Sacramento used to have an FM radio station called KZAP ("98.5, nearly up to normal!") that was technically on the air from 1968 to 1992, but was only truly special from its beginning until late 1978. New owners wanted the big bucks and took it from a very interesting station that played a wide variety of music to one that just played the same ultra-popular stuff over and over. About the only classy thing they ever did was to play the very same song when they signed off for the last time in 1992 that had been played for the 1968 sign on ("Christo Redentor" by Harvey Mandel).
So, depending on how you want to count it, they've been gone for either 23 years or 37.
That changed on Saturday, July 4. Quite a few people from both versions of the station worked quietly for a couple years to start it back up again as a community, listener-supported station. Broadcast-wise, they've only got a 100 watt mono signal on 93.3. It comes in great where I live, but it's clear that most listeners will be using the stream at
http://k-zap.org.
They were quad for a while in the 1970s...I didn't have any decoding ability at the time, but I remember noticing the echoed vocals on "Us and Them" bouncing back and forth and (even though I was listening on a mono clock radio at the time!) had a major WTF moment one night when they played the quad version of Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools".
The reincarnation isn't quite as genre promiscuous as the old one was (at least, not during the day--I have yet to listen overnight), but they're about a hundred times more consistently interesting than anything else around here. Right now they're playing "Hold Your Head Up" and earlier they were playing the new Ringo Starr. While I might like a bit more genre variety, they're definitely not afraid to mix the old with the new. There are no real commercials and the yapping is kept to a minimum--just enough to let you know that there are real people programming what you're hearing.
And a couple days ago they played Dan Hicks' "I Scare Myself", so at least on the stream (which, unlike the broadcast, is stereo) they were in quad again.
