so back in the “day,” when i was employed by rock music FM stations in reno that made use of consultant services, we would often be advised to “not be too hip for the room.” in other words, stick to the hits, maybe go 2 to 3 cuts deep on new albums by superstars, but generally, we want to be playing the really popular epics/hits as much as possible, which of course yielded terrific dividends in listener popularity very quickly (and, i must add, a popularity that was easily maintained), but also guaranteed that, in many instances, we overplayed the great songs (Roundabout, Night Moves, Two Tickets to Paradise) and just pulverized them into fairy dust. Of course, there was no denying the track record of such an approach, and, sure enough, about six months after our adoption of the “format”, our ratings pretty much doubled. it was impressive….and alarming. our consultants said simply, The Masses Are Asses. and then, they backed it up.
we don’t have such quandaries now at Jive Radio. which is nice. we can cut it loose however we want, the way d.j.s in the 50s, 60s, and 70s used to do. and then take it further….if possible. and what we’re discovering here in the Jive Era….it is indeed possible. And it’s interesting to see a multi-decade trend toward ever-increasing eclectism in the reno radio market. KGLR was reno’s first “underground fm station,” and it indeed BROUGHT IT (let me not forget KSML up at the Lake!). and then KGLR (Get Loose Radio?) Get Lost Radio?) morphed into KOZZ, which was still a fairly wide open rocker (we much enjoyed Jeff Beck, Dire Straits, and Genesis) until it got consulted and got real popular and a bit predictable (which, it was plain to see, a lot of people were just fine with). Ok, jiffy.
Then, halloween 1990. me and psyd marley and rich garcia and don darue and darren vassis got goin with an “adult” rock thing called The X (adult meaning no led zep and aerosmith and lots of john prine and paul simon and bonnie raitt) which was considerably more eclectic than any other commercial station at the time. we really did have our multi-flavored moments, especially when the late rex kramer was jamming with count basie records on sunday afternoon and the late baba o’lear was getting off on gilberto gil performances on his sunday night show and darren would host martian bandstand and don would dream up the hayseed hoot and psyd would be firing up frank zappa in the mid morning and i’d go off on some james brown tangent and we certainly got some musical noodles flung on the wall. in our time. Yeah, we probably overdid it with the Chris Isaak and the Lyle and the Sonia Dada, but really, what great new bands to discover and expose. and hey, i love that The X is still here and doin it and on last Nov. 1st made it to 27. that’s a good feelgood.
And now this humble experiment in radio terror. beginning in October 2014 as KXNV and then sorta morphing into being better known as the Fine 89 and then morphing again (and the company who bought 89.1 from us in Feb. ’16 are doing some very nice work indeed and i recommend that you give them a listen on occasion, if you don’t already–you may be pleasantly surprised) morphing again to our latest form, Jive Radio. and as you have heard, JR is yet another leap forward in terms of wider horizons of musical eclecticism. or put another way, we have a quite enormous pasture to romp around in. It is conceivable that one day, you just may hear Spike Jones into John Klemmer into Beck into Cold Blood into Paul Revere & the Raiders into Henry Mancini into Patsy Cline and down down down into the Whoa Hole. It happens all the time that i hear songs on JR that makes me say to my self, “damn, why wasn’t i playing THAT shit on my morning show on the X in the 90s?”
There was an old theory, undoubtedly begun by someone in SF at 230 in the morning, that eclectic music radio, if done REALLY well, in fact, PERFECTLY, could result in vibratory transformations of an instant kind. where the listener just suddenly would dramatically dissipate into a beam of light, which would then be followed by a swift GTFO move. Thus, the theory of JR….Jive Rapture.
a long shot? you bet. but the real point being that, according to steve miller, the beauty of time is that it’s snowing.
other than that…….
ahtay ahtay, othermay ukkerfay!
