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The great Depeche Mode “riot,” 1990, when so many fans showed up at Wherehouse Records the band could not accommodate them all. God forbid they cut off the line and stay an extra hour. It did get dicey with enraged Dmode fans who pounded on the window in view of the band. Warner Bros. then called it a riot to regenerate buzz. As I recall it changed permitting policy in West Hollywood. We would do things like this several times a year with our bands. If KROQ supports you, you’re a KROQ band.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 90s, All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | March 11, 2019 |
I have discarded these awards if they had no meaning for me. This one did, because I feel I have a relationship with the band. U2 I will always remember because of their Jed The Fish interview for their Pop Mart tour. This award was for the following album.
photo bt Debbie Leavitt.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All |
Taken | March 27, 2019 |
Uploaded | March 30, 2019 |
Now this was audacity that could never happen today. KROQ took 200 listeners to Hawaii. Twice. The first time the GoGos played and Richard got hired. The next time Oingo Boingo played at Aloha Stadium. April Whitney, R, next to Freddy Snakeskin. Then Danny Elfman, Steve Bartek comically peering in over Vatos. Dale Turner in the shades looking at me, behind him Kerry Hatch and Richard Gibbs in the striped shirt. The hotel was very angry.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
He was rumored to have a chandelier goldfish bowl, and sure enough, during a party, I found it. It was actually a terrible interview that day — I was sent all the way to New Orleans for a Nine Inch Nails interview with faulty equipment. I shall restrain myself from identifying the engineer who furnished a bad DAT recorder. I think his name was Paul. To make matters worse, because I had to use Trent’s studio gear, they edited out the part in which I asked him about Marilyn Manson.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 90s, All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Where’s Josie? This is the day I asked her what her real name was, and she said, “Well, basically Josie Cotton is my name.” A dedicated bimbo. Pasadena control room. A fake protest was staged outside the Pasadena studios. None of the protesters were angry. Gleaming Spires, the Sparks offshoot, was in the studio. Leslie Bohem and David Kendrick.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
This was a crazy, barely legal short wave club I belonged to in the 2000s. This is the organization that led me into Class B fireworks (Class A is military, Class C is fireworks stand). Their most notorious members -- The Neckbolt Brothers -- would egg people on to break FCC rules, which of course apply to KROQ as well. Had I followed this path, I might have lost my broadcasting priveliges. I made my mom's chili and won 3rd place.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Ephemera |
Taken | March 5, 2019 |
Uploaded | March 15, 2019 |
Martin looks fairly normal with a leather vest and checkered shirt. It seems I was intent on being anything but normal.
He was always very kind. Chrissie, on the other hand, was harsh. Somewhere along the line, she developed a habit of refusing to shake hands, which she told me one time getting reacquainted at the Weenie Roast. When, at the end of the interview, I reached out to shake and she was offended. Don't you think of Ray Davies of the Kinks as mild mannered? What on earth was a household like with the two of them.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
When Devo was doing clubs, these posters -- with venue particulars -- were for promoters in each city.
It's rough for the American radio listener to hear a heavy Liverpudlian accent. Paul McCartney learned to clean his up a bit, Ian McCulloch not so much. His subdued voice does not help. At least he left a sizable souvenir booger on the wall of the Burbank men's room, which remained for nearly a year.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
This was when David Bowie came by the station in advance of the 'co-headlining' NIN show, and I GOT TO INTERVIEW HIM. Thing is, as anyone will tell you, he is as kind and disarming as could be. It was near Halloween, and I had decorated the Burbank studio with oodles of scary, and one of my props was a battery-operated, undulating heart. He made sure I noticed that he had crammed it in his pants, power on, just as I opened the mic. To say I laughed is an understatement, as I'm sure you recall what I was capable of. This was when we were both in recovery. Meeting him in the Station to Station days might have been different. And yes, I asked him if he had ever been fat.
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Uploaded | February 18, 2019 |
This is one of my oldest memories of KROQ. This is the parking lot where I climbed the stairs the night I was hired. Original logo. From left, Brett Kahlen, Chuck Randall, driver, chick dj I don’t remember, Mike Raphone, me being prophetic about the station’s prospects, Darrell Wayne in nice red pants, Larry Woodside, hairy dj I don’t remember, and the late Al Ramirez. He always looked like he was sneaking away from something. Let me know about the ones I missed.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Taken | February 18, 2019 |
Uploaded | February 18, 2019 |
Jed The Fish, Cal State Fullerton's Daily Titan
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Uploaded | February 16, 2019 |
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 90s, All |
Taken | February 18, 2019 |
Uploaded | February 18, 2019 |
Jed The Fish, Cal State Fullerton's Daily Titan
You can see John Dolmayan checking me out to make sure I was OK before he went crowd surfing, unbeknownst to me. Later he said I was supposed to take a solo during Sweet Pea, something I would not even do on drugs. Serj began leading the audience in a chant, "Jed The Fish on drums, Jed The Fish on drugs," and a few minutes later I was glad John came back. Somehow he had known I was a drummer long before that.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
The ancient Sony CD players on the right, the ponytail — up — and the visor. It was amazing that we had an extra oscilloscope at all, and that it was in the control room a miracle. It told us if the signal was in phase, important to avoid cancellation (bad sound). As in most control rooms, a music log and a program log to keep track of played commercials. Koss headphones. Turntables to the left.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
KROQ DJ Tami Heide, signing a tee shirt at an event.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
The dawn of professional CD players. You cued them up by hand, almost like vinyl. Sony “Digital.”
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Whadday know. Amazing who you run into in the KROQ control room. I can't figure out why Bonnie Raitt was there, other than to sniff something with our program director. I'm sure he did her the courtesy of actually playing her album for a week. She was sweet.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
We did KROQ beach remotes weekly for several years, where Joqs would broadcast their radio shows. I probably did the most, and even coming to the same beach several times over the years to give out these towels, they were all unique. Many conversations with listeners and artists. As Jed The Fish, it wore me out, but it was always fun.
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Taken | February 18, 2019 |
Uploaded | February 18, 2019 |
DMode I began playing on KROQ because the producer was Daniel Miller, of The Normal (TVOD, Warm Leatherette, 1978). Mike Zampelli from Zed Records/LBC brought the single New Life to Pasadena with a dozen or so other records he wanted me to play on the Jed The Fish import show. Not a huge response but the band showed promise. Once Speak and Spell arrived, everyone on KROQ was playing it.
I must have met with Richard Butler a half-dozen times, and we always had laughs. One night before a show at the Forum he asked if I had decent seats, and I said, yeah, not bad. When he came onstage and saw me dead center in the front row, his eyes jumped out of his head. Later he said, he remembered me saying I had decent seat, but he never expected me to be right under his nose whilst singing. I explained that, yes, I can always get free seats, but if I really want to see, I always purchase tickets. On this occasion, I actually asked Goldenvoice if I could buy front row center and they let me, knowing I never ask such things. Note long-time Music Director Lisa Worden on right, left below me is Assistant PD Gene Sandbloom, who today runs Roq of the 80s.
Categories | 80s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
I was Student Body President, 1972 at Casa Grande Union High School, Arizona. The year before, my step-brother Bill Koenig was. Many K-ROQers came from the Copper State, and that's when I became a broadcaster.
In those days, Danny always had a jovial mood for the camera. It was a time I will never remember. Honolulu, Hawaii 1983
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
This is the band I was most chummy with. We would get together at Farmers Market, their old hang, and I remember they would talk to their stalkers. Girls would go to FM to see them. They told me it’s important to approach them to humanize the relationship. You want them to know the impact they can have on your normal life just being famous. Not just being a quest. At Ron’s house one night, they played me Interior Design. It was an album devoid of bass parts. Some upper bass synth, but that’s it. I tried in vain to help them justify it. It was a tough listen, because I liked them so much. Rock needs bass if not guitar.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Jed The Fish in the KROQ Control Room, Pasadena, 1983. The ubiquitous Sennheiser 421 microphones.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
What the hell happened? KROQ used to be a fun station. We not only put out calendars, but gave events for them. This one was in Orange, 1999. Wonderful crowd. Hey, let me know if you have a better guess at the year.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Me in my pannies in 1983 introducing Boingo at the Us Festival. This was the day I was used by Terri Nunn to make Richard’s first wife jealous. She picked at my nipple with her long nail. I could only watch.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
I can only describe my ridiculous hair as a follicle fountain. Depeche Mode has been in the station more times than I can count. Andy Fletcher is probably the member least like a tempermental artist.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
This guy wound up doing 22 studio albums and he is a famous songwriter. John Hiatt is still one of the most popular singers and writers for other artists.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 70s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
photo Debbie Leavitt
Category | All |
Taken | March 27, 2019 |
Uploaded | March 30, 2019 |
Before they got huge, Wang Chung stopped by the KROQ studios to promote Points on a Curve. I always thought Jack Hues was an odd sort of good-looking, like he was genetically modified. They actually made themselves into a verb, as in "everybody Wang Chung tonight."
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |