About this mouse potato

Radio

"Do you remember lying in bed
With your covers pulled up over your head?
Radio playin' so no one can see."
    —The Ramones, "Do You Remember Rock 'N' Roll Radio"

I wasn't always a tech-geek. My first passion was radio, and I spent many years working at various radio stations. Like so many other DJs, I got my start in college radio, which was probably the most fun I ever had.

KSDT-FM, UC San Diego (1978-80)
This was the college radion station at UC San Diego where I got my start. I did my first airshift in January 1979. San Diego was a sleepy town back then, and we played a mix of rock and jazz fusion. I went along with whatever everyone else was playing my first year, but after returning from a summer of listening to KROQ in Los Angeles, I skipped the prog rock fusion stuff, and started playing the Buzzcocks, Lene Lovich and the Stranglers instead. I think that was too much for them to take there at that time.

KSDS-FM, San Diego City College (1980)
Sometimes just working at one radio station at a time wasn't enough for me, so I decided to volunteer at KSDS, the jazz station at City College. Unlike the jazz fusion stuff I was playing at KSDT, this was a serious jazz station, and I really knew almost nothing about the music. I thought I would learn, but I never really did. I tried to fake it, but you can't fake jazz. I remember the program director during my show always telling me to play more mainstream, and I would think I was! I stayed on for a few months, and when the semester was over, that ended my career as a jazz d.j.!

KOCM-FM, Newport Beach (1979-80)
This was my first paying job in radio - working at an automated beautiful music station. I don't think they have "beautiful music" formats anymore, but back then it was mostly instrumental versions of light pop songs with an occasional vocal thrown in. I worked over the summer of 1979 and 1980, and did the graveyard shift on the weekend and changed tapes and read the news and weather. If you think radio is glamorous, this is the kind of job you have to be willing to take to get started. They said John Wayne was a fan of the station and that he used to come in every so often. John Wayne passed away just before I started working there, so I never saw him.

KUCI-FM, UC Irvine (1979-80)
In addition to working at KOCM over the summers of 1979-80, I also volunteered at the college station at UC Irvine. It was a small, but very friendly station. I did airshifts there, and the people there were probably nicer than any other station I worked at. I remember practicing my talk-ups to songs the Knack's "Good Girls Don't" and Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind." I had a lot of fun with my shows there.

KALX-FM, UC Berkeley (1980-84)
I left UC San Diego after 2 years and transfered to Berkeley. After the conservatism of La Jolla, Berkeley was the most exciting place that I had ever been. The music they were playing when I got there was incredible - Joy Division, Stiff Little Fingers, Killing Joke, Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls...bands I would never heard had I stayed in San Diego. I became the Production Director, and stayed at KALX for 4 years. I spent more time at the station than I did going to class and studying. Somehow I managed to graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in Mathematics. They did not have a Radio Major at that school.

WNYU-FM, New York University (1981)
In the summer of 1981 I was house-sitting for someone in Brooklyn, and would catch the train into the city everyday to explore. I stayed out late at concerts, and wandered the city by myself. It was one of the most exciting times of my life. Of course I had to find a radio station to make my home and went to NYU's college station. Since they shared their frequency with another station, they only broadcast on the air (ie. FM) from 4pm 'til the end of the day, and the rest of the time on carrier current to the dorms only. They kicked off their broadcast day with "The New Afternoon Show" a high-energy commercially presented alternative music show. I think the whole goal of the station was to get its staff members jobs in the industry after they graduated, as the general manager wore a suit to the station (even during the summmer break!) and seemed to concern himself quite seriously with that task.

KSFO/KYA-AM&&FM, San Francisco (1983-85)
After graduating from college I thought the world would be banging down my door to give me a job. What a lot I had to learn! This was 1982 when inflation was sky-high and we had double-digit unemployment. But I perservered and got a job at KYA as a board operator. After a few months they promoted me, and I became the engineer for the morning drive show with Gene Nelson. Around the same time, King Broadcasting (who owned the stations) purchased the call-letters of legendary KSFO (which used to be in the Fairmont Hotel). The AM/FM combo stations became KSFO/KYA and they brought on some of the most talented air talent in radio. "We've got personalities" was their slogan, and they did. Gene Nelson, Russ "the Moose" Syracuse, Buddy Hatton, Carter B. Smith, and Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins was the line-up. It was pretty amazing, and I could not believe I was actually working with talent of that caliber. They were all wonderful people and I loved them. But I wanted to be on the air and do my own show. Even though they did eventually give me an airshift, I knew that while I worked there, being the morning-show engineer would always be their top priority for me, and I needed to do more.

KLLK-AM, Willits (1985-6)
While I was at KSFO I met an engineer who was starting a brand new radio station in Willits, and he offered me a job. I told him I would only move there if I could be the Program Director, and he agreed. What an experience that was! When I got to Willits all there was was an empty office space. I spent about 3 months getting everything together - I bought furniture at an office auction, developed my own original "adult rock" format (a mix of old and new rock), called record companies and got them to send us records, picked the library and carted up 1,000 songs, programmed a music rotation system on bootlegged software, and hired the airstaff. I really believed I had a good station going - but it was probably not the right format for a small town like Willits, that kept asking us to play Madonna and if we would have an on-air swap meet where people could call in and say what they had for sale. I would not budge on the format and instead added The Cult and The Waterboys to the playlist. Living in the country was not exactly my thing either. Sales were not good, and after about 6 months of being on the air we ran out of money. We started making cuts in the staff and I decided to cut myself loose and return to the Bay Area.

(Years later when I was working at LIVE 105, Tre Cool, the drummer of Greenday called me up and told me how he was from Willits and remembered me from KLLK, and had actually gotten a job there when he was a teenager. I think he said they fired him, but I can't remember what the circumstances were - probably for playing punk rock! Knowing that he had grown up listening to KLLK made my day.)

LIVE 105-FM (KITS), San Francisco (1987-99)
I started working at LIVE 105 in early 1987 doing overnights. The station had recently changed its format from top 40, to Modern Rock, and I was excited to be there! Finally, I was at a station with a format that I liked, a demographic that I was part of, and I was getting paid for it. Not much, though, as none of my radio jobs ever did pay very much money. I did overnights for a little over a year, and then switched to working weekends. I also went back to graduate school, and continued to work weekends through school, and later with a fulltime job (completely unrelated to radio). I worked at LIVE 105 on the air up to 1997, where I did almost every weekend shift there was - including all-request Saturday night, to the Sunday morning flashback brunch. I also wrote and produced "The Modern Rock Report" a music news feature that ran daily.

LIVE 105 was a great station; we played the best music on the radio at that time, had a talented and fun staff, and a terrific general manager. But things changed when the station was sold to CBS in 1997, and the music had changed and the jocks were told to tighten up. By then I was tired of working a fulltime job and working weekends, so I decided to drop my airshift. I had started working on the station's website, so I was happy just to do that. During Memorial Day weekend of 1998 they asked me to do a fill-in weekend shift, which I did. That was the last time I was ever on the air. A few days later the station fired much of its management and some of the airstaff, and brought in staff from KOME (another CBS-owned station) and the Howard Stern show. I continued to work on their website for another year, working with the operations manager Ron Nenni, who is a great guy and the only nice person from the KOME management that came over. Ron had bigger plans for the website and turned it over to an agency in Los Angeles. And that was the end of my radio career.