KJHK Lore - The Lou Reed ID

Here's another KJHK relic: The Lou Reed ID. Like many of the artist ID's in the studio, No one seems to remember how it got recorded. There are four possibilities:

1) A field recording was made at a concert venue.
2) A production room recording was made following a live in-studio interview.
3) An ID was recorded over the phone.
4) A reel of tape may have arrived from the record company as part of a promo package in support of a album.

There are several well-known examples of field-recorded KJHK IDs: drops from the members of X, and the Go-Go's were recognizable as field recordings by the amount noise in the background. Our Lou Reed mention is recorded in quiet surroundings. So it's not a field recording.

We had a few phone IDs. My favorite was from Patti Smith, who identified the station correctly, but seemed to say "in Lawrence Canyon" instead of Lawrence, Kansas. Phone lines have limited fidelity and Lou is obviously in front of a microphone and not a handset.

I can't rule out a visit to Sudler annex. Lou played in Lawrence and Kansas City in the late 70s and early 80s, but it seems unlikely that Mr. Velvet Underground would be available for the college radio handshake tour. He just didn't need it.

That leaves the fourth option: the promo tape from the record company. The probability of this was reinforced by the fact that KJHK had other unsolicited IDs in its collection: Ace Frehley from KISS and Nikki Six from Motley Crue. We never played KISS or Crue records so why did we have the IDs? For years I never knew. I figured they were bogus. When I located some copies of these old IDs, the Frehley ID was included and after listening to it again and then seeing an interview with Ace on VH-1's "When KISS ruled the world" I am convinced that we had the real Frehley on tape.

I believe the KJHK Lou Reed ID was a gift of sorts from his record company and that he spent an afternoon in the studio reading a list of similiar IDs for stations all across the country. They were mastered to Reel-to-reel tape, dubbed onto five inch reels and distributed. A few stations like KJ treasured them. I suspect most were discarded. If you know more, drop a line.