You Live In L.A. – You’re A Teenager – It’s March 14, 1979, And Supertramp Is About To Release Breakfast In America – Past Daily Pop Chronicles

KROQ-FM – Mike Raphone – March 14, 1979 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –

Your town – L.A. And the weekend belongs to you. You have your fake i.d. and you’re going to punch a hole in the heart of Saturday night. You have choices – there’s the Strip and the Whisky, but they check i.d. closely and you just don’t look like the 28 year-old former Marine on your license. There’s Club 88 on Pico – or Madame Wong’s in Chinatown, or Madame Wong’s West on Wilshire. If you went to Madame Wong’s in Chinatown you could head over to The Atomic Cafe in Little Tokyo and then head down to Al’s Bar on Alameda. They sell wine in a box and the toilets never seem to work, but they get bands in and its possible, just possible, you could run into somebody there – that would be sweet. But if you went there you might run into your ex-girlfriend – the one who dumped you for the drummer. You heard they broke up, but you were pissed off when she left that message on your answering machine, and you flattened the tires on her car a few weeks ago to get back at her – she may not be so happy to see you. Okay, maybe head to Santa Monica and check out The Oarhouse on Main Street and walk around, and head over to Sunspot on PCH. Or you could go to Westwood and see if anything interesting is going on at Monty’s. Or you could go to your friends house, get loaded and watch Saturday Night Live. You could do that – maybe you will.

Lots of choices and lots of music. Welcome to Los Angeles in the late 1970s – a hotbed of activity with people dying to do something and go somewhere. It was also where radio was interesting, and KROQ was leading the way, playing music KLOS or KMET weren’t playing -KROQ kept its ears to the ground and was always playing new stuff, new bands or seldom played tracks.

And this broadcast, from March 14, 1979 features the venerable Mike Raphone holding court on an afternoon – playing songs you weren’t about to hear anywhere else. That’s what made them so unique and that’s why it was so tragic when there was a sudden direction change and the voices playing all the new and interesting music were replaced and the music got less adventuresome and more predictable.

But in March 1979 we didn’t know that – we thought KROQ would be that way forever.

If you lived in L.A. and you were anywhere between 14 and 40, you were most likely listening to KROQ, for the first time or for as long as you could remember. It was, in fact the Rock of The 70s.

Enjoy the next 90 minutes.

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