Or, Radio Tales, Part 2.
I'm finally continuing a series I had tried to start five years ago, basically me bitching about radio, which for some reason is one of my favorite past times. This one is about how different the two places I've lived, Austin, TX, and the area surrounding Louisville, KY are, and about how a good number of people view Alternative Rock. I'd recommend you read this old blog entry before going any further with this one. And keep in mind, my family didn't have full time access to MTV for all of the 1980s and most of the 1990s.
I guess I should start with a brief history of Rock radio in Louisville from 1988 to 1998. In August of 1988, I started 6th grade, and my transformation into a music nerd was just beginning. By the end of 1988, there were two Rock stations in Louisville that I knew of, 96 WQMF, and LRS "The New Rock 102". WQMF had an emphasis on Classic Rock, while WLRS seemed to have more of an emphasis on what would be known later as "Hair Bands". At first, I split my time in between the two, but later I developed more of an interest in Classic Rock, and grew tired of the saturation of Hair Bands on LRS, so by 1990 I leaned heavily towards QMF. LRS supposedly played cool bands like Jane's Addiction or Concrete Blond, but I was so sick of the current crop of "I gotta stick my thang in you" music that I couldn't listen to it long enough to hear the good stuff. At the very beginning of 1991, 102.3 changed from LRS into an Adult Contemporary station, "Mix 102.3", leaving QMF as the last Rock station standing. In October 1992, QMF made the bone headed move to do a "Classic Rocktober" gimmick where all they played was Classic Rock. By this point, I had gotten burned out on Classic Rock. The only upside to this gimmick was that they mixed in some Talking Heads, Squeeze, and The Clash along with all the usual tired crap. Instead of going back to a mixed AOR format in November, they made the even more bone headed move of officially becoming a Classic Rock station. So basically, if you wanted to hear any new Rock in the Louisville area and didn't have access to MTV, you had to listen to 99.7 WDJX, the CHR (Contemporary Hits Radio) station. QMF slowly started integrating some new Rock in April or May of 1993. That June, a new Rock station popped up, 100.5 The Fox. To my disappointment, it was more AOR than Alternative. To put it one way, I think it was The Courier Journal's Jeffery Lee Puckett who expressed his disappointment with, "They played Pat Travers within the first fifteen minutes." But The Fox gave QMF the kick in the pants it needed to get with the times. QMF was the first station I heard play Stone Temple Pilots, so to me, they automatically won the war. They were also the first station I heard play Porno For Pyros and Smashing Pumpkins*. Later in the Summer, The Fox started up a couple of hour long niche shows, The Metal Pit and Detour. Detour was an Alternative show, while The Metal Pit was, obviously, a Metal show. QMF had had an Alternative show at some point that year, but I wasn't real impressed with it.
In September 1993, I heard a promo on QMF telling us to check out 105.9, which I did, but not until I finished listening to David Bowie's "Suffragette City" on QMF. I then flipped it over to 105.9, and I think the first song I heard was a Boston song. Not long after that though, I heard something that totally made me lose my shit... "Head Like A Hole" by Nine Inch Nails! Better yet, I later heard "Sex On Wheels" by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. This new station was known as Q-Too. It started out with some Alternative, some Metal (old hair bands, but also heavier Metal that I dug like Anthrax, Sepultura, and Fight), and Classic Rock. It took a while, but they eventually phased out all the Classic Rock and a lot of the Metal, and you were mostly left with new and classic Alternative. Around the end of 1995/beginning of 1996, they changed the name to WXNU. New name, same format.
Later on in 1996, the Telecoms Act happened. The owner of QMF and XNU sold the stations. I can't remember who bought 105.9, but in September it switched to something that was like a prototype of what is now known as "Hot AC". It was like a mix of the more MOR (middle of the road) side of what Q-TOO/WXNU had been playing, along with newer stuff from John Mellencamp and Eric Clapton, and some occasional Soft Rock. I still had QMF, which made things somewhat less harsh for the remainder of 1996. But Clear Channel bought QMF, and at the beginning of 1997 it was Classic Rock. So if you wanted new Rock, you were stuck with the Butt Rock of The Fox, and if you wanted to hear Alternative, you had to listen to their Detour show.
On Memorial Day week of 1997, 102.3 changed its call letters back to WLRS, and became something of an Alternative station. Unlike 105.9 though, which started out kind of iffy but improved over time, this new LRS started out good, then got worse over time. At first, you could hear some occasional female voices, and some occasional electronic oriented stuff like Sneaker Pimps or new Depeche Mode. I noticed later that the oldest song they played was "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction, and the station had devolved to mostly White Guy Guitar Rock. As of 1997/1998, this could've meant a mix of Matchbox 20, Dave Matthews Band, Alice In Chains, and "Cryptic Writings"-era Megadeth, which was sadly more diverse than what LRS would become years later. But either way, this didn't bode well for Alt Rock in Louisville. It's a good thing that my family got DirectTV in the summer of 1998, where I got to discover new music via MTV2, making that summer suck slightly less hard than it could have.
I should mention before I go any further that I tried listening to 91.9 WFPK a few times, but it seemed like every time I turned it over to them, they were playing some acoustic folksy singer-songwriter/Americana stuff that was not to my liking. I realized in the post-Austin era that if I stuck around, I'd hear plenty of stuff to like. I did end up listening a lot to an R&B Oldies station on 94.7.
