TRAVUS TRIBUTES

I just got an email Chandler has passed away. This hit me like a brick. I spoke to him several years ago and was so pissed he had to do jailtime at his age for Pot...fucking Nevada rednecks.
Anyway My thoughts are with him today.

Dusty


KPIG played "Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die" as a send-off.  http://www.kpig.com/


 

Really. Remember him rolling in late for a Tom Donahue birthday celebration at Enrico's and the sweet smoke fragrance wafting off from his long drive.    Lobster

 
I was demoralized by our government after 9-11 and the war I couldn't listen to any news except Travis for many years. Somehow his strength and commitment to the truth helped me realize you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you and I felt safer not being alone on this dinky ball in space. If you can know someone by what they believe in and by what they do every day, then I don't feel so badly that I never met the man in person. Thank you all for your wonderful stories about this man. I will always remember the sound of his voice.  Melinda
 

Sorry to hear of Chan's passing.  He certainly was fearless, loquacious and a true original.

Rest in Peace, brother.
Bear

Rest in Peace Chan.   Bonnie
 

It's hard to believe that Chan is gone. He was definitely a one-of-a-kind talent. I went digging into my tape archive to look for some of his work from KMPX when his newscasts ran on my mid-day show. I'd been working with Chan at the station as he was going independent with his Cabal News "operation." He had started to produce his newscasts out of his own studio -- actually an old garage on Laguna and Bush. He was living in a school bus next to the garage with Lynne Hughes at the time. He wanted to syndicate his daily newscasts and I think KMPX was his starting point. He'd record the program on a cassette deck in his garage studio and then feed it to the station by phone (alligator clips to the leads on the mouthpiece -- way old school). Welcome to the new Cabal News Service. He was a great guy to work with and I had some unforgettable times hanging out with him back then. Rest in peace, brother (and mentor).

I made an mp3 of the last "C. Acheson Laughlin" report that ran on KMPX in March of '72. It was my last day at the station, as well. The uptight New York owners had come out to San Francisco to personally pull the plug on the hippies (and more importantly, the union organizers). No more insurrections or station takeovers this time. My apologies for the slightly funky audio, but, hey, it was a phone feed! The intro/outro by the Congress of Wonders is classic. His story on KMPX's demise was workmanlike and unsentimental. Good thing, or I would have choked up on the station ID.  Hank

 

ALL THAT WHATEVER IT WAS

FOUND ON KPIG WEBSITE

From Travus T. Hipp  commentary on March 31, 2008. 

You know, I like to think that I'm a pretty fair pundit. And have worked out the mechanics of being a radio personality--including vocal stress and things of that nature--reasonably well over a period of years. And having come up in the game under the mentorship of Tom Donahue, a legend no longer living but still influential throughout the broadcast industry, I was relatively, reasonably prepared to call myself a professional and things. And then I realized...that I am at best, a fortunate remora on the shark of popular radio taste. I have been fortunate in that my entire broadcast career has been as an adjunct to programming on various radio stations which was in itself before I got there, unique, semi-revolutionary, and amazingly appealing.

Tom Donahue said a number of times that his contribution to radio was, moving the little lever from 45 to 33.   Which for those of you who grew up in the post-vinyl period of American history, that means the speed with which the old records went around. Now, that and deciding to do so on FM because it could be broadcast in stereo which AM couldn’t -- destroyed the AM radio world!  Up until then, FM was a sidebar…K-JAZZ and KPFA and the Pacifica nets found some home over there on the FM side. But basically it was unused. Until KMPX and Donahue and I and Milan and Voco and Dusty Street and a whole bunch of others came along and changed it. 

And I got to, ride the wave…Didn’t make the wave or even build the surfboard. But I got to ride it. KSAN came on, and then all of the smaller peripherals out there. I was on KZAP…K-ZAP, when it was reeeely out there. 

From the 12th floor of the Elks Temple with the chimes of the local cathedral in the background whenever you broke at the top of the hour. And all of these were playing music that was a part of the major social revolution that is whatever it was that we did in the 60s. We were the pit band for the Show. And I got into, first doing talk radio, because in those days it was necessary to give a certain number of community service hours to Public Affairs in order to maintain your license, and so it was cheaper to hire me at K-ZAP AND K-TIM AND K-SAN and various other stations where I would come in on the weekend and do a remarkably irritating job apparently because I always got lots of phone calls, as a talk host. A skill which I honed so well that I owned Reno Radio for about a year. And I once managed to get myself fired and whole contract paid after only two months in Hawaii [LAUGHS]. But that’s another story. 

I’m proud to say that I no longer do talk shows and therefore no longer have to answer for what they have become, which is a perversion of the art, if it is an art. So now I am, associated with this massive net of K-PIG, plus a couple little community stations here and there. And by some obscure reason I have access too—I own, in the radio term—most of northern California! There are people listening right now in Mount Shasta, in the entire northern Sacramento Valley, thanks to the crew at the new Chico K-PIG station. Then there’s the AM-er in San Francisco which reaches Marin County and the City along with whole bunches of the coast. And then in Santa Cruz and below that San Luis Obispo. All I need is Santa Barbara and I can establish an empire 

But it isn’t my empire! Once again I am fortunate to be, on a station which, plays a unique blend of music and attitude and strangeness, that is...majority appealing to the radio audience available out there. We are at worst a cult station – in which I am a cult figure— and at best, the best damn radio that’s being done anywhere in the neighborhood. And I get to ride along! After all these years. I am still out there on the front of the wave, trying to keep my balance. I love it. God—we’re—I—occasionally I’ve been tempted to work for schlock radio just to have a job. Don’t do it. Heh heh…and that’s enough news for now I’m Travus T. Hipp on the Pig on the radio. None of the foregoing commentaries and opinions have in any way reflected reality as perceived by this station, its management owners sponsors or staff, but are solely the responsibility of myself and Cabale News Services. [SFX: Pig until zzzzzip!]