NEWS FLASHES

DUSTY STREET STARTS NEW SHOW

Lady Street has added a new show besides her Sirius programs. Her new show is called Fly Low, which is also the title of a book she's been working on for years. Street says Fly Low is much like the free-form shows she did on KSAN, but with 40 more years of experience. "Radio has always been my greatest love." says Dusty, "and like all insane acts I keep doing the same thing over and over (trying to have input into the music my station is playing). I have become the “radio host” by day but on Friday nights I turn into the “Madame of Music on the Internet.”

"My Fly Low Show on the Classic Rock Vault and The Flying Eye Radio Network, has reopened the wonderful world I fell in love with back in San Francisco. I no longer have to sit and stare at thousands of records, tapes and CDs. They now can be played and heard with a mere click of a mouse." more

NORMAN DAVIS MAKES FRONT PAGE NEWS

It has been more than five years since the coppers raided Norman Davis' farm outside of Taos, New Mexico, but his case is still pending. Recently, the Albuquerque Journal put the story on the front page of its Northern Edition.

ALAN BEIM DIES UNEXPECTEDLY

San Francisco Bay Area advertising executive, Alan Beim died in his sleep while vacationing at Lake Tahoe on Saturday morning, July 30.  The CEO at Herbert, Holden, Slater, and Beim, (HHSB) Alan was 63 years old.

Born in San Francisco, Alan moved to Mexico at the age of 14 with his mother after his father passed away. The family then relocated to Sacramento where he completed high school and then attended University of California, Berkeley. 

Alan began a long broadcasting career in 1972 at KZAP-FM. He was fond to point out that he was an Oakland City Police Officer before breaking into radio sales. In 1976, Alan moved to San Francisco and worked at KSFX, KSAN, and KNEW as Account Executive, Sales Manager, and General Manager. 

In January of 1985, Alan was one of the founding partners of Herbert, Holden, Slater, and Beim, (HHSB) a full service advertising agency that includes media buying and planning, online marketing and social marketing, and a full graphics and IT department. 

In addition to being a principal at HHSB, Alan was owner of Graphics Plus, and part owner of World Class Shows Inc. He was a Former Board Vice President at Dolores Street Community Services, a member of the Baptist Peace Fellowship, and at Bread for the World. 

Alan is survived by his sons Jeremy Slater Beim and Nathan Joseph Beim, Kate Casas, Shanon Brown, and Diana Beim.

NORMAN DAVIS LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE

As a DJ playing a lot of blues, Norman Davis wondered why there are so few women harmonica players. The instrument is easy to carry, easy to play and women are not known for having less wind power than men. Davis became so curious he started some intensive research on the subject and discovered that there are indeed some women who play the mouth harp around the world. He has launched a new website to promote harp gals and requests information on other players, not listed on the website. Check out www.hermonicas.com.

JOYCE SHANK SUFFERS HEART ATTACK AT THE BEACH

JACK POPEJOY PASSES

Longtime radio journalist Jack Popejoy, whose expertise in aerospace and earthquake technology informed his listeners for nearly 30 years, passed away at his home in Sherman Oaks Feb 4. He was 63.

Popejoy was a multi-award winning reporter, anchor and commentator who was was recognized in 1998 as Journalist of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists.

He won 27 Golden Mikes from the Radio Television News Association of Southern California, including a best newscast award just last month for Best News Broadcast. He won eight Press Club Awards.

Popejoy was the producer/reporter for KFWB's award-winning earthquake series "Shock of the Century," "Safe at Home" and "Quake Quiz."

He wrote, produced and hosted the post-Katrina special "There but for the Grace of God?" and the 1994 KFWB / Disney video "The Great Quake Hazard Hunt."

For the past several months he co-hosted KNX Tech News on Saturday afternoons. He created KFWB's original website and served as its webmaster for a decade. He held the News Director's Chair at KSAN in its final daze.

"LUCKY LOGAN" CELEBRATES 70TH ANNIVERSARY ON AIR

Norman Davis, known as "Lucky Logan" for a short time at KYA, recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of his first appearance on radio. Davis, his wife Marsha, and numerous kids and grandkids hosted the party at their 5-acre spread across the Rio Grande Gorge from Taos, New Mexico. Live music was performed by Mesa Moon, Zander, and Susie Davis who flew in from California for the event. Susie rocked out on solo piano and then called up her dad for some four-handed blues. The party lasted most of the night and quite a few of the celebrants camped out and were around for breakfast the next morning. Davis' first appearance on radio was at the age of five, when he played Jesus Loves Me on his violin for his grandmother's churches local radio show in Casper, Wyoming. Davis recreated his first appearance by scratching out Jesus Loves Me on a three-string fiddle (the E string broke). He said it sounded a lot like the original.
 

LAUFER GOES PROFESSORIAL AT U OF O

Our esteemed author, reporter, bon vivant and globe trotter Peter Laufer has added another honor to his long list. He was recently named the James Wallace Chair in Journalism at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication and will begin teaching this fall in Eugene. Laufer is promoting the Slow News Movement that he announced in his recent book on butterflies. "My slogan is 'Yesterday's News Tomorrow,'" he says in a recent interview, "I believe we need to consciously and carefully moderate our incoming media. I've taken to writing letters with a fountain pen and sending them through the post. I try not to respond immediately to email messages. I leave my mobile phone in the car when I go out to restaurants, and I'm seriously considering closing my Facebook account (I shut down Twitter after just a few "tweets"). We need to decide for ourselves what media is worth our while to read (and as a writer I want to use the word "read'' and not "consume"). We're in danger of missing the story because of the noise." More of Laufer's interview here.

FONG TORRES GOES FOR #7

Ben Fong Torres is working on his seventh book. He says, "I used to think that if I got a book or two published, I could consider myself an "author" as well as a reporter, editor and occasional broadcaster, and be done with it. And, now, here comes lucky number 7. I've agreed to write a book about Quincy Jones, the legendary musician. He'll talk about his six-plus decades bridging jazz (including bebop) to R&B and pop (including hip-hop). I also plan to get comments from a few of Q's friends-you know, Oprah, Maya Angelou, the Clintons-people like that. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm going to learn more about music with this one project than I have in my entire career." Ben continues his weekly radio show, Backstage, Sundays on KFRC.

GAY LIFE GOES ONLINE

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.

WARDELL PLANS BENEFIT FOR HAIGHT-ASHBURY FREE CLINIC

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.