My KPFA - A Historical Footnote
By the time of the UC Berkeley Vietnam Teach-In, KPFA had practically become the Hansard of on-campus campaigns. Telephone lines were duly installed and most of the events were broadcast live or in delayed transmission. My own most vivid memory is of Norman Mailer’s stunning diatribe, going out live while I was the announcer/engineer on duty, taking the air-check that would be its ultimate record. As Mailer’s language became more extravagantly scatalogical, I got a phone call from station manager Al Partridge, directing me to take him off the air—the speech would go out later suitably emasculated. I was furious, but I knew that Al was right; obscenity had been used repeatedly by our enemies in high places as a whip to beat us with.
This documentary on two LPs was put together for Folkways by Louis Menashe, who subsequently incorporated its content into a book on the US academic teach-in phenomenon [Teach-Ins: U.S.A.: Reports, Opinions, Documents. Edited by Louis Menashe and Ronald Radosh. NY: Praeger, 1967]. KPFA is duly credited. Rather than trying to cram in sound bites from every participant, Menashe wisely chose to present lengthy excerpts from the most important speeches. The 12-page booklet that accompanied it included both background information and a complete transcript. It’s available here to print pape-by-page in jpeg [In Print Preview, set margins to 1mm and scale to fit page]:
003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009, 010, 011, 012, 013, 014
Here are the speakers in mp3 format (except for the last three, which I don’t have). Several can be heard in their entirety on the UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project.
:
SIDE A
001 Band 1: Professor Staughton Lynd 10’15”
002 Band 2: Professor Aaron Wildavsky 5’15”
003 Band 3: Robert Scheer 5:45”
004 Band 4: Paul Potter 9’45”
SIDE B
005 Band 1: Paul Krassner 4’55”
006 Band 2: Bob Parris 3’55”
007 Band 3: Dr. Benjamin Spock 3:45”
008 Band 4: I. F. Stone 6’20”
009 Band 5: M. S. Arnoni 5'30"
SIDE C
010 Band 1: Norman Mailer
011 Band 2: Mario Savio
012 Band 3: Dick Gregory