Entry tags:

modern music appreciation

Live 105
One of the perks of living in the SF Bay Area in the 80's and 90's was Live 105 KITS. KITS was a station that had always totally just sold out, and was always totally better a few years ago (and was always totally inferior to the Quake) but everybody always listened to it, for one reason: it was awesome.

They played a bunch of popular alternative music, but they also played a lot of stuff that wasn't getting much airplay. They played a bunch of classic (and in some cases, obscure) punk and alternative. They played local bands. They put out albums of local bands. They had specialty music shows, like a reggae hour. They had the only morning show I've ever heard that didn't make me want to murder someone with a hammer -- the Alex Bennett show, which, when it wasn't being (repeatedly) cancelled, featured vaguely intelligent conversation, new music, big-name guests, and regular visits from big-name local and national comedians. They had a call-in show for the gay community. They had a medical advice call-in show -- which was, admittedly, painfully boring, but it was still a cool service. They put on massive concerts with huge bands, bands that would eventually become huge, and bands that should have become huge.





Then they were brutally murdered and corpse-fucked in 1998 by Infinity Broadcasting. But I digress.

Anyway, there was a downside to all of this. Their concerts included such acts as the Cure, James, Orbital, Allen Ginsburg (!) and... the Crash Test Dummies. They played Enya.[1] asparagusp claims that he was once subjected to Wild Boys being played 69 times in a row. I don't if that last one's true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me, and it would certainly make Steve Masters eligible for extradition to the Hague.

They did awesome things, they did horrible things, they deliberately did annoying things, but they truly seemed interested in doing the most they could with the platform they had. They were, to me, the very definition of what a commercial radio station was capable of. Much of what little I know about music, I learned from listening to them.













[1] - A confession: I actually like Enya. But that doesn't make it right.