You’re A Teenager – You Live In L.A. – It’s May, 1989 And They’re Taking The Edge Off The Air – You Are Not Happy – Past Daily Pop Chronicles

KEDG-FM – last two hours – May 13, 1989 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –

Sometimes life just isn’t fair – even where you get your music. Here you are – full-on member of the MTV generation. Your life has changed – you can’t imagine what it was like before MTV. Music is serious, and you take it serious. And when a radio station starts playing stuff there aren’t even videos for – you notice.

But radio had changed a lot. Companies spent a lot of money buying radio stations – and if they aren’t massively popular from the get-go, something had to change.

The problem was – The Edge was only around for a couple months – not even long enough for your friends to know about it. The music was great – the DJ’s were familiar, they were playing what they liked and not the same stuff over and over, because it was on a chart. It was a radio station that played music for people who liked music – and you like music . . .a lot. It was your life – still is – always will be.

And just as people were starting to notice, one day they announced they would be no longer. They would be something else; something else they thought you would like more – something they knew you would like because they had focus groups made up of people who were kind of like you, sort of looked like you, acted a bit like you and nodded their heads like you. And that focus group said you weren’t going to like this music – this unfamiliar stuff – that you wanted something you were familiar with, that you already knew who it was by so the DJ didn’t have to remind you – something the owners of the radio station would be happy about, because it meant their investment would pay off – they didn’t need to take any chances. All would be fine – and you wouldn’t care.

KEDG-FM went away and became K-LIT (K-lite) and then something else and something else after that.

At least you still had MTV, for now anyway.

Here are the last two-hours of The Edge, as it was rolling off into the sunset on May 13, 1989. Maybe you remember and maybe you don’t. They said the station never got more than a “cult following” – so perhaps this slice of history will be new to you.

In any event, it was the 80s.

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