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In a society where information is transmitted in a mass media—and where “the medium is the message”—the underground energies of the proverbial “revolution from below” where transformed into radio air-waves and amplified in the appropriate element for this psychic landscape (psyche: literally breath, the soul, or vital animating force within living beings; spirit, divine spark). The psyche to the Greeks was made of air, but also had a special relationship to fire, since it was an animating life force. Thus for Plato, in his discussion of “soul” used the Empedoclean quaternary of elements (earth, water, air, fire), as water is related to earth, so is air to fire. And Heraclitus recognized both psyche and fire as universal and all-inclusive. Once more, this same relationship of elements was (according to the Stoic concept of the “world soul”) mirrored in the outer world. Thus, “heavenly fire” made up the what Greek philosophers called “ether.” Now, though no longer called such, it is this same medium that carries the electromagnetic waves occurring on the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Again, in the sixties the primal energies from below—Dionysian energies—where called forth and amplified in the appropriate medium for this “psychic” landscape—underground radio. The subterranean rumblings of the 1950s culminated in the volcanic eruption that was the 1960s. Social critics and scholars of the period have pointed out that the era was marked by a unique convergence of elements, an agglomeration seldom witnessed. Thus began the brief but glorious life span of one of the audio medium’s most remarkable programming phenomenon—”underground radio” (also known as freeform, alternative, and progressive radio). The underground radio phenomenon was as much a product of the turbulent times as it was a reaction to the numbing status quo prevalent in the broadcast industry. The young generation of the sixties, unlike the next generation, who grew up on TV, grew up with radio. The underground of social discontent of the times needed a mass outlet and a voice. Thus, it was underground radio that shaped the revolutionary musical sensibilities of those who came of age in the sixties. It is this underground radio fiery signal that reaches our ears through radio waves, where
“crimson flames tied through my ears.”
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