I doubt anyone who was born during the "Reagan Years" would have any vague idea of what this is all about.
Popular culture has moved so far, so fast and the mainstream aspect of that culture has become so compartmentalized, marginalized and abandoned that listening to this entry may seem downright strange to you.
And hearing his tape again I realize just how far removed we are today from that period of time in our popular culture where the Disc Jockey actually served as a sort of Town Crier and imparter of wisdom and musical taste.
In 1967 we had AM radio and AM radio had B. Mitchel Reed, who was one of the most popular disc jockey's in Southern California. A transplanted New Yorker, whose reputation had been cemented at another Top-40 AM radio station, WMCA. Reed was a cornerstone and a bridge between the staid music business of the time and the bubbling under counter-culture in search of the alternative. And it was probably because of his pioneering spirit in the area of free-form radio that made such a dent in audiences growing up in the mid-late 1960's in California.
Here is one hour of B. Mitchel Reed on KFWB from July 15, 1967. We swore by him.
