Voicemail for the request line is:  646-504-6144    **It has recently changed**

Well, boys and girls, after a 10-month hiatus, Happy Hour has returned to the airwaves.  😉  (To the left, you see a screenshot of the RadioBoss software that I use.)  Several people had asked for HH to return, so I brought it back.  However, now, its music format will remain the same, but the schedule will be every other week, with previously recorded broadcasts on the off weeks.  Enjoy, and don’t forget to let me know if you want to hear a particular band.  I shall do my best to accomodate.  This return broadcast, will feature three bands never before broadcast on Happy Hour.

Lynyrd Skynyrd  – 1975-11-06 – Cardiff, Wales, The Unreleased KBFH  [PreFM]

Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band that is best known for popularizing the Southern Rock genre.  In the summer of 1964, teenage friends Ronnie Van Zant, Bob Burns, Allen Collins, Gary Rossington, and Larry Junstrom, formed the earliest incarnation of the band in Jacksonville, Florida as My Backyard. The band then changed its name to The Noble Five.  The band used different names before using One Percent during 1968.  In 1969, Van Zant sought a new name. The group settled on Leonard Skinnerd, a mocking tribute to a physical-education teacher at Robert E. Lee High School.  The more distinctive spelling Lynyrd Skynyrd was being used as early as 1970.  Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines died in an airplane crash in 1977, putting an abrupt end to the band’s most popular form.  This bootleg finds Skynyrd at their peak in Cardiff, Wales on 11/06/75.  (This was before Steve and Cassie Gaines joined the band on guitar/vocals and backup vocals, respectively.  This broadcast was recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour.

Steve Miller Band  – 2010.11.15 – Duesseldorf, Germany  [SBD]

The Steve Miller Band is an American rock band formed in 1966 in San Francisco, California.  The band is led by Steve Miller on guitar and lead vocals. It is best known today for a string of mid-1970s hit singles that are staples of classic rock radio, as well as several earlier acid rock albums.  Miller left his first band to move to San Francisco and form the Steve Miller Blues Band. Shortly after Harvey Kornspan negotiated the band’s landmark contract with Capitol/EMI Records in 1967, the band shortened its name to the Steve Miller Band.  Their third album, Brave New World,  featured the song Space Cowboy and My Dark Hour, which was co-written by “Paul Ramon” (alias Paul McCartney) who also played drums, bass and guitar and sang backing vocals.  The style and personnel of the band changed radically with The Joker (#1, 1973), concentrating on straightforward rock and leaving the psychedelic side of the band behind. Three years later, the band returned with the album Fly Like an Eagle, which charted at #3. Three singles were released from the album: Take the Money and Run (#11), Fly Like an Eagle (#2) and their second Number One success, Rock’n Me. Miller credits the guitar intro to Rock’n Me as a tribute to the classic song by Free,  All Right Now.

Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe  – 1989.08.28 – Houston, TX  [Ex-AUD]

When Jon Anderson, disenchanted with the new direction that Yes was taking, announced his departure from the band after the huge 1987-88 Big Generator tour, very few people knew what the man had in mind for the future of Yes music.  The answer came less than a year later when an official announcement was made that Jon had joined forces with former Yes band members Bill Bruford, Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe to sign with Arista Records and form a new group named simply Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe.  With the task of getting Yes music back on track again, ABWH set off to record their only studio album. Completed in the summer of 1989, this album recaptured the magic of the early Yes albums these four men created in the early seventies, and, once released, gained worldwide fan and critic acclaim.  Strangely enough, the ABWH tour would be the first time that Bill Bruford would perform songs that he had helped to compose on the Close To The Edge album in 1972.