PETALUMA --

Copperfield’s Books welcomes Hank Rosenfeld and Peter Laufer to Petaluma for a live celebration of Hank’s new book - The Jive 95: An Oral History of America's Greatest Underground Rock Radio Station, Ksan San Francisco.

The discussion will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. 

“What made KMPX/KSAN so special was its connection to the community. To the generation. To the culture. It knew its audience because it was part of its audience."  Ben Fong-Torres, Rolling Stone editor and KSAN DJ.

The Jive 95: An Oral History of America's Greatest Underground Rock Radio Station, KSAN San Francisco is an oral history of America's first hippie underground FM station which broadcasted the countercultural consciousness of the '60s and '70s to a new generation. A communal radio band of intrepid hellraisers, pranksters, and drug-enlightened geniuses defined this psychedelic era, from the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park, to the rebellion and bitter end of the late 1970s, which launched the Reagan Revolution.

Founded in San Francisco by Tom Donahue, a 1996 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an entire generation of Americans discovered a new musical universe among dance clubs, light shows and street fests--the original pop-ups. Almost overnight, KSAN became an audio clubhouse, where anyone could belong with friends and the cool cats and hipsters they just met. Rock gods, political stars, and literary celebrities, including Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey, Sly Stone, and John Lennon were all interviewed by founder Tom Donahue and his cohorts, whose listeners "tuned in and turned on" to bands like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Quicksilver, Country Joe and the Fish, Hot Tuna, The Beatles and Santana, among others.

Folk journalist Hank Rosenfeld was there during those final years--writing, producing, and announcing. His warm, funny voice presents a behind-the-mic experience at KSAN, the beloved, "Jive 95," whose delicious dose of enlightened sunshine and 33 rpm LP dreamscapes ignited a radio explosion from coast to coast. So, how did KSAN go from a liberating voice to a corporate cliché? It's all here in Rosenfeld's insightful, hilarious account, which includes countless exclusive interviews with iconic performers and never before available in print or audio form.

Author: Hank Rosenfeld grew up in Detroit, went to college in Connecticut, and moved to San Francisco in the 1970s looking for the Beats. He was a little late to that party. When poet Gregory Corso fell into his taxicab, Hank quit driving and joined "the Jive 95." (KSAN. Greatest. Radio. Station. He'd Ever Heard.) In the "Gnus" Department his mentors were icons like "Scoop" Nisker, Dave McQueen, Larry Bensky and Darryl "The Swami From Miami" Henriques. Hank also produced "The Stephen Capen Morning Product" until 1980, when KSAN switched formats from rock & roll to country & western. Say, wha--? 

Since then, he's been telling stories on NPR, playing pirate on a ship broadcasting music "from somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea," and, while writing a column at The Athens Times, getting arrested for robbing the National Bank of Greece. His folk journalism has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Detroit News, Spy Magazine, NY Post and other fine journals of ill-repute.

The Jive 95 An Oral History of America's Greatest Underground Rock Station, KSAN San Francisco is his fourth book and offers tales to astonish about the Bay Area's beloved FM underground outpost from 1967-1980, told by the original "freaks" & "heads" (& "straights!") who created, out of thin air, radio history. Many Jivers still live in Petaluma and farther-flung parts of Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Alameda, and SF counties. Most retain semi-intact memories.

Journalist, author and professor Peter Laufer reports on borders, identities and migration along with the relationships of humans to other animals. A former and longtime global correspondent for NBC News, he’s covered the requisite wars and earthquakes, coups and elections. His NBC documentary on Americans in prisons overseas received the James Polk Award and his broadcast journalism has won a plethora of other prizes. His books include studies of the Mexican-U.S. frontier crises, the collapse of the Iron Curtain and a natural history quartet that looks at turtles, butterflies, exotic pets and animal abuse. His most recent book is Up Against the Wall: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border and he currently is researching and writing O Say Can We See: Two Extraordinary Decades. That work is based on his cross-America trips immediately after 9/11, ten year later and in the midst of the Trump/pandemic era. Laufer talked butterflies on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, traded migration opinions with Bill O’Reilly on Fox TV, lectured passengers about butterflies on the Queen Mary 2, held forth of CSPAN’s “Book TV” about soldiers opposed to the Iraq invasion and headlined at regarding turtles at Toronto’s Ideacity conference. Peter Laufer holds the inaugural James Wallace Chair in Journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication where he was awarded the Marshall Prize for teaching innovation. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, and Marin County, California.