The History of Radio in Silver Lake - Ask Silver Lake by Eric Brightwell

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Silver Lake‘s connection to music runs almost as deep as its well-known ties to film. There are live music venues, like El Cid, which hosted its first performances in 1962. There are studios, like Pulse, which opened as Soundcastle in the ‘70s. Record stores have come and gone, but Rockaway Records has rocked Silver Lake since 1979. There are also music labels, musicians, and – underneath layers of cover-ups, tags, and placas – Ernesto de la Loza’s mural, Under the Bridge, dedicated to the neighborhood’s artists and musicians. 

Additionally present are less obvious connections, like the name of the band, Silversun Pickups, which came from a popular liquor store – or the Solutions! mural, which was featured on the cover of Elliott Smith‘s 2000 album, Figure 8. Musicians including Moby and Donald Glover have tried their hands at the restaurant and cafe business.

All of these threads lead us to the focus of this month’s “Ask Silver Lake” – Silver Lake’s history of radio.

After a few experimental and amateur broadcasts, commercial radio made its Los Angeles debut in 1922. A year later, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson prayed over her sick daughter and received a signal transmitted straight from Heaven instructing her to build a megachurch on the shores of Echo Park Lake – at  Lot 1 of Tract No. 14060, to be exact. And so she did. In 1924, she began transmitting her own message, via a 500-watt KFSG (Four Square Gospel) radio transmitter, broadcast across the city at 1080 kHz.

A few years later, God again instructed, in His mysterious way, someone to broadcast the good news. Paul Myers was a former Los Angeles radio personality who’d fallen on hard times. He’d abandoned his wife and four children and turned to the bottle. As he stumbled through the shipyards of San Diego and heard the distant ring of eight ship’s bells. The bells signaled that “all is well.” All was not well, though, with Myers, and after he opened a Gideon Bible in his motel room. Another bell struck, this one metaphorical. Myers would start sermonizing and playing Christian music on a program he would call Haven of Rest.

“The Haven of Rest” is a 19th-century hymn with a maritime metaphor. Its chorus goes “I’ve anchored my soul in the haven of rest, I’ll sail the wide seas no more; The tempest may sweep o’er the wild stormy deep, In Jesus I’m safe evermore.” Myers took the metaphor even further: dawning a captain’s cap, rechristening himself “First Mate Bob,” and addressing his listeners as “shipmates.” Haven of Rest made its debut on KPMC (MacMillan Petroleum Company) in 1934.

In 1941, “Haven of Rest” set sail from Wilshire Center in search of a new harbor. First Mate Bob dropped anchor at Silver Lake – a neighborhood named after a large body of water. That was the same year a volunteer auxiliary police force was tasked, along with the new fence, with keeping people, including even Christian sea captains, out of its waters. No matter. The surrounding shores, too, were a hotbed of nautically-inspired Streamline Moderne architecture, thanks in large part to the designs of William Kesling, whose offices had been on Silver Lake Boulevard. After designing many ship-shaped homes in Silver Lake – and following an arrest for fraud that ended his career as an architect — Kesling had moved to La Jolla. 

The Good Ship Grace

First Mate Bob commissioned what was surely the most seaworthy Streamline Moderne structure Silver Lake had ever seen – one with portholes, gangways, and ship lights. While we can deduce that Kesling did not design it, we don’t know who did. Here and there, a source attributes, without evidence, the design to First Mate Bob himself. It’s possible if seemingly unlikely. Bob did name the building, though, and its name was The Good Ship Grace.

The Haven of Rest Quartet

Bob’s deck officers were also singers and they performed and recorded as the Haven of Rest Quartet inside of the Good Ship Grace. The Haven of Rest label also released solo albums by gospel tenor Charles Turner, organist Lorin Whitney, Ron Mitchell, and Steve Ragsdale, among others. At its peak, Haven of Rest was carried around the world by roughly 250 radio stations.

First Mate Bob stepped off the bridge one final time in 1971. He died in 1973. The Haven of Rest moved to Orange County in 1998 and the Good Ship Grace was purchased by the Dust Brothers: King Gizmo (John King) and EZ Mike (Michael Simpson). Ignoring nautical tradition, they re-named the Good Ship Grace, the Boat Studios. Its radio days were over — but the music played on. Originally used for personal projects, the Dust Brothers turned it into a commercial prospect a few years later. 

The last album recorded in its Haven of Rest era was likely gospel tenor Truitt Ford’s Friends; A Truitt Ford Collection, recorded in 1990. The Boat era began, fittingly, with Tenacious D’s eponymous debut — an album that also draws upon Christian traditions and imagery. Since then, artists like Avril Lagine, Beck, Garbage, They Might Be Giants, and Sia have all recorded there. The building was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 897 in 2007. It changed hands in 2010, with Silverlake Conservatory of Music co-founder, Flea, taking the helm.

By pure coincidence, 1998 was not just the year that Haven of Rest departed for Orange County – it was also the year that Silver Lake’s only radio station went off the air – KBLT. KLBT was a pirate station. The age of radio piracy really took off in 1958, when Peer Jansen and his cousin, Børge Agerskov, grew frustrated with conservative Danish radio and began broadcasting rock and pop music from a ship in international waters. The Danish media branded it piratradio.

KLBT was not broadcast from a converted fishing trawler, an offshore platform, or even the Silver Lake Reservoir’s outlet tower –  but from an apartment on a hill above Sunset Junction. Using the pseudonym, Paige Jarrett (and others), the station was the creation of Sue Carpenter. Prior to broadcasting from Silver Lake, she operated another pirate station with sandwich-themed call letters, San Francisco’s KPBJ. It was, when it began in 1995, a solo operation. For two hours, every night, Carpenter spun an eclectic mix that included Cambodian psychedelia, classic country, French pop, jungle, and more. On a clear night, its 40-watt signal could be heard as far away as the 101 Freeway.

Screenshots from 40 Watts from Nowhere (2025)

Over time, the staff – if not the signal power – of the station grew. 98 people ultimately served as KBLT DJs, including veteran musicians like Bob Forrest (Thelonious Monster), Don Bolles (The Germs), Mike Watt (Minutemen and fIREHOSE), and Keith Morris (Black Flag and Circle Jerks); as well as radio and music enthusiasts like Miwa Okumura and Shondra Riley. With more hands on deck, KBLT was able to broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It broadcast live performances from bands like the Bicycle Thief (Forrest’s post Thelonious Monster band), Jane’s Addiction, Old Time Relijun, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

The Federal Communications Commission launched a national crackdown on unlicensed micro-radio stations in 1998 and KBLT was one of the victims. A benefit featuring Mazzy Star was organized to raise money for Carpenter’s legal fees. Ultimately, though, the plug was pulled on the station in October 1998. 

Carpenter later detailed her account of the experience in a book published by Scribner, titled 40 Watts from Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radio. The end of KLBT was not the end of Carpenter’s career in radio, though. In the 2010s, she hosted The Wheel Thing and co-hosted, with Alonzo Bodden, The Ride, on Pasadena public radio station KPCC. KBLT, too, lives on in its way. In 2022, Andy and Jeff Crocker recreated the KBLT studio for their interactive 40 Watts Experience. And, earlier this year, Carpenter completed an 89-minute documentary titled 40 Watts from Nowhere.

Fair winds and following seas! This is Ask Silver Lake, signing off.