ALL
Between Kevin and Bean and Jed The Fish, we had a pretty good award run until Album Network, the trade publication, was bought by Clear Channel. I guess our competition couldn't bear to see us sweeping up awards, so they just bought the magazine. Now they are called I Heart. Do you think I Heart is a good name for a radio group?
John Frost was a legendary promotional announcement producer and sound designer. There’s another photo of him floating around here somewhere. Here we are mugging in front of a giant cart rack. He called me Jed The Pudding Fish.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
On the couch with RUN DMC...
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Jed The Fish and Dusty Street at a party in Santa Monica. Photo Debbie Leavitt.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Fat Boy Slim platinum award, detail.
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 |
L-R, Tad, Kevin, Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Corolla, bottom, Lightening. I took this photo before I met Lisa May, and initially told her it was meant to be a KROQ Morning Show photo. She nodded, and I was embarrassed, because I knew what she was going to tell me before she said it. Kevin he acted surprised before he changed into costume. A golden era for the Morning Show.
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Taken | October 24, 2018 |
Uploaded | February 14, 2019 |
Elvira and I did a string of appearances together. This one was in Hollywood at a gay club called The Circus. She was on-air for KROQ in 82-83. Always a riot to work with. And of course look at.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 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.
Jennifer Beals, eventually a Yale graduate, could carry herself well in an interview. Aside from Return of the Jedi and Terms of endearment, Flashdance was the highest grossing film of 1983. She impressed me so much, I asked her to take her bra off under her shirt like she did in the movie. It looks like she's dipping me!
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Amazed that we could sell out what was then Irvine Meadows, I had no idea it would become an exalted event. We were so happy to have hotel rooms, because the staff didn’t want the worry we would show up late. Wearing the shirt. Sometimes we did not get good seats, so I early on got in the habit of buying them both for myself and my guests. When people would ask me for tickets, I would always inwardly groan because I would rather give away no seats than nosebleed.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Rick Rippey was my producer for 12 years, in my opinion my best years. He encouraged diabolical ideas. Suggests things in just the right way to inspire me. Burbank KROQ control room. Now THIS guy could fix any piece of equipment put in front of him. Note the overbridge, which he and Scott Mason installed. It allowed the cart machines to be places directly over the control board for smoother workflow.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
From left: Poorman (what a name) Van Johnson, Dave Gahan, April who couldn’t keep her clothes on, below her Martin Gore, whose guitar skills are vastly overlooked, Alan Wilder, Freddy Snakeskin (never one to push forward for photos), Andy Fletcher, Jed The Fish below Andy, some schleb who ripped off KROQ, and long time WB promoter Chris Crist.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
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 |
I got to meet the captain of the QE2. People said, "Oh, Jed, you're going on a cruise!" An Atlantic crossing is no cruise. Waves the size of hills made it feel as though we were sleeping on Viper. Robert Smith of The Cure at that time refused to fly to America.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 90s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Category | All |
Taken | March 9, 2019 |
Uploaded | March 10, 2019 |
When we were on a listener vacation to Hawaii, Danny and buddy Jed The Fish had truly a blast. Partying in one of the suites at the Reef, a few days later 300 KROQ listeners went to see Oingo Boingo at Aloha Stadium.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Jed The Fish Pasadena KROQ control room. Various radio station stickers were everywhere.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
The KROQ mural in Pasadena. Tony James, left flat-footed by Billy Idol’s departure from Generation X, had to start a new band. No doubt inspired by the outrageousness of Malcom McClaren and his bands, they went big. Love Missile F1-11 was their only real hit. I bet they wish they had boobs.
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
The Weird Science/Dead Man's Party synthesizer. Danny actually asked for this back, and I tried several times to return it. I think it was Leon of Oingo Boingo who sewed the cover for it. If this isn't cool memorabilia, I don't know what is.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All, Ephemera |
Taken | March 5, 2019 |
Uploaded | March 15, 2019 |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Taken | March 9, 2019 |
Uploaded | March 10, 2019 |
Muscle shirt, no muscles. INXS drummer Tim Ferriss is the clowner-arounder of the band, and I love that they didn't always send Michael Hutchence for interviews. Fun guy.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Kate and Fred stopped by for an interview after I had carved a jack-o-lantern in the KROQ control room. It was a sad time for the band with Ricky having passed just months before. They did not tour for the album. Warner Bros. Promotion person Paul V. was outraged at my criticism of the album.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Undoubtedly the only straight people with our hands on each other that night, I did not think of her as a comedienne. I thought she was just funny as hell. Ahh, the gays always loved her.
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes with -- I believe -- daughter Tatjana Rose at KROQ Acoustic Christmas. "This here is my Hammond Organ, Tatjana, I'm going to make you play this one day!" Not sure, maybe his wife at the time Julie Anne Friedman looking on. DD fans, help out.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 90s, All, Events |
Taken | February 3, 2019 |
Uploaded | February 14, 2019 |
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | February 18, 2019 |
KROQ Music director Lewis Largent. He was a very funny guy and a treasure to work next door to. I need people like him around me to perform. This is Lewis goofing off at an radio station event. My photo.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 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 have discarded these awards if they had no meaning for me. This one did, because I feel I have a relationship with the band. UB40 was an example of success by acclaim, not as much by promotion. That's why Jed The Fish support means something.
There was nothing left to say when your band leader, after 10 years of scoring movies, is calling it quits. No more gold records to be had, hearing going bad, and bandmates so sad, they all autographed this poster from the site of the departure, the once-heralded Universal Amphitheater. Music and movies have never been the same since.
This is the most concrete example of Jed The Fish having an impact on an artist's success. My Catch of the Day feature allowed me to choose one song per day. One Tuesday in 1988 Anthony Smith and Matt Dyke talked their way past reception and brought me Wild Thing. I spent most of my shift talking with them and sent them off expecting to hear the single at 4:40 pm. The phones blew up, and I made the rare decision to play it again the next day. The day after that it was a mid-week add to KROQ (most radio stations do their music meetings on a Tuesday, where they decide what is 'added' to the playlist). By Thursday it was on KIIS-FM. A most memorable instance of watching a piece of vinyl setting the radio waves ablaze in a matter of hours.
Album | Everything Album |
Category | All |
Uploaded | February 16, 2019 |
A rare photo of early 1980s KROQ Program Director Rick Carroll to the right of Lou Reed. Jeff Naumann, in the blue shirt, was a promo guy for Virgin in the 80s. Oh, my god. He got so yelled at by Lou that day when he asked him to sign his copy of Metal Machine Music. "Don't you EVAH, EVAH, show me a picture from my past AGAIN!!" Evidently Lou was a little sensitive in early sobriety. In a private moment, he looked at me and could tell I was having problems. He gently assured me if I went to a meeting it would make me smile. Awww!
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 80s, All, Around the Station |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
Way before I was Jed The Fish, my mother remarried and I moved to Arizona. I was an object of ridicule in Laguna Beach, but once I lived in a town of 35,000, I was conferred star status, because I was from LA. I kept explaining I was NOT from LA, I was from Laguna Beach. "Yeah, sure, you're from LA," I heard back. I had some experience doing light shows, so I did one for a high school dance at the first opportunity. The art department liked the concept, and with the guidance of teacher Robbie Robertson and other students, we created one of the first multi-media events. Our only mistake was not making it interactive.
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 |
Outdoor event in Pasadena. Our crowd was so loyal back then.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | All, Events |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |
PJ Harvey in the Assistant Program Director's office in 1995. I think that giant black shape overhead was a robot. With ears.
Album | Everything Album |
Categories | 90s, All |
Uploaded | January 15, 2019 |