1967: The Austin Connection And The Fifth Beatle(s) - Page 3

1967 - Deck Yoes

Biographical information on Mr. Yoes is sparse, amounting to a small hand full of academic records and Texas Observer articles, but he did serve on the KPFT Board Of Directors in 1970, as well as contributed material to the station's early news program Life On Earth.

Screenshots courtesy The Texas Observer archives for March, 1970 and December, 1979.

As the following letter shows, he was also a dear friend of Larry Lee, and while not exactly wildly enthusiastic about a Pacifica station in Houston, was willing to put his shoulder to the wheel for his friends.

Austin, Texas
July 30, 1967

Dear Larry:

It's all wrong, you dropping out of this thing. You are the man who should be at the middle of it, not an old has-been like R.D. or an old never-been like me. Don't you see, man? If I were the kind of person to organized something like this it would have been done already. I've been back here five f---ing years and haven't even finished a lousy thesis yet. If you really want to see this thing take root and actually happen, you should be organizing it.

I'll tell you a little secret. You probably guessed it, already, anyhow. I am not all that interested in a Pacifica station in Houston or elsewhere. It is, as I think I remarked in a previous memo, a twice-told tale for me. I know what's involved in it. It was great when I was twenty-five, a refugee from authoritarianism who knew only that he did not want to collaborate with mindlessness any more. Now that I'm ten years older, the idea of free radio still looks very good but I just don't have the energy; I know too much about how it works and why it is the way it happens to be.

The only reason I got excited about doing the thing in Houston was that you and R.D. were interested in it. If Ronnie is going to play hard-to-get and if you can't work with it, I literally don't know how there could be any satisfaction in it for me. I could do it, like a duty, but that' s what I've done all my  life, and I am in imminent danger of ending my life having done nothing about the other things that are in me and me alone. There are lots of people around who can do some duty or other, but there is only one Deck Yoes, Jr., and there is only one Larry Lee, and their first concern is to foster what is unique  about their existence. Does this make sense? Probably not; at any rate, I am not at all enthusiastic about launching yet another effort at doing good. If it ain't got that swing, it ain't worth it. And without you  and R.D., it ain' t got that swing.

That's what's wrong with the Observer, incidentally. I could not agree with you more. Greg Olds may be a fine fellow, a competent journalist and editor, and dedicated to the principle (see how I automaticaly type principal now, after a year in the S. D. of Ed.? ) of the Observer, but he is not fired  with excitement or enjoying the hell out of the paper, or if he is he’s first-rate at not letting his  enthusiasm show in print.

Incidentally, that excitement is often missing from the Pacifica stations, too. After all, they have been  going now for nearly twenty years (in Berkeley, at least) and they are still right where they were. They 
haven't grown. It hasn't caught on. It's still a thrill for the people who come in contact with the idea for the first time, but for the rest, it's a duty. Naturally, it shows.

A cardinal principle (got it that time! ) in life, I find, is that precise thing: it shows. It always shows,  and a big part of maturing is learning where to look and when to look for the telltale bits of expressive 
behavior or expressive form which reveal whether or not someone or some institution is authentic and  vital or fake and dead. Pacifica is not dead, but it appears to have progressive atrophy in some spots, and perhaps cancer in others. State Departments of Education are frankly ossified, and happy about it.  What about press syndicates? The Observer appears to be in decline. Am I right?

Well, why not? Institutions, like men, die. Some live longer than others (by conserving their energy).  The brilliant, spectacular ones often burn out rather quickly.

Now Pacifica did not become cancerous and atrophied without help. Plenty of forces have converged  on this simple, healthy, delightfully UnAmerican idea of a subscription-supported broadcasting service  with freedom to express individual viewpoints.

Biggest single item: the fact that while anyone with the money can set up a printing press, only a  selected number of persons can operate broadcasting stations.

That's banal, you say. I quite agree. But that's at the root of it. Scarcity of a natural resource leads to  regulation or control by some power or other. Read the history of the development of broadcasting 
and you will see how the Federal Government acquired the power it has over the assignment of   frequencies. Perhaps someday, through some new technical development, this may change, and a way  be found to increase the effective spectrum to the point of practical infinitude. Or, also perhaps, new  forms of social or political organization will alter the way audio and video productions are  disseminated. (The record industry is an example -- you can put a great deal more on a record than you  can on the air.) But for now, the Federal Government, and through it all the principalities and powers 
which attain their ends partly or mainly through governmental action, holds the power of life or death  over every broadcast licensee.

Pacifica was literally in limbo for years. The Berkeley station operated until 1962 on a Construction  Permit! That meant that the F.C.C. could theoretically have put them off the air at any time after a  hearing for cause and subsequent thirty days notice. Repeatedly, hostile groups such as the Marin  County Deputy Sheriffs' Posse, the Birchers, etc., tried to “get” KPFA' s licence. Several times it  looked like they might succeed. Repeatedly, the manager was put into the position of being responsible  for something done by a staff member, whom he trusted, about which he literally knew nothing and  could not have exercised control had he known.

There were so many times when things were said which gave the station a scare that the Board of  Directors finally decided, in 1961, that the mode of control being exercised was simply inadequate to  the task. A station manager was not sufficient safeguard. There were threats from the Congress (read  the material at the Senate Internal Security hearings on Pacifica) to pressure the F.C.C. to revoke the  Pacifica C.P. 's and licenses.

The Board of Directors crumbled. They chose to place survival of the station above insistence upon  freedom of expression. They assumed control.

That is a nutshell; of course, it could be argued that what happened was not as simple as that, but  underneath the twisting and turning of logic and rationalization that's really it. So Pacifica, Larry, is not 
as free as it likes to make out, and not nearly as free as a newspaper can be.

The manager of a Pacifica station is not exactly a puppet of the Board of Directors, but he is in no sense  as free as the editor of the Observer. They have him by the balls. And the F.C.C. has the Board by the 
balls. And the Congress has the F.C.C. by the balls. The only check upon the editor of the Observer is  the libel laws, his own courage and pertinacity, and the cost of operations.

I have a strong hunch that a new generation is commng into being which will support far more freedom  of expression than we have so far seen in America. You mention the new journalism. The Rag. The  L.A. Free Press. You will have noticed, in the KPFK Folio, the hints that the station could, by appealing  more to this younger group, become fantastically popular and very relevant. But to do so it would have  to be able to say shit if it had a mouth full of same. And the fear that the younger staff members of the 
station were, metaphorically speaking, about to do this was behind the action of the Board in the absurd  controversy over the cancellation of the Pleasure Faire.

You see, under the rules, a radio station cannot be permitted to be “terrible, but growing" in any relevant way. It can be as terrible as it likes in matters of taste and excessive commercially as it pleases,  but it cannot enjoy the luxury of just being wrong.

If you get the impression from all this that I am cynical and not fully commited to what we are trying to  do, you would be right... except that if you and R.D. were fully commited I would feel differently. I'm  cyncial but prepared to tackle anything if people I respect feel likewise. On my own account, I am, as I  have been all my life, withdrawing, analytical, and inclined to contemplation rather than action.

So there you have it. Now please let me hear from you, before you leave the country, or move to New  York. My address is now <REDACTED>. There's a bunk for you any time you're passing through and need one. Maybe a beer, too.

Best Regards,
Deck Yoes, Jr.