A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1: Rock Radio History

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.

End of 2015

2015 is almost at an end, and I haven't posted in over four months, so I guess I should give an update.

I've been busy as fuck the past few months. My friend got evicted. I moved out and got a place with her. And just as soon as I'm getting ready to move, which was the beginning of October, my work decided to start mandatory overtime. Great.

In early October, I saw that there was an opening for a Monday-through-Thursday or Tuesday-through-Friday daytime shift at another building, and put in for it. The catch was that I'd either have to work Sunday-through-Wednesday, or Wednesday-through Saturday, from the beginning of November until Christmas. I got the Tuesday-through-Friday shift, meaning I had to work Wednesday-through-Saturday for November and most of December. The two weeks that I got to do Tuesday-Friday were nice, but the Wednesday-Saturday was awful. Black Friday and the week following it were pretty bad, and I don't even want to talk about it right now. I'm just glad that it slowed down after that Sunday, even despite that Monday being Cyber Monday. But anyway, now that Christmas is over, and my schedule is reverting back to Tuesday-Friday, I can breathe a little sigh of relief.

You know, I've never really come up with a nickname for my employer of the past three years. The tv show "Maron" gave me some inspiration. From now on, I'll refer to it as Steel Johnson.

I've lived here for three months, and not only do I not have my turntable set up, it's still sitting at my mom and dad's. Oh well, hopefully I'll have it over here pretty soon.

Blah

I just finished Week 3 on my new shift. I love having my Sundays off again, and it's easier to binge watch tv shows and movies. The only problems I have with the shift itself are that I have a hard time getting up before 2:00pm on my days off, and there are fewer people on the night shift than there were three years ago, meaning there are fewer interesting people. I've realized that a lot of my issues are with the company itself, and that that place has sucked my soul so dry that changing shifts won't make me any less miserable. I really don't know how much more of the ten hour days, micromanaging, and being sent to other departments I can take. But I'm also making $13 an hour, and with my limited skill set, I don't know where I'm going to go where I can start out making at least that much. And I don't feel like I have the brain power to look for another job, look for a therapist, or look for an apartment, and work at the same time. The only other reason to stay is that I'll be getting more vacation time in January.

My life outside of work hasn't been much better, which makes the work situation worse. I was hoping to get to hang out more with the new friends I made last year, but everybody seems to be too busy. I'm no closer to getting my own place now than I was six months ago. A lot of that is my own fault, between being bitten by the collecting bug, and engaging in "retail therapy" when I need to get out of the house, but have no one to hang out with. But I've also spent a good deal of money trying to keep one of my best friends, who deals with thyroid and depression issues, from getting evicted, which ultimately amounted to prolonging the inevitable. And too many people I've known have died.

I'm also tired of the general mediocrity of Louisville and the surrounding area, much like I was in 1998. A lot of online articles try to paint Louisville as some Hipster mecca, but the Hipster element is mostly confined to the original city limits, which is nowhere near as big as Austin, TX even was in 1998. The greater Louisville Metro area is made up of people who are content to see mediocre cookie cutter acts like Luke Bryan or Shinedown, and don't have much interest in movies beyond the major releases. As far as terrestrial radio goes, if it weren't for 91.9 WFPK, I'd go nuts. Looking back, Louisville Mojo was the main reason I came to like Louisville in the 2000s, and now that Louisville Mojo seems to be on life support, it figures that my love for the city should dwindle as well. I so want to travel, but I've not mastered the art of traveling on little money, plus I don't have the vacation time for it. I'd also like to relocate, but if I can't make it in a relatively affordable place like Louisville, then I don't know how I could make it in a place like Austin or San Francisco.

Shift update (July 2015 edition)

I always give myself three or four weeks before I ultimately decide if I like the shift I'm on or not. Anyway, I found myself hating the new shift, and wished I had made the new night shift my first choice. Further irritation was caused by not getting partial days off for the day after the Kentucky Derby, Mother's Day, Father's Day, or the morning after July 4th.

This month, an opening for my department's night shift finally opened up, so I put in for it, and got it, starting on July 27th. I'll be working the same days I worked before the shift change in April (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday), but instead of working 6:30a.m. to 5:00p.m., I'll be working 5:30p.m. to 4:00a.m.. My Friday nights are pretty much fucked, but I have my Sundays back, and without the annoyance of trying to get up around 5:00 on Monday mornings.

Work news and Movie sadness

This entry brings up some topics related to what I posted in Cutting back on fun stuff over four years ago.

It's been over two months since my last entry, and I'm still no closer to moving out. Work had been slow during January and February, and then we got the big snow dumps in mid-February and the first week of March, so my checks were pretty crappy. Thankfully, that kind of snow seems to be a thing of the past in Kentucky, at least until next Fall or Winter, and things at work have picked up. Sadly, my Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday shift has been eliminated, and I start working a Sunday-through-Wednesday shift starting April 12th. Getting up so early on a Sunday morning blows, and working four consecutive ten hour days again will suck, but the change isn't all bad. Some of the more positive aspects of the new shift:

• I get three days off in a row, two of which will feel like entire days off. That Wednesday in the middle of my former shift never felt like a full day off, and neither did Sundays.
• With Fridays off, I'll get to go to early showings on most movies' opening days again. I kind of missed that.
• My previous designated overtime day had been Saturday, now it's Thursday. That might make it easier for me to work voluntary overtime, though I'll probably still only do half days, at least until I get my own place.
• I get to work more with some of my favorite coworkers, and less with my least favorite coworkers.

I considered maybe looking for a new job in June, but I just realized that if I make it at my current job until January, I should be getting more vacation time.

In some ways, this would also make it easier for me to get a second job, but I'd only be able to work on two of my three days off, and I don't know what the hell I would want to do for a second job.

One thing I was looking forward to doing when I moved to Louisville was renting from Wild and Woolly Video. Sadly, it was announced in January that they would be closing in March, and they had a big closeout sale in the two months leading up to the closure. The last thing I needed was another music or movie store closing. Tons of money was spent. It was depressing flipping through those movies that I had no desire to buy, but would've been eager to rent, especially since there is no guarantee that you'll be able to find some of these movies on Netflix or on any other streaming services. The decline of physical media, and finding bands/artists to obsess over, still has me spending collecting like a maniac, I really need to slow my roll.

I still consider myself a fan of indie/art films, but I've been underwhelmed by some of the movies that my film lover friends have been fond of recently, namely Birdman, Maps To The Stars, and It Follows. But for what it's worth, I did love Whiplash and What We Do In The Shadows. I hate that I've become the kind of person that will mostly see big event movies in the theaters, but movie going is so expensive now that I'd rather not take a chance on flushing $9+ down the toilet on a movie I would've rather watched at home.

Lastly, I've been reading some of Hunter S. Thompson's work lately. He seemed to spend a lot of his writing time on drugs or alcohol, or if not writing under the influence, then writing about being under the influence while on assignment. Similarly, I feel like I need sodas or blended frozen coffee drinks when I'm writing. Amazingly, all I've had to drink for this entry is plain old water.

Hey there! (Plus more Vlado talk)

I'm okay, I just haven't had time to blog between working, sleeping, getting caught up on TV shows, and getting out of the house. I'm hoping to get a place of my own soon, preferably in Louisville. I'm simultaneously thrilled and terrified. Thrilled because I'll have my own place, I get to set up my turntable for the first time since I boxed it up six years ago, and because living with mom and dad has been killing me, literally and figuratively. Terrified because I only make $12.50 an hour, and am afraid that something will happen that will make it harder to pay rent, among other things, than it already is. I'll likely not be getting out so much, giving me time to do things like work on this blog.

I've taken down my "Vlado: The Music Impaler" post. It was my most popular post, but I'm not so sure now that Vlado Meller deserves to be as demonized as he's been. He's no Greg Calbi, Bernie Grundman, or Vic Anesini, but he is capable of doing decent work, and I'm not sure that he's the Worst (dedicated) Mastering Engineer Ever, so much as he is the CD mastering engineer on some of the worst recorded or mixed popular music of the past twenty years. I'm more bothered by people who try to fill all the roles of producer, recording engineer, mixer, AND mastering engineer. An exception is Jack Endino, who I thought did a decent job with mastering The Decline Effect's self titled LP, and on remastering Soundgarden's "Screaming Life/FOPP".

However, I'm not letting Vlado off that easy! I had mentioned before that I thought his remastering of Living Colour's "Vivid" was tolerable. The truth is that I had never owned the original CD or vinyl of it until recently, so the only thing I had to compare it to was hearing "Cult of Personality" on the radio. Broadcast radio is very compressed, and so the remastered "Cult of Personality" sounds pretty similar to what I remember hearing on the radio. I was content to keep it since I was satisfied with the sound, and it's worth keeping for the bonus tracks. After reading that Greg Calbi was listed as mastering the original "Vivid" CD*, I had to check it out. The original CD sounds so much better than the remaster! I swear I heard stuff in it that I never noticed before. The EQ-ing on the remaster might be okay, but the dynamic range has been squashed badly enough to make it virtually useless. One odd thing about the remaster is that "What's Your Favorite Color?" is way shorter than it originally was, down to 1 minute 41 seconds from its original 3 minutes 56 seconds. I don't know what the story with that is, I can't even find much info about it doing a Google search. Vernon Reid was a producer on the reissue, so the shortening of it was probably his idea, and he probably approved of the overall sound as well. Between having the original "Vivid" CD and having the Japanese import version of "Biscuits" which includes a few tracks that ended up as bonus tracks on the "Vivid" reissue, the only real reasons for me to keep the reissue are for those few bonus tracks that had never been on CD, and the novelty of the shortened version of "What's Your Favorite Color?". By the way, the Japanese import version of "Biscuits" was mastered by Vlado Meller. I don't own the Bob Ludwig-mastered U.S. version, so I can't compare the sound, but Vlado's version sounds fine to me.

I am hoping to post more about the Loudness War and the mania of music and movie collecting, probably even updating older posts with recent revelations. That might be a while, though.



*Greg Calbi might have mastered the CD version, but it's hard to tell who actually mastered something sometimes. Back in the 1980s, CD credits often just listed the mastering engineer for the vinyl version. These days, you're more likely to see the CD mastering engineer listed on the credits for vinyl albums, but the deadwax (that part of the vinyl between where the music on a side ends and the center label) usually include the initials of the vinyl mastering engineer, or some indication of who or where it was mastered.

The Failure of the Dream of 1990s Alt Rock.

One of those things that I spend way too much time thinking about is how the Alternative Music "Revolution" of the 1990s failed. In the short term, it made music more interesting. In the long term, it changed the course of Hard Rock and MOR , and not for the better. One thing that came to mind when I was thinking about it this morning was the scene from "Easy Rider" where Wyatt (Peter Fonda) says to Billy (Dennis Hopper), "We blew it." In the context of my thought, it would really be more like "They" blew it, "They" being The Music Industry, since there really wasn't a whole lot I could do to keep the momentum going. I was too naive to see it in 1994 and 1995, but the signs were there that things weren't going in the direction I'd hope they'd go.

1. Candlebox.  The first few times I heard "Change", I thought, "This kinda sounds like a hair band." "You" didn't sound quite as much like a hair band, but "Far Behind" was definitely a power ballad. They might get some brownie points for getting their name from a Midnight Oil song, but no, just no. Candlebox were indicative of a problem with The Industry when it tries to push a certain genre, in this case Alternative in general and Grunge in particular. There were many bands that had been around for years, touring in vans, and were just bubbling under the mainstream. A few of those bands managed to make it (Soundgarden finally having done it in 1994), but for the most part The Industry were more interested in signing, and at times possibly even creating, bands that hadn't been around long, and were like some watered down version of the genuine article. But most kids in places like Shepherdsville, Kentucky, didn't know any better. I remember cringing one time during my senior year of high school when I heard a classmate say, "I like Alternative, Candlebox rocks!" A year after that, my brother was substitute teaching at our old school, and I think some kids asked him what kind of music he listened to, and when he said Alternative, they asked him if he was going to see Collective Soul.
2. Ignoring newer stuff from "older" bands. Faith No More put out one of the best albums of 1992, and Living Colour put out a fairly strong album in 1993, but they were virtually ignored. Sometime in early 1994, the local Modern Rock station played Living Colour's "Cult Of Personality", and the DJ said something about them being in the "Where Are They Now?" file. I wanted to call up the station and tell the guy, "Where are Living Colour? They put out an album a year ago called 'Stain', you oughtta check it out."
3. Hootie & the Blowfish. "Hold My Hand" was a song that got started on Modern Rock stations before it made its way to Contemporary Hits Radio. But the first time I heard it, I thought, "This is not Alternative." I think the only people who could try to make a case as to why it would be Alternative would be the kids who didn't know better. They're Mainstream Rock through and through.
4. Sheryl Crow/Jewel. I'm not really sure how these women got lumped in with Alternative either. I find it funny that both of them and Darius Rucker are now singing Country, or the music that is referred to as Country these days.
5. Either ignorance or no respect from the "kids" towards the people that paved the way. As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I first got into Alternative well before "Nevermind" made it cool, so I tend to lean more towards '80s Alt. I'm also a history nut, especially when it comes to Rock music. At the end of 1994, I was still a few years away from buying a Psychedelic Furs CD, but I really dug the few Furs songs I had heard, including three that got regularly played on the local Modern Rock station. I also really liked the first single from Richard Butler's new band Love Spit Love, called "Am I Wrong". In March 1995, my brother and I went to see Live, with Love Spit Love and Sponge opening. Sponge seemed to be fairly well liked, but Love Spit Love didn't make quite as good an impression on some people, most likely due to Richard Butler's flamboyance, and others because, honestly, they weren't great, especially compared to the Furs, but most of the people who were coming to see Live probably didn't give a shit about or had never heard of the Furs anyway. Apparently, on one side of my brother was me geeking out over Richard Butler, even going so far as yelling "RICHARD!!!", and on his other side were some dudes calling Richard a fag. It seems like I yelled something back about how this guy was in The Psychedelic Furs, or being a legend, or something. I do seem to remember that being an overall disappointing night, and should've been the moment I said, "We blew it." One of my hopes was that Alternative Rock would somehow make people more open minded, but, eh, not so much. Hell, I know people who do listen to legit Alt Rock who are pretty staunchly Conservative. And then there's Representative Paul Ryan, who claims to have been a Rage Against The Machine fan. Dude, did you even bother listening to their lyrics?
6. To be honest, I don't know how many people in the Louisville area during the mid-'90s listened to the local Modern Rock station (105.9Q-Too/WXNU) compared to the mainstream Rock station (100.5 The Fox, now at 93.1), but it seemed like Fox listeners had 105.9 listeners way outnumbered. I could understand the older people who were into hair bands or arena rock listening to The Fox, but not the kids I went to school with. It's like, did they know there was an alternative and didn't like it, or did they even know it existed? I guess some people just don't like exploring the dial in hopes of hearing something good on the radio, but people around here seem to be content with mediocrity.