Remembering Radio Free Hawaii

radio-free-hawaii

The summer of 1995. Bill Clinton was president. A First Class stamp cost $0.32. The first Boeing 777 entered service for United Airlines, and Joe Montana announced that he was retiring from football. I was 20 years old, very much in love with my girlfriend (now wife), and living in Hilo. I loved Hilo, but one thing I desperately missed about life in Honolulu was Radio Free Hawaii.

Radio Free Hawaii was the soundtrack of my young life. Launched in 1991, I was heading into my senior year of high school when the “radio revolution” caught on like wildfire… at least among the contrarian, mainstream-shunning crowd. The station had ballot boxes in music stores (music stores!) across the state, and they would play anything — and I mean anything — that people voted up the charts.

The station was an absolute phenomenon. Everyone I knew listened to it, and Radio Free Hawaii brought concerts to Honolulu that featured bands that would otherwise have never given our rock in the middle of the ocean a second thought. The “Big Mele” concerts, held in the mind-bogglingly beautiful cradle of Kualoa Ranch, have yet to be matched. (If only GoPro cameras were around back then.)

Then, the unthinkable happened. In 1994, the station’s owners decided to switch to another format. Radio Free Hawaii was gone. The airwaves were dominated by Boys II Men, TLC, Brian Adams and Madonna. In Hilo, radio was playing reggae. Lots and lots and lots of reggae. It was horrible.

Fortunately, the station’s owners knew they’d made a mistake pretty quickly, and by the spring of 1995, Radio Free Hawaii was resurrected. Music geeks cheered. The ballot boxes returned. Sure, Madonna and other superstars sometimes made the charts, but so did NOFX. Dance Hall Crashers. Perry Como. Vivaldi.

Of course, I was still drowning in Bob Marley in Hilo, so on visits home, I would fill cassette tapes with Radio Free Hawaii broadcasts. Whatever I could gather, usually on the weekend, which were when the week’s countdowns were announced. I’d return to Hilo, and play Radio Free Hawaii while my sweetheart and I made frequent, long drives over to the Kona side. I think Jen may have liked my Radio Free Hawaii tapes more than the mix tapes (mix tapes!) that I’d make her.

Fast forward nearly twenty years. Radio Free Hawaii, which went off the air for good in 1997, was just a distant memory. My girl and I are now married with three kids, living in Mililani, and desperately trying to dig ourselves out from under years of packrat clutter. When my youngest son’s school announced that there would be an “e-cycling” pickup for old electronics, I tackled the corner of the family room where our old Sony sound system was falling apart.

I was handing the dual cassette deck over to the recycling staff when my son noticed there was a tape in the machine. Well, he actually just said, “What’s that?” Because what’s a cassette tape to a ten year old?

radio-free-hawaii-tape

There it was. a 100-minute (I liked weird tape lengths) tape labeled “Misc. Radio Free Hawaii.” I was delighted, then instantly worried. Had I been using the tape for something else, maybe recording over history with a Broadway musical? And how was I going to find out what was on the tape, having just given away the rusty hulk of the last machine in the house that could play it?

I posted a photo of the tape to Facebook. I was immediately invited to join the I Loved Radio Free Hawaii group, which has over 1,600 members who all thought to look for such a group on Facebook before I did. There I found many, many other nostalgic Radio Free Hawaii fans (and more than a few former deejays and staffers) sharing their memories, photos, and audio clips. They urged me to find out what was on my tape.

Fortunately, I happen to spend a lot of time at a radio station teeming with a lot of old-school audiophiles. And my fellow Mililani High School graduate and friend Jason Taglianetti, HPR’s multimedia production manager, was happy to help me tap into the ancient artifact I’d found.

This cassette tape, one of dozens I used to have, contains audio from a random Saturday morning Top 36 countdown. Just hearing the voices, let alone the music, took me right back to those probably overly romanticized days.

In the summer of 1995, the Radio Free Hawaii team was still giddy about the station’s resurrection. Here’s a special song recorded to celebrate the occasion, “Radio Free is Back.”

The “Radio Revolution” not only allowed you to vote for or against songs, but you could also nominate a track for “the sledgehammer.” And yes, the song would indeed be smashed to smithereens, live on the air. But like all democracies, there were checks and balances, and before a song could get sledgehammered, seven consecutive callers would have to confirm its sentence. Here’s the fourth time the song “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex was on deck.

One of the things my indiscriminate recording also preserved was the commercial breaks. It’s fascinating listening to radio ads from twenty years ago, including a positively somber Father’s Day message from Ala Moana Center, and an unimaginably good airfare deal from Mahalo Airlines.

If you’re like me, though, you probably just want to listen to this Radio Free Hawaii broadcast as it aired in 1995. So I uploaded both sides of the tape. Unfortunately, out of an abundance of caution, I’ve faded out the actual music, reducing a 100-minute tape to about 40 minutes of studio chatter. But still… those voices take me back. Hopefully you’ll be transported, too.

Radio Free Hawaii – Summer 1995 – Side 1 by Hawaii on Mixcloud

Radio Free Hawaii – Summer 1995 – Side 2 by Hawaii on Mixcloud

(And because the audio embedded in this blog post will only work so long as the services on which the audio is hosted on stick around, I’ve also uploaded MP3s to the Internet Archive for safekeeping.)

Bumper sticker image from Franchon Luke in the I Loved Radio Free Hawaii group on Facebook.

13 Responses

  1. mel says:

    1. When 102.7 FM switched away from RFH in 1994, the format was turned into classic rock “The Blaze”.
    2. When the station was sold in March 1997 the format changed to some kind of light R & B along with different call letters.
    3. True to form Radio Free Hawaii played anything that got a significant amount of votes including the Partridge Family which my friends and I voted for many times until the count accumulated that one song had to be included on a Top 36 chart, all of which I am slowly uploading to the RFH Facebook page.

  2. Aaron says:

    Some friends and I started a Radio Free Hawaii Spotify playlist: http://open.spotify.com/user/1269933582/playlist/4EcceIu2BWxnm0k5f0KKqa

  3. Aaron says:

    oh, and my worst memory of Radio Free Hawaii was when the RFH crew lost the flag football game to their AM counterparts from the country music station and RFH had to broadcast country music for a couple of days. My second worst memory was RFH going off the air for good right before the last Dark Horse report where my band was supposed to have cracked the top 50 and made rotation for the week…

  4. jack says:

    Thanks for posting. I loved Radio Free Hawaii as I lived there from ’92 – ’95. Maybe you can help as I have been trying to remember a tune, but have not been able to find it online… the lyrics go, “Come with me, down to Waikiki. I’ll show you a place never meant to be… Too many people. Not enough sand (?) Can’t you see that we want our land (back)…Why should I grumble, in this concrete jungle…” Grateful if you can remember this. Thanks again.

  5. Joel says:

    Radio Free Hawaii was the biggest musical influence on my life to this day. It was the greatest radio station period. They played and supported local bands like my silly high school ska band and helped to create a thriving music scene in Hawaii. I have such fond memories of the station, the events that promoted and the bands and shows they sponsored and played.

  6. Mark says:

    Anybody know this song?!

    In 11/94, when RFH went off the air, there was a song in heavy rotation that had a dance beat, the only lyrics being mostly scat, and a refrain “Let it Rain.” I think the instrumentation was mostly a muted trumpet. They also played it at the Honolulu clubs.

  7. Jason Ochranek says:

    Radio Free Hawaii. The most influential thing in my music life. Thanks so much for posting the audio, going have to record it and cut it into some playlists. Also the spotify playlists linked in the comments are awesome. It’s a shame the Autocakes commercial can’t be put on it!

  8. Truly inspiring to the point where I’d started Radio Alchemy here on the Big Island which has now morphed into KONA -100.5 LPFM. Tonight did a tribute to KDEO on air as it is now the day after the release of Norm Winter’s book “The Radio Revolution”. In my mind’s eye, there are people who are hungry for this kind of station which really was more a movement. I would encourage anyone with the spark to join Radio Alchemy. It can be programmed from anywhere on (or off) the island though it is broadcast on FM only in KONA, it is around the world.

  9. David Hetzler says:

    I lived on Oahu from 91-94 and loved RFH. I even went to the flag football game mentioned above. I will be heading back to Hawaii in about a month and I will definitely be remembering how much RFH influenced me. I still play my Roots Natty Roots CD.

  10. Iris Andrade says:

    Recently, I’ve been in a time warp back to 1991 & 92… the first years of Radio Free goodness thanks to a fellow Radio Free listener–and collector–who uploaded most of that first year of Surveys/Hawaiian Island Music Reports. I also remembered your post on the Facebook group: I Loved Radio Free Hawaii (KDEO 102.7fm) about finding this mixtape but I ended up listening to it today… with the only Survey/Report I kept in front of me realizing that your recording was of the same Survey/Report, no. 186! The Time warp is because I ended up creating spotify playlists for ALL the reports! I just finished tonight. https://open.spotify.com/user/irisa27/playlist/79fnyO6eR2vInyRgVA4jSW?si=TnQcvdzqREWGfqx5LwUC0A This is the all encompassing playlist, but typing in Radio Free Hawaii or RFH and checking out the Playlists that pop up will give you all what I’ve put together separated by Report, Song Discovery, New Music Show and even sledgehammers/least wanted songs just to gather some input on what we wanted to meet the Sherriff’s axe!… although towards the 40’s I ended up stopping on the Top Artists… maybe I’ll work on those, or maybe I won’t. Like the Frente song, Labour of Love, this definitely was a labor of love!

  11. Iris Andrade says:

    …also, this message is for Jack… the song he’s looking for was by Brother Noland, Song Discovery on the 44th Hawaiian Island Report entitled: “Look What They’ve Done.”

  1. February 7, 2015

    […] Remembering Radio Free Hawaii. (Hawaii Blog) […]

  2. March 26, 2019

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