Runaway Radio

First Tuesday SMTX, is a community film event that brings award-winning indie films to the big screen. On July 9, First Tuesday is showing “Runaway Radio: The Rise and Fall of Album Oriented Rock Radio through the Lens of Houston’s 101 KLOL FM” at the Price Center in San Marcos.

Before lives went fully digital, radio entertained, informed and dictated what was cool through the theater of the mind, and with that, Houston’s 101 KLOL played a big role in the lives of rock radio listeners.

The feature documentary focuses on the legendary outfit, starting in 1970 as a progressive rock station where DJs played whatever they wanted, to how it evolved into one of several wild Album Oriented Rock, or AOR, stations across the country, where onair personalities were sometimes bigger than the music itself.

In the film, acclaimed musicians Lyle Lovett, ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill, Melissa Etheridge and Sammy Hagar, along with top radio DJs from across the U.S., reflect on how the medium changed their lives and the lives of devoted listeners. Changes and pressures from Washington, the music industry and Silicon Valley led to the station’s, and much of the format’s, demise in the 2000s.

Following the film, there will be a question and answer session with director Mike McGuff and Dr. Jason Mellard, Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University.

Tickets are $5. Doors open at 6:15 p.m., complimentary pizza and drinks served from 6:30 p.m., and the film starts at 7. The Price Center is located at 222 W. San Antonio St. in San Marcos.

For more information about First Tuesday SMTX, email jeffreybrownfilm@ gmail. com.