Note 1/20/2006: the files will not derive into MP3/Ogg's - there's something wrong with the original wave files preventing this, so this show cannot be streamed in the current condition. Sorry!
THE CELESTIAL JUKEBOX (Special Radio Flashback Edition "The Phil 'n' Jerry Show" April 1967)
A long, long time ago -- before many of you were born -- there was a wondrous thing called "progressive" or "free-form" radio. These were the days when rock radio stations were programmed by people who actually knew and loved music, rather than the accountants and marketing analysts who now control the airwaves. During this time it was possible to hear, in a single program, music by artists as diverse as the Beatles, Ravi Shankar and Miles Davis, to name but a few, picked and played by DJs who spoke to, rather than at, their audience. One of the pioneering stations in this adventurous era of radio was KMPX-FM in San Francisco, which was instrumental in letting the world know about the explosion of great music in the Bay Area in the late 60s.
One fine April evening in 1967, the station's co-founder, the legendary Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue, invited Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia to play guest DJ on his nightly KMPX show. Phil and Jerry discussed the Grateful Dead's then-brand-new debut album (they promised the next one would be much better!), as well as such arcane topics as a top-secret military project to develop a "sound gun" that could kill or maim everyone for miles around with super-low-frequencies. Best of all, they brought along some of their favorite records to play on the air. As you might expect, it was a most unpredictable batch of tunes indeed.
The following is a playlist from Phil and Jerry's guest DJ shift, as broadcast on KMPX-FM in San Francisco, sometime during the last week of April, 1967.