KROQ – Dusty Street – May 26, 1983 – Rob Frankel collection –
Ever since grade school you’ve wanted to be in a band. Trouble was – all the guys you knew who played music kept telling you “No chicks in rock bands” – especially since you play drums. That was Middle school – a long time ago.
Now you’re in high school things are looking up. You finally hooked up with these other girls who play music; serious girls – serious music. You aren’t playing around.
Just one problem – you can’t quite agree on what direction you want to take.
You grew up on Led Zeppelin – the guitarist is into XTC. The singer is a Laura Branigan fan – the bass player is big on Rockabilly. The Keyboard player loves Emerson, Lake and Palmer and the Rhythm guitarist loves X. The singer you can work around. You know a lot of singers – the school choir is loaded with them.
The Rhythm guitarist is the biggest problem because she has all the amps and her parents have a two-car garage. The rest of you live in apartments so you have no place to practice.
You get together on the weekends to practice, but mostly you argue. You kind of got the keyboard player interested in playing Barracuda by Heart, but that lasted all of five minutes before the snide comments started.
Finally, you all agree to disagree but you’re going to be democratic about the whole thing – everybody gets to choose one song they like and the others have to go along with it. The spirit of compromise is at least lukewarm, until you get down to learning songs. Easier said than done. The lead singer let’s everybody know she signed the band up for the talent show at the end of the semester – a month away. No pressure there.
So you decide you should come up with a name for the band.
After an hour of arguing back and forth, the Rhythm guitarist hooks a radio up to one of the amps and produces a six-pack of Budweiser. You decide you’re going to spend the rest of the afternoon listening for songs you can all agree to play.
But then . . .you have to agree on what station you want to listen to. Since she owns the amp and the radio, you all sit around and listen to KROQ and open beers. You don’t like beer.
Being in a rock band ain’t easy.
And here’s an hour’s worth of Dusty Street from KROQ, exactly as it was heard on May 26, 1983 to remind you.