I grew up in northwestern Missouri. It isn't exactly musical Siberia, but it wasn't always easy to listen to good music there, either, especially when you were a kid without much money to buy what you wanted. Sometime in the late 1960's, I first tuned in to KAAY, "the mighty 1090", a high-powered AM-radio station broadcasting from Little Rock, Arkansas. I could also get KRLD from Dallas occasionally, and if I was lucky, one of the not-too-close college FM stations, but KAAY was my primary conduit for the music that transcended the stuff that began to pass for music once the sixties died out. You could hear the good songs on the coasts, I think, and near the colleges, but DJ "Clyde Clifford" was king of the Midwest for those of us who liked to leave the mainstream. His show was called "Beaker Street" and from 1966 to 1972, ran late nights on KAAY, usually in the 11 pm to 2 am time slot.
Much of this music he played is now mainstream, in part due to his efforts. "Underground Rock" eventually became "Classic Rock" and joined the mainstream, and because I had listened to it a decade earlier, when most stations of that period wouldn't touch it, I find it boring. Now it gets played, or more precisely a small fraction of it gets overplayed, everywhere, all the time.
Anyway, there's a website devoted to the legendary Beaker Street. The web address is www.beakerstreet.com; you might be able to find them there. "Clyde", whose real name is Dale Seidenschwarz, now hosts Beaker Street on Sunday evenings at an Arkansas FM station that webcasted until the RIAA drove them and almost all other American webcasting stations to cover. He generally avoids the overplayed stuff, playing old songs from the underground/progressive era that don't get much play, and newer music from artists like Oingo Boingo and Trout Fishing in America, who didn't exist then, but would have fit the genre if they had. I credit Beaker Street for permanently warping my taste in music and thank Clyde profusely for having done it. I think he's one of the main reasons that I am a night owl, too.
When the host station decided to stop webcasting, Clyde wanted to continue providing his music to his fans worldwide. He removed the advertising from recent recordings of his show and bundled what was left into one-hour .mp3 segments, which could be downloaded. When I saw that he was doing this a few weeks ago, I wondered how long it would be before he was knocked off the web. I may have my answer - yesterday morning (this was June 4, 2001) at 6 am, the Beaker Street site was down and it was still down as of 6 pm today. At this point, I don't know what happened. Maybe it's just a glitch or perhaps the site was shut down. Since you won't see this for several weeks, the site may be back by then, or an explanation may be posted. In any case, I'll be looking for information, and watching for the site to return, and will keep you posted on what happened once I find out.
Postscript - within a few hours after I posted the article, Beaker Street was back - no explanation and apparently no shutdown.
CATBAR - Brain Candy #47 - Beaker Street / Brian Rock / Jun 26 2001