We are taking a break
this week from blogging this week to do consulting work for a new client. New Spark News posts will return on Monday
8/20.
This week we are
featuring some of our favorite oldies about radio. Most of these songs come from
the period when we worked in album rock radio. These songs meant sometime to us
then and still do today.
WALL OF VOODOO
Mexican
Radio
In
the early 1980s I traveled frequently to Los Angeles and KROQ was the hottest
song on the station. I always liked the way PD Rick Carroll disrupted album
rock radio by playing a new generation of artists rather than more Jefferson
Starship.
If Rick Carroll was alive today, he would have told you that the KROQ was not a Rock station but a Top 40 station that plays music that no other Top 40 station or Album Oriented Rock station would play. He used the Bill Drake Top 40 bible quite a lot, but he used that (and allowed his staff a 'little power') to break a lot of 80's rock that most AOR's tend to avoid or if they do play it, it would not overshadow Bruce Springsteen, Genesis, Eric Clapton, or Journey just to name a few.
ReplyDeleteKROQ was a money making and the top LA "AOR" station back in the 1980's and beating out KLOS and KMET (A Little Bit of Heaven...Tweddle-Dee). Their are still people upset over the demise of KMET...well you thank KROQ in part for that. It would become the top Alpha Altenative station in the 1990's
If you do look at the trades from 1980's, you will see KROQ and KTCL as part of the AOR fold. For most of the 80's their was not enough stations for a Modern/Alternative Rock chart. Billboard started their Alt rock chart in September 1988. Radio & Records followed suit in January 1989 with their first incarnation of their Alt Rock chart.
It was a big risk for both trades at the time because their still not enough commercial stations carrying Alt Rock's water, but outside of LA you had commercial stations in San Diego (the only station Carroll successfully consulted), San Francisco (a station that evolved from CHR, but Carroll planted seeds their), Fort Collins-Denver, and Salt Lake City. I am not counting KBCO or WXRT cause they were more closer to Underground/Early AOR than Carroll Alternative Rock.