A piece of Sacramento rock & roll history now has a permanent home at Sac State. The university unveiled the Sacramento Rock & Radio Collection Wednesday thanks to a well-known former student.
Dennis Newhall was a K-ZAP DJ back in the 70s. He’s spent a lifetime collecting artifacts that tell the story of Sacramento rock history. "We've gotten tickets, posters, hand bills, radio station tee-shirts," says Newhall. "Whatever I could get that had anything to do with the rock scene, I would get."
Newhall ran the Rock and Radio museum in midtown until it closed in 2017. Now the collection has a new home at Sac State. "The fact that we put 15 years into getting all this stuff and keeping it organized, I wanted that to keep going like a lot of people do with their collections," said Newhall at a reception held Wednesday to debut the collection's new home. "And I was lucky enough that Sac State was interested in taking it on," he added.
The newly named Sacramento Rock & Radio Collection is permanently housed in Special Collections & University Archives. It’s available for research and study. "I think it will be fun for people in the future who are listening to whatever kind of music they are listening to to go back and get an idea of some of the things that went on in the 60's up through 2020," says Newhall.
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Newhall’s initial gift is for approximately 1,000 items. The balance of the collection will come to Sac State over time.