KMPC-FM – Spring 1989 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
You have to admit, the 80s were just a little strange. Big hair, padded shoulders, mom-jeans – it was the decade people most often cringe when seeing family photos, or looking at high school year books or watching favorite videos. What were we thinking with the hair? It wasn’t a particularly good look at the time, and it’s aged even worse since. But every decade has something to cringe over, something that gives pause or comes with cold sweats attached. We had The Reagan Years and Gordon Gekko. Leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers. New Romantics and old problems. The Blitz and Spandex – The Bangles and Ratt. Yeah, it was the decade to be cynical over. But . . . if you were a kid and you were in high school and you lived in L.A., this was probably the best of all times for you. Because that’s the way it is – every decade where you come of age is the best decade that ever was. And those of us not in those decades shrug our shoulders and fail to see the good parts – because we aren’t the ones this is happening to for the first time. We’ve seen it before, and we swore it was better. We got drunk at the Roxy from cocktails in glasses, not plastic cups. We swore by lps, not those little silver discs you had to strain your eyes in order to read the liner notes. We had Time and Temperature Towers, not “If you Play It, Say It” – we had real bands with real musical instruments, not pretty people in puffy shirts with Techno. We had Firesign Theatre, we didn’t have Seinfeld.
But, no getting around it, radio was becoming a different thing altogether – it was different listening to it than watching it on MTV and most people were watching it and radio was drifting someplace, not quite sure.
As a reminder, here is over an hour’s worth of KMPC-FM, months before it became KEDG and The Edge in 1989. Forever changing, forever leaving previous impressions.
So glad we no longer need to listen to stupid outdated homophobia.
Yes. But it’s taken on other shapes, forms and avenues – this radio station lasted only three months, and that no doubt said something.