(Audio only, no video)

This is a rare off-air recording of one of Sacramento's shortest-lived radio formats, but one that had a HUGE influence on my musical taste. I have extensive notes on the YouTube link, but the gist of it is that this was the Rock of the 80s format most famous on KROQ in Los Angeles. KPOP in Sacramento tried this in August 1983 but gave up and killed it for crappy top 40 by mid January 1984, as the people here just weren't ready for anything new or different. A lot of this music was unlike anything I'd heard before and I was just hooked. There's several signature tracks played here, including "Flaming Desire" by Bill Nelson which just blew my mind the first time I heard it, and Re-Flex's "The Politics of Dancing" which was probably one of their most-played songs.

This was a great radio format but it jumped the shark by the mid-90s when grunge pretty much took it over, phasing out all the synth and pop stuff. While KROQ technically still survives today, I consider it nearly unlistenable now. I don't want stations to keep playing these 80s tracks as I have them all on CD now, but they should be playing NEW music that carries on that spirit, maybe some other new and amazing sounds. Instead they've latched onto what was popular in the 90s, having never stopped playing those songs and adding little else. If KPOP had survived til now it might sound like that also. (The crappy top 40 thankfully was not successful either, there's detailed history of the station online if you care.)

That's a unique mix of music, I gotta admit. Definitely one that was programmed by real people who listened to the music and decided what went on the air. I didn't listen to the whole thing, but two things stood out for me:

1: They played deeper cuts. For example, I heard Adam Ant's "Baby Let Me Scream At You" from the Strip album, when the two big singles from that record were the title track and "Puss N'Boots". I don't even think "Baby" was released as a single, so there you literally have an LP being played. The singles I mentioned were also the first songs on either side, so the DJ was cueing up a mid-record song. Clearly either the DJ or program director took the time to listen to the whole record and picked out what THEY wanted to play, not the record company.

That's a refreshing take, and I wish it was done more often. Like, my local college station got a hold of Voice of the Beehive's "Let it Bee" record, and instead of playing the two big singles "I Say Nothing" or "Don't Call Me Baby", they went with a non-single deep cut, the rocking "What You Have is Enough", and I became hooked immediately. The singles were fine, but I don't know if they'd have grabbed me the way the song I heard first did, and I immediately sought out the LP. Still a favorite to this day, and "What You Have is Enough" is still the highlight of the record as far as I'm concerned.

2. They were mixing in more mainstream songs with the new wave. I heard "That's All" from Genesis in there, and Huey Lewis and The News' "I Want a New Drug", two songs you would NEVER hear on any "alternative" stations of the day, like San Diego's 91X, LA's KROQ, NY's WLIR, or Boston's WFNX. Putting in essentially top 40 in with the alternative was a bold move.

Of course, for both reasons listed above, I can see why it wouldn't last. People want to hear the same shit over and over again regardless of genre. I like the "1st Wave" station on Sirius, but you'll hear Richard Blade say "And I just got a request for The Smiths' 'How Soon is Now', I'll get that on before the end of the hour...". Really? You need to request that fucking song? Wasn't it played to death back then? Can't you find a deeper cut from that band? They did have other songs, you know.

The first thing that attracted me to this station was that they didn’t stick to just the singles. I’d been listening to other top 40 stations before this and quickly became insulted how they would only play ONE song off a new album, then a few weeks later another single would get released and they’d say “Here’s a brand new song from…” That’s just stupid.

Safety Dance is the only song most people know from Men Without Hats, but KPOP played a bunch of other songs off their album. The first I’d heard of Spandau Ballet was their sappy ballad “True,” but KPOP played their other songs (they’d already been popular in Europe a few years) and showed that wasn’t really their main sound. Then they played bands other stations wouldn’t even touch and I found their music brilliant. I first heard The Ramones here, also Shriekback,
the Toy Dolls (proving that punk could be FUN!) U2 LONG before they were popular here, ditto with Thompson Twins.

Sadly KPOP killed this format just a couple weeks after that recording. At that time I thought they were really hitting their stride and I was truly in love with the music, but ratings weren’t great and the station also got sold, and they decided to just do what the other top-rated stations were doing. They kept the same DJs also, but they sounded like they’d been given brain transplants. The guy on this recording sounds cool and casual, but after the change he had a fake positivity to everything. I element hearing him introduce Lionel Richie’s “Hello” like it was something great, and I just groaned.

Thankfully I was able to get The Quake out of San Francisco, which had the same format and they were a bit more dedicated to it. That lasted until June 1985 when they were also sold and the new owners changed the format. This station’s new format was still a quality one at least but I wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate it. They played a big variety of stuff but they clearly favored Bob Dylan over Gary Numan.

Sacramento radio remained mostly bland for the rest of the decade. In 1986 San Francisco got the format back when KITS actually DROPPED top 40 for it becoming Live 105 (always thought that name was lame), and it was a lot more successful that time (but just about impossible to pick up in Sacramento.) In 1991 a Sacramento station finally gave the format another shot, but that was right when Nirvana broke out and within a few years that took over almost everything. (I thought they were OK, but not the greatest thing I ever heard. I was happy they were popular, but they had their time.) More than 30 years later, stations like KROQ still play Nirvana every day while ignoring newer music. That isn’t what made them great originally.

Radio should introduce you to exciting NEW music. I’ve never understood sticking to just what’s familiar; I’ll play
my CDs if I want to hear my old favorites over and over. But how did those become my favorites in the first place? Radio gave them a chance long ago. I’m especially critical of repetition now also, ideally I wouldn’t play any song more than once per day, maybe twice if it was just released that week or something.

I wanted to work in radio in the 80s mainly because of the “Rock of the 80s”
format, but am sure glad I didn’t now. The magic is just plain gone. Most stations don’t even have live DJs anymore, everything is recorded onto a computer hours in advance. You’d think with the competition from online radio stations which at least play better music, traditional radio would at least want to keep that human element as an advantage.