Remember album-oriented rock? For about twenty years, from the early seventies until the early nineties, boomers and GenXers thrived on the genre, which played a relatively wide variety of rock and roll, mostly popular tunes with a few deeper cuts thrown. We're are talking Led Zeppelin, Allman Brothers Band, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, Jethro Tull, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Yes...the list goes on and on. And you could talk to the disc jockeys by calling the studio line, so when we wanted to hear the Allman's Blue Sky or Statesboro Blues, or it was dawn after a long night and only Yes' Heart of the Sunrise would serve the moment, most of the jock would comply with your request. Every major radio market across the country had at least two of these station, and in the case of Hartford, where I grew up, we had three--WCCC, WHCN, and the best of the lot, WPLR. These stations served as our soundtrack whenever we were in the car, and as home portable electronics exploded in the late seventies and early eighties, they became portable for the beach or around a campfire.

Saturday nights on these stations often featured live concerts, and you could often hear these shows on unlikely named King Biscuit Flower Hour. Originally, the King Biscuit Flour Company had produced the venerable live Blues show King Biscuit Time, which had begun in the local Helena , Arkansas' KFFA in 1941. This was a 30-minute live show that featured artists like featured blues artists Sonny Boy Williamson II, Pinetop Perkins, and Robert Lockwood, Jr.. It is said that later great musicians such as James Cotton, BB King, Ike Turner, and Levon Helm were all inspired by this early program.

With the changing musical tastes that the sixties and early seventies brought on moved on the rock in 1973 with the new King Biscuit Flower Hour, a one-hour, syndicated show that featured a huge variety of music. The first show was broadcast in early 1973, and featured Blood, Sweat & Tears, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Bruce Springsteen. As time went on, the show successfully introduced audiences with new artists, and tracked the emerging New Wave scene of the early 80s. With the advent of compact discs, the owners began publishing some of the shows in CD format, which were sold in record stores.

The King Biscuit Flower Hour show was eventually part of a series that the syndicator D.I.R eventually produced, delivering programming to 5 million young people on 200 radio stations. their programs included---The King Biscuit Flower Hour, British Biscuit, The Best of Biscuit, Conversations, The Way It Went Down, Sugar Hill, and Live From The Bottom Line.

All right, you ask, they were great shows, but that was almost 50 years ago, who cares about them in 2022? Enter yet another fine music website with the same name: the King Biscuit Flower Hour. There is a huge variety of live shows, that you can stream for free. The concerts are broken out into a number of genres: Favorites, Rock, Blues & Soul, Jazz, Country, Folk & Bluegrass, Indie, Comedy, and Interviews. There are also some great playlist that include The British Invasion, Buffalo Springfield Alumni, Back to School, and Great Guitar Riffs that deliver the music like a live version of Pandora. There is enough her for anyone to listen for weeks on end. Who knows, maybe you or someone you know was at one of these shows.

I am constantly amazed at the variety of live music you can find on the Internet. The King Biscuit Flower Hour website is no exception. Head to this site and you can access and stream many of those shows either on your phone or your laptop. Bluetooth the tunes into a speaker, and you are game on for a party soundtrack. Head on over to the website at www.kingbiscuit.com. and enjoy some of the greatest shows in late 20th century music.