A HISTORY OF SWEET NIGHTMARES
Jason Beck, September 24, 2019
Hello Sweet Nightmares fans old and new...
This week is a big anniversary for the show- 20 years ago the original run of Sweet Nightmares came to an end.
I thought I would give a fairly comprehensive history of the show for the occasion. I might be a little off on some of the earliest history- that stuff is kind of fuzzy (Wes can correct anything that I get wrong, tho I believe all of the facts are correct; maybe just some time frames are a little off).
Sweet Nightmares was started in 1987 by a guy named Steve Harrington. I believe that Steve had something to do with a previous metal show on KPFT called "The Random Sampler" which got kicked off the air for an interview they did with Slayer that got the station in trouble with the FCC.
A young metalhead named Wes Weaver heard the first episode, and showed up to the station the second week with some records that he thought should be played on the show. He became the co-host, and before too long the host (after Steve Left- not too sure how long Steve hung around. Wes can confirm that. It wasn't long). There were several other co-hosts that were around in the early days- a girl named Kobi was there for a little while, and a guy named Bill Bishop was there longer, but the most important co-host to come out of the early days was definitely Bill "The Master" Bates. Bill Bates came in the next year (1988) and became the main co-host. After Bill Bishop left a guy named Mike Wakefield (nicknamed Big Jesus Trashcan, like the Birthday Party song) started coming down and helping out some as well. He later got his own show, called The Dumpster, where he played metal, rap, punk, industrial, hip hop, alternative, and stuff like that.
1988 Scoped Tape of Bill, Wes, Lisa, and maybe others.
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- cool promo at the 5 minute 40 second mark: Duane Bradley free speech promo
- Gabby & Mandy Sweet Nightmares promo at 9 minutes 10 seconds
- What sounds like a Ken Nordine station promo at 9 minutes 30 seconds
- A space out promo at 14 minutes 30 seconds
1989 scoped samples featuring Wes and Bill, plus some promo spots for The Civil Service Broadcasting Empire and Xenophile.
But for several years it was mainly Wes and Bill, who both became fixtures in the Houston metal scene and are on quite a few underground band's thanks lists. Lots of interesting stories came out of those early days- I'm sure people can share some here (one thing that a lot of those old stories have in common is that Bill did not like to wear clothes much, even out in public).
