thrilled to hear his program come back to life after 30 years. "John has done an amazing job of moving this material into a new medium for people to learn about our history as a community," enthused Alfred. The Gay Life was the first regular gay programming on a commercial broadcast station in the U.S. The shows now available on the internet represent a sonic time capsule of six epoch-making years in Bay Area, national and international GLBT history, in the political and cultural history of San Francisco and California, and the first years of AIDS and the community's complex responses to the epidemic.

San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society collects, preserves, and interprets the history of GLBT people and the communities that support them. In addition to its archives and educational programs, the society will open a permanent museum in the Castro district this year.

SCOOP'S NEWSCASTS DOWNLOADABLE

Wes "Scoop" Nisker, who created a new way of presenting news on KSAN, has made some of his historic audio collages available for downloading at his web site, www.wesnisker.com. Included in the retrospective are Scoop's features on: The War, Kickin' The Dick Around, It's Oil Over Now, Turn On, Drop Out, EEk-ologu and others. Scoop also offers CDs and DVDs of his unique commentaries.

San Francisco: Kenny Wardell has announced plans to revive the long-lost "Live Jive" tapes. He borrowed a friends reel-to-reel and started listening to some of the old tapes of the series he produced for KSAN. "Live Jive" was a 'best-of' compilation with tracks from some of the hundreds of live shows KSAN broadcast for more than a decade. "I must say some of this is fucking great," Wardell enthuses.

"Back in the day, Tom Donahue threw me the key to the tape closet and asked me to put together a weekend special we called Best of Live Jive. I made a first generation dub from the masters and that is what I am listening to; artists like Steve Miller, The Pointer Sisters, Randy Newman from the Boarding House, Robin Trower, Jesse Colin Young, Boz Scaggs, Marshall Tucker, Hoo Doo Rhythm Devils with the Pointers, Joy Of Cooking, Elvin Bishop, War, Buddy Miles, The Persuasions, Merle Saunders and Jerry Garcia, Tower of Power, Jefferson Airplane, Hall & Oates and a bunch of other choice stuff."

"So I was thinking," he goes on. "Pick the best of the best and produce a CD called the Best of Live Jive and give the proceeds to the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. The clinic was there back in KSAN's heyday and they are still there now. I think the artists would contribute one of their songs for the support of this great public service that the clinic provides. I've been in touch with the clinic's director and he said he would help getting the approvals. Maybe The Bone- 107.7, whose call letters are KSAN would join the fun and help us promote it." Wardell welcomes any ideas on this project.