A Tribute Site to the
Fabled Radio of
KABN 830 AM
The Voice of the People
Long Island, Big Lake, Ak
by W.J. Lynus O'Brien

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KABN RADIO arrow DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
Friday, 03 September 2010
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
RADIO FREE BIG LAKE -- or what a long strange trip it's been PDF   E-mail
Written by W.J. Lynus O'Brien   
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Thinking back on it, I wonder? Would I change it if I could? Would I take it all back? Even after all these years I'm not yet able to answer that question. But what I do know, what I can tell you, giving it straight from the heart, is this, that night in 1980 during my weekly bath in the old #3 wash tub I began a journey that took me down a path from which there was no coming back.

I'd started dancing around the cabin and doing air guitar listening to KABN while drying off when one of my all-time favorite songs came on and just blew me away. Now you've got to understand, Grateful Dead on AM was unheard of in those days, much less the long twenty-two minute version of Dark Star from the Skull & Roses album, so I was stoked. I'd been tuning around the dial trying to find a decent station since coming into the country (the Northern Interior) fresh up from South East Alaska just four months prior--

I caught KABN... Radio Free Big Lake -- Your Voice In The Valley, that night on a strong wave of skip as I twisted the tuner just hoping...

Had it not been for the particular alignment of stars and moon, the magnetic gauss of the Lights and me fiddling with my antenna that day KABN may well have bounced on past me and who knows where I would be today. But it didn't and instead skipped right into my life. Skip being that amazing phenomena AM radio frequency propagation takes on at night, bouncing each wave from earth to the ionosphere and back again in strange erratic touchdowns--tens, hundreds and at times thousands of miles from the transmitter depending on the height of the ionic layer and electrical charge of the air. So I lucked out that night as I had mostly been listening to KJNP (a 50,000 watt Christian station) in North Pole, Alaska, CBC out of Canada or Pravda [the English version (for their own brand of twisted propaganda)] in Moscow. It was nice to hear American rock again, especially with the eclectic spin of what I'd tuned into--

But nonetheless, it was still a damn fluke, the radios we use out in the bush for the long distances encountered in remote Alaska being persnickety at best even if the modifications are done just right. One really earns bragging rights if you end up with good reception. I'd already adapted my little battery powered cheapy with the requisite lead wires out from the antenna and ground terminals on the rheostat inputs, now I was experimenting with the directional tune of the long wire end-fed antenna, it ideally being aligned perpendicular to the transmitter and of one-half wave-length for optimal reception. Of which my antenna was neither, but like I said, everything in the sky was in alignment that night and I suppose it was all meant to be I reckon.

So down the rabbit hole I went, looking first at my maps that night, the next day lengthening the antenna by about 500 feet and tuning for the only Big Lake I'd found, way up in the Brooks Range, thinking there must be some real gonzos in that small enclave (population about 20) that had a hair up their ass. And was disappointed by bad reception that night?

Back to the drawing board, I was new to Alaska, only a little over two and a-half years under my belt in the Northland, part of it spent back Outside seeing Doctors about arthritis (and that fact is critical to the story later on) even though I was still young. After hours through my topo-maps and others, I finally found a more plausible Big Lake in answer to what by now was my obsession. Dammit! I was going to hear that station again even if I had to put the antenna on top of a fucking mountain.

The object of my desire eventually spotted a few miles north of a place called Wasilla on a regular old road map about forty-miles north of Anchorage I hadn't even first thought to look at, being so far into the woods and only vaguely aware of outside influence in my mindset. The station, as I said, just outside of what those around the area call, Wasilly, the entire area exploding in new obscene development along the Parks Highway to accommodate the influx of people flocking North for the sustained boom that changed Alaska, after the big boom that made it all happen--the rough-living Pipeliners now being displaced by city slickers showing up for all the damn Government Bureaucrat positions being created and the pen-pushin' piss-willie middle men reaping the harvest multiplying with an economy kicked into high gear by the high-octane royalties paid to the State from every barrel of crude oozing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Far worse than drunk sailors. Speculation the word of the day.

And I duly tuned towards Anchorage when it was daylight, having to cut and bushwhack a brand new trail to string up the nearly 600 feet of antenna wire out through the bush, as I needed a South by Southwest axis good for 500 miles, instead of the 100 miles to the imaginary station on a North by Northwest tangent I had aligned to the day before, laughing about what a goon I had been for being so bushy at this point I'd actually thought someone would be gonzo enough to have a radio station up in The Brooks Range. With my youth, and the Alaska I'd come to, seeming at the time, like anything was possible, it was not an outlandish notion to me. And in actuality I had no idea how whacked it could really get--but I was to find out...

For the station may as well have been way deep in the bush, 'cause these KABN folks I was listening to were crazy, way out there (the building was in fact down a mile long road off the highway, that at times was impassible, one having to walk in through the cold snow, rain and mud many times in the Spring and Fall). Not a huge problem. Most of the volunteer D.J's and builders of the station being hard scrabble homesteader types that had bought property around the area. Everyone of that sort intent of making a success of their independence, and willing to endure. All with such diverse talents it seemed a treasure. Some good, some bad, some just plain outstanding for their jobs, like Roger Leff, A.T. Wiggins and Kathy O., among many other unique voices. But this is ahead of the story. I was still just trying to receive this controlled chaos on my cheap little radio every night.

Within two and a-half days I had it dialed in--

Unless the Northern Lights went bonkers most times getting reception that would fade in and out with the night constant changing waves. Great! Perfect! Given the sparseness of a woodsman's life, I was in bliss. Bluegrass, folk, country, pop, classics and classical, plus rock with the Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, and so many bands that I loved.

Tom Locke (the manager, and later owner of the station) and Kathy O. (the program manager and Tom's wife to be [but not at that time]) giving pretty much free rein to the D.J.'s and Newsman to do what they wanted on their shifts, as long as they kept it clean. It was pretty eclectic--the bluegrass of one show segued into the head banger thrash of another, not always a pleasant experience, but most often transitions much more in sync. There were the Weather Reports from a personal perspective, i.e., looking out the window, or as Billy Hale was known to do, rappelling off the third floor balcony to look up into the heavens and discuss the cold Aurora lit sky--the News Reports always a little off beat and sometimes falling apart completely with pilot error or mechanical malfunction. The advertisements were hilarious, beautifully done little home grown ditties for the local Matanuska-Suisitna borough businesses cool enough with the wackiness, and laid back attitude to advertise with us. But again that is premature, I was not yet in on the inside.

It was awesome stuff--almost all of it live, with the attendant bloopers out on the airwaves in front of God and everyone before they could stop it. Late night hot mics a constant source of legendary fuck ups. Yeah, the station had made quite a name for itself by now...

I was hooked--

And there had to be more girls around those digs than what I'd had a chance at in the previous six years of hard mountain living. With the next mush into Circle City on the Yukon I dropped a letter in the mail, got drunk with the Indians and told them all about it. They couldn't get what I was sensing, but there was something in the air, my life was about to take new directions--I could feel it...

To be continued with next post.

[Please read Author's Note about The KABN Chronicles blog posts]

Always on the long trail, even when standing still, Tobias Stewart

 
by W.J. Lynus O'Brien ~ November 23--2008
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  1. November 23 -- 2008 ~ RADIO FREE BIG LAKE -- or what a long strange trip it's been

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MAPS & OTHER LINKS

WHERE THE LEGEND BEGAN
WHAT BECAME OF IT ALL?
THE FIRE THAT TOOK IT AWAY

The Famous A.T. & Chris

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