Radio Daze: Part Two — The New Kid in Cowtown
Nothing like planning ahead I always say. After landing at Denver International Airport and not having made any arraignments in advance for transportation or housing, I did the only sensible thing I could – go directly to a pay phone and consult the Yellow Pages.
I didn’t know it at the time, but none of the major auto rental companies would lease you a car without a major credit card. I flipped anxiously through the directory until I found my salvation – Rent-A-Wreck. They didn’t require a credit card. All you needed was cold, hard cash, a driver’s license and a total disregard for your personal safety.
My Pinto wasn’t quite in this good shape, but you get the idea.
I took a cab over there and was shown a lovely green rust bucket that sort of resembled a 1971 Ford Pinto. I signed the contract and drove my cool wheels to the downtown Y where I got a drab and depressing dorm-type room with a common bathroom down the hall.
The next day I scoured the want ads of the Rocky Mountain News and I came upon a promising lead for a telemarking positon. I called and got an appointment for an interview. Then next day I met the hiring manager and got the job. So, thankfully, things were progressing fairly quickly. Within a week of my arrival that July in 1981, I had found a job and a nice, cheap apartment just off Colfax Avenue near City Park, a few miles east of downtown.
The job itself simply consisted of calling people at home in the afternoons and early evenings to tell them how much they could save on “major brand” household goods by joining United Consumers Club and inviting them to attend an open house to learn more. It was scripted and repetitive but the money was good, my coworkers were a fun bunch, and the job was easy if you could put up with the steady stream of rejection and the occasional a-hole. There was a base salary and you’d get a bonus if your people actually showed up to the open house and signed a contract.
All I had for entertainment in my small apartment was a boom box and I lost no time in scoping out the local radio landscape, especially the left side of the FM dial where at 88.5 MHz I struck the mother lode – KGNU – aka Boulder County Public Radio. It offered an exceptional variety of musical programming and a superb mix of news and public affairs.
One KGNU logo – they’ve had many over the years.
Punk and related genres ruled the airwaves during KGNU’s Saturday night programming block. Of these, one show in particular caught my ear. ‘Over the Edge’ hosted by Peter Tonks played all the music I was craving to hear and then some. He exposed me to some new bands like Crass and Chelsea and much more. Peter produced the first punk rock radio show in Colorado in 1978 on KGNU and he played a significant role in promoting the emerging punk movement along the Front Range by playing local bands and hosting in-studio jam sessions.
Peter Tonks inciting the masses via his Over The Edge radio show.
What made the show so memorable for me was Peter’s voice. In contrast to the loud, raucous sets he would play, his patter was muted, detached, and impassive. At times he sounded almost bored. Yet his caustic commentary on right-wing politics, consumerism, corporate America and his favorite target – Yuppies, showed he was anything but disinterested. His breaks were concise, his ego in check. The show wasn’t about him but about the music and the political activism driving it.
CRASS record cover.
I loved the station so much, I drove up to Boulder a few mornings each week to volunteer and help out with general office chores like picking up the mail from the post office. Peering into the air studio from the hallway’s glass partition, I would spy the morning talent ‘making radio’. I think I may have drooled more than once, I wanted it so bad. The underlying motivation for my munificence of course was for me to get my foot in the door and eventually get on the air.
Back to School
At some point I decided that I wanted to seriously pursue a career in radio, so I checked out the local broadcasting trade schools. There were about three. I toured two and decided on the Ron Bailie School of Broadcast. It was the Denver branch of a six school empire founded by Seattle radio personality Ron Bailie and spanning four western states.
Ron Bailie.
Ron had worked as a DJ at Seattle’s Top-40 KJR before starting a broadcasting school in his garage in 1963. He soon built a small broadcast studio on Denny Way and kept on growing.
In Denver they rented the creaky second floor of a substandard office building near downtown that was resplendent in 1970s décor – dark wood paneling and filthy shag rugs. The school hired all of their part-time faculty from a big pool of pros working in local radio. Facilities were rudimentary and utilitarian and included offices, production studios, classrooms, and a snack room. The 8-month curriculum focused mainly on radio with a miniscule two week module on TV.
Our class was small. There were about seven of us twenty-something’s. The first couple of weeks were taken up with the classroom basics: vocabulary and diction, proper breathing techniques, and warm-up exercises. But we were all just dying to jump into the studio and start doing radio.
Radio Bueno
After a couple of months of doing make-believe radio shifts at Bailie, I was growing impatient for the real deal. At the time KBNO-AM was Denver’s only Spanish-language radio station and played Spanish Contemporary, Rancheras, Tex-Mex, Norteño and all the other genres you would expect in the Southwest.
KBNO was formerly KFSC-AM, Denver’s first Spanish-language radio station launched in 1954 by pioneering civic activist and broadcaster Francisco “Paco” Sanchez from his east Denver home studio.
Francisco “Paco” Sanchez.
With my rather rudimentary Spanish speaking skills, I decided to try my luck and I targeted them for an entry level job. Using the school’s studios after class, I cobbled together my first audition tape. Since I didn’t have any Spanish music of my own, I checked out some Mariachi LPs from the downtown Denver library’s folk music section. I scripted out a little show with back announcing, news, live commercials, and music. I wrote a cover letter and mailed off the package to KBNO’s Program Director – Santiago Hinojos. After a couple of days I got a call from him. Could I come in for an interview?
Next Up: My Big Break and the Climb to International Stardom
Making a Spectacle of Myself 
Hi,
I actually worked at the Ron Bailie School in Colorado Springs (a part of Dennis and Ginger Johnson’s Denver operations. Until I was transferred to the San Francisco office of RBSoB as Financial Aid Officer, I ran the Colorado Springs school.
We, the employees of RBSoB, knew that Ron and Nada Bailie were making a WHOLE LOT of money that was not being shared with the employees. I had heard the Bailies had property in Hawaii and and a ranch in Idaho, as well as their home in Seattle.
As for the financial aid aspect of their school, I was directed to make sure EVERY student qualified for the National Direct Student Loans. It was my job to work the loan apps. For that, and in San Francisco in 1974-76, I was paid $600 per month. The cost of living in San Francisco made rents higher than the mean nationally, even back then.
I lived at a room-and-board residence that was frequented by foreign tourists (that part of my life was very pleasant). It was, however, a struggle to make ends meet. I eventually turned in my resignation and returned to Seattle.
The Bailies, while excellent at glad-handing, were Mormon and very clannish to everyone outside their family and church. It amazes me to this day that Ron, Nada and their daughter actually did “time”, but it couldn’t have happened to a nicer family.