KYA – San Francisco – December 9, 1967 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
A buck a month is all it takes: Become a Patron!
Color you cynical. Okay – they said it would happen; sixteen-on-the-edge-of-seventeen and it’s that age where you start to doubt things, don’t believe anybody and generally walk around in a cloud of doom. No particular reason – you have decided you don’t like much of the world, even though you haven’t been around very much of it. You’ve decided people are strange, life is weird and what’s this thing about Christmas anyway? You tell everybody you have Existential Angst – problem is; you have no idea what that is. You have friends who read a lot of Sigmund Freud and talk about him at lunch – it sounds like they’re describing you. You feel like you walk around sneering at people a lot. Maybe you really are just cynical – yeah, that too. You’re a whole pile of feelings and they’re mixed up, making lots of sense and no sense, all at the same time. Suddenly, everything in the world feels very deep and profound . . .and scary. The girl you have a crush on is reading Siddhartha – she has a dog named Govinda and you don’t exist. Next year you’re going to turn 18 and you’re supposed to register for the Draft. People are protesting, a lot. You’ve heard about Vietnam – you can’t help but hear about Vietnam, almost every day, almost everywhere. You aren’t crazy about the prospect of getting drafted and going into the Army, or the Marines. You are starting to realize life is complicated and it’s more than getting a drivers license. You aren’t sure you’re up for this – you don’t have any choice. You wish it was 1964 again.
And while contemplating the universe and life in general, there was always radio to provide some sort of background, no matter how odd or inappropriate it may have seemed at the time – it was just there and it was distracting, even if for a few seconds. And to give you some idea of what that distraction was all about, here’s a little under two hours of KYA from December 9, 1967 as a reminder.
