It Was All Just Rock-'n'-Roll II: A Return to the Center of the Radio & Concert Universe

I enjoyed the book very much. Growing up in Federal Way during the 60's it was fun reminiscing about "KJR Seattle, channel 95". I learned that beyond the "sex, drugs and rock & roll" Pat O'Day was very much about customer service and gave countless examples of doing the right thing throughout his book.

If you grew up in the 60's and 70's with Seattle radio and the local dance and band scene, here's your book. Pat wrote a good one and I hope he finds time to do another. He didnt get it all because he couldnt possibly fit it all in. It also helps if you were a a radio person on the inside during that time to fully understand what that industry was going thru. Its was the swan song of AM broadcasting as a music medium. FM was right on its tail.. I met Pat when I was about 13-14 years old when a friend of mine and myself (we were considered early day geeks) wanted to go see what a 5000 watt transmitter looked like. We somehow got down to West Seattle to KJR and hounded and badgered the hell out of a poor receptionist with a million questions for an hour before she grabbed an employee who happened to be walking thru the station to take over. That employee was Pat O' Day. He spent a part of his afternoon showing us the station and all the (at that time) cool gadgets and gizmo's that made it all go together. We were blown away by it all. Never got to see the transmitter but we didnt care. That moment for me was instrumental in me getting into that business for a few years in the early 70's. THis book brings it all back. Pat will go down in Seattle history as being our own Alan Freed. Or better yet, our own Dick Clark. So many of those bands, some that still play today, you would never have heard of if it hadnt been for Pat and Concerts West. He personalized the rock entertainment industry in Seattle. Not to be compard with the awful, sanatized and over done over cost over budget way it is all done now in the world of ticketmaster etal. You'll like this book if you grew up on Seattle radio and its people. Pat talks about most all of them in one regard or another. What fun and torture it all must have been...

Having grown up in the Northwest, when I saw It Was All Just Rock n Roll II in the bookstore, I couldn't wait to read it. Evidently, the first version was filled with editorial mistakes, as well as some inaccuracies. This edition still contains some grammatical and factual errors, but it's relatively clean. Pat O'Day was huge in Seattle when I was a teenager, and when I had to leave the area in 1969, other than my family and some friends, he was probably what I missed most about the Puget Sound. As O'Day mentions in his book, Seattle's KJR was blessed with many excellent DJ's, but there was only one Pat O'Day, and he was without a doubt, the King of disc jockeys in this part of the country. My subsequent travels around the country led me to believe that he was truly the best during his 1960-1974 hey day. It was Pat O'Day who inspired me to enter radio and forsake an effort at taking my own stab at becoming a rock and roll musician. No, instead I opted to become a radio disc jockey, and make no mistake, I wanted to be another Pat O'Day. I had my day in radio, though it wouldn?t be in the Pacific Northwest, and I never reached the heights of Pat O'Day or any of the other fine dj's at KJR. I desperately wanted to give this book five stars. However, being an English teacher, and a harsh critic of biographical writing, I am only able to offer four. It Was All Just Rock n Roll excels in several areas, but fails miserably in a few along the way. The good points are many. For one, and this is actually a big deal, the book is of extremely high quality. The paper is very expensive, heavy, somewhat glossy, and very nicely textured. The binding is some of the best I've ever seen, and the book's end covers are made of highly durable material, though not leather, of course. This book will not fall apart. The information contained in the book is very interesting for those of us who have worked in radio, concerts, etc, and/or lived in the Northwest. O'Day gives some great insight into the world of radio, though he doesn't spend enough time discussing KJR or it's evolution. The sections on Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, BTO, and Three Dog Night are very entertaining, and perhaps too short. He tells a wonderfully amusing story about a brush with the mafia, that to be honest, had me wondering. The early years of Northwest rock and roll are covered well, but could have been more fully explored, and it would have been great to have heard from the legends of the day, such as Merrilee Rush, Gerald Rosalie, and Buck Ormsby, to say nothing of other djs from KJR or even KOL. He does give some great info about the Spanish Castle dance club from the early to mid sixties. This place was only a legend in my mind, as it was too far away for me to attend any of the dances, and reading about it really brought back my teenaged desires of wishing I had been there. It was very interesting finding out that Pat O'Day began Concerts West, a promotional company