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Rockers turn tables
Musicians grab radio microphones, spin their favorites
from: rockymountainnews.com
by Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
Rocker Alice Cooper broadcasts nightly in a portable radio studio from wherever he's touring. He also calls on longtime friends in the music business, like Bill Wyman.
Bob Dylan speaks on Wednesday morning – and XM Radio is betting that the world will want to listen.
But if Dylan's not your taste, plenty of other rockers are lined up to play music for you. Rock-star-hosted radio shows are the big new trend in radio, on both traditional and satellite stations.
Denver has more than its share of the programming. Besides being one of the first cities where Sirius Satellite Radio launched, traditional radio stations here have embraced the shows.
KQMT-FM (99.5) The Mountain has carried Little Steven's Underground Garage since its early days. The weekly show, hosted by E Street Band and Sopranos star Steve Van Zandt, runs Sunday nights. The Fox-FM (103.5) runs Nights With Alice Cooper every weeknight and recently recruited San Francisco rocker Greg Kihn for a Saturday-night show (The Fox also hosts Mark Brown's Sunday night show, The Latest From the Greatest).
Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones has a show in Los Angeles, while rockers such as Sammy Hagar have announced plans to launch a show in multiple markets across the nation. If you subscribe to satellite radio, you can get shows and programming from Eminem, Tom Petty, Snoop Dogg, Marky Ramone, Fred Schneider of the B-52s, Charlie Daniels, Tony Hawk, Mojo Nixon and many more.
In some ways, having your own show has become the new vanity project for many artists.
"Yeah, it's the new hip thing," says Lee Abrams, the chief creative programming officer for XM Radio, who landed Dylan after pursuing him for most of a decade.
"(Performers) just kind of like the idea of a radio show. And those are the kind of shows that go south real fast," Abrams says. "You sign them because they have a name, but the actual radio show is rather useless."
That won't be the case, he says, with Dylan's Theme Time Radio Show. In it, Dylan pulls together an hourlong show on various topics, starting Wednesday morning with "Weather." The show features several New Orleans musicians while Dylan quietly muses about music, lyrics and life.
Do fans tune in to stars?
Can a rock-star name cause people to change their listening habits?
"There are really two aspects about it," Abrams says of announcing a show hosted by a star. "One is, it's a great announcement. It spreads the word to the fans of those artists and it draws attention to XM and satellite radio. Most importantly, it has got to be something that has meat to it beyond the press release."
Doing a celebrity radio show can create a lot of initial buzz, Abrams notes, but often falls apart because "either the artist is too busy or doesn't really know what to do on a radio platform."
Abrams says satellite stations have signed artists to do shows, only to have them turn into a ratings train wreck. "We've approached artists who were great at it and it didn't work out . . . and far more where it looks great on paper and you don't even get to the demo(graphic)."
Dylan's audience might be limited, but it's hard-core. Recent revelations from him - his Chronicles autobiography, the Martin Scorsese-directed documentary No Direction Home - were looks behind the curtain many fans thought would never happen. The radio show promises to be another.
"It's really just the mystery of what someone like Bob Dylan would do with his own radio show," Abrams says. "It's a peek inside his musical DNA. It's doing radio like he wants to hear it. It's his favorite songs and him just talking, telling the stories."
Van Zandt's Underground Garage was the pioneer in the genre, launching in 2002. Van Zandt has watched other people copy his idea and has no problem with it.
"I encourage people to not only cop my idea but please, steal my format. I'd like these new rock 'n' roll bands to be heard," Van Zandt says. "I'm hoping things loosen up a little bit for the sake of rock 'n' roll."
To hear him tell it, and his track record backs him up, Van Zandt launched the show solely for the music. "I wasn't hearing my favorite songs on the radio anymore. I didn't feel that personal relationship with radio anymore like I did growing up.
"Most of the old great stuff doesn't get played and none of the new great stuff gets played.
"I partly got into it out of being naïve. I didn't realize how much work it would be, to be honest," says Van Zandt. He juggles creating the two-hour weekly radio show with overseeing two Sirius Satellite Radio channels, as well as touring and recording with Bruce Springsteen and filming his role in HBO's The Sopranos.
The 30 hours a week he used to spend on the show has been pared to 22 hours lately, "but it's still an enormous amount of work." While touring with Springsteen "I'd do the show at 2 o'clock in the morning after the show. That was tricky."
But it has paid off: Underground Garage is surging, attracting more than 1 million listeners nationwide on 146 stations reaching 202 markets in the U.S. That doesn't count those who listen online at littlestevensundergroundgarage.com.
"Most radio stations are 600 songs or less, of which you might hear half. We have 2,600 songs in my playbook. That depth, believe me, young kids respond to," says Van Zandt, working on his 214th installment of the show. "They burn through the homogenized genres very quickly. The whole culture is basically subsisting on the lowest common denominator, walking on this quicksand of mediocrity."
The solution, he says, is simple: "You just raise the standards. You allow people choices." BR
Cooper's show has been one of the most successful because of the work he puts into it. Airing in the evening on 103.5 The Fox, Cooper has taken that station's 25-to-54 demographic, in just a few months, from 14th to first in its time slot. He's now in more than 80 markets and continues to grow.
"I know of at least 10 cases where we went from No. 6 or 7 to No. 1 in two months," he says. "It's different broadcasting and we're playing stuff they don't get to hear every hour."
Cooper still maintains a full touring schedule, recording the show from wherever he's performing. His show is a mix of comedy bits and visits from rock star pals, along with new music, classic rock, rare tracks and more.
"I've got a portable studio," he told the News late last year in Germany. "I've been doing the show from all over the world since May. It's absolutely amazing."
Bringing back the past
The free-form attitude, a throwback to the old days of FM radio, appeals to listeners.
While in Europe, "we decided we'd go see the White Stripes," Cooper says. Backstage he decided "I'm going to get Jack and Meg White to call in. All you have to do is ask and they say 'Sure, we'll call.' It's great to get guys like that and then get Bill Wyman or Roger Waters to call. I've known these guys for 35 years."
That attitude has seeped back into more mainstream stations. "I'm starting to see a lot of things we do - bringing back not only the personality aspects of it but the production aspect," Van Zandt says. "We brought back artist IDs, new artists being part of the station."
The Mountain has led the Denver market in embracing a looser tone, but others are as well. "Things are shifting back," says Garner Goin, general manager of The Fox.
"It takes somebody like an Alice Cooper or a Steve (Van Zandt) to break open that kind of radio. It got so corporate," Cooper says. "When you have the sponsors programming your show, it's not a good thing."
The media has cast recent changes as satellite radio versus terrestrial radio, but many don't see it that way. Clear Channel has invested in both, and recently XM's shock-jock Opie and Anthony show was relicensed back to terrestrial radio.
"I don't see it as a threat to regular radio. It's a complementary medium to it," Van Zandt says of satellite. "There'll be more experimenting going on, different kinds of DJs will get a chance to try to be different on the satellite. Shows will be formed that'll be licensed back to regular radio."
Van Zandt also programs two channels on Sirius, one highlighting the Underground Garage, the other featuring Outlaw Country. It's packed with celebrities too, from JOAN JETT to Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham. "They have great first-person stories. You can't be any more authentic than that," Van Zandt says.
Even though Cooper's show airs on terrestrial radio, where there are FCC restrictions on content, he's had no problem so far. "There's really nobody to tell us 'No.' There's nobody to say 'We can't say that.' "
There are some issues. A preview of Dylan's first show was made available to journalists through a password-protected site - yet someone already has recorded that streaming download and put it on the Internet, where fans can download it for free before the show's debut.
"I don't have an answer for that," Abrams says of the piracy issue. " Like a lot of people, we're trying to figure that out."
And despite the plethora of bandwagon-jumpers who threaten to dilute the formula ("Sammy's Cabo Wabo Happy Hour" anyone?), many feel that radio is resurging.
"Great is great, OK? Entertaining is entertaining. It doesn't matter who it is. In the end the cat's either going to be entertaining, compelling and cool, or he's not," Van Zandt says. "It's a permanent trend. I don't think it's gonna go away. There'll always be musicians now becoming DJs. There's nobody more authentic. It's a legitimate extension of what we do.
"It'll bring people back to radio and that's a healthy thing. . . . Shut the (stupid) computer off, shut off the TV, come back to radio. Anything that does that is a good thing."
Radio, radio
Celebrity radio programming on broadcast stations includes:
• Little Steven's Underground Garage: Steve Van Zandt mixes old-school garage rock and new music; 10 p.m. Sundays, The Mountain-FM (99.5)
• Nights with Alice Cooper: Cooper serves up music and interviews; 7 weeknights, The Fox-FM (103.5)
• Greg Kihn: Behind-the- scenes stories and music from the San Francisco rocker; 7 to midnight Saturdays, The Fox-FM (103.5)
Satellite shows
There are dozens of celebrity radio programs on satellite radio. A look at some of them:
SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO
• Party Out of Bounds with Fred Schneider: The B-52s leader digs through his vinyl collection; 7 p.m. Fridays
• David Johansen's Mansion of Fun: Music from around the world with the New York Dolls founder; 1 p.m. Fridays, rebroadcasts at 11 p.m. Tuesdays
• Marky Ramone's Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: A mix of classic and modern-era punk rock; 8 p.m. Saturdays
• Shooter Jennings' Electric Rodeo: Waylon's son mixes rock and country; 4 p.m. Saturdays, rebroadcasts at 8 p.m. Sundays
• Grandmaster Flash's Flash Mash: The hip-hop pioneer explains how it's done and plays his own selection of tunes; 4 p.m. Saturdays, rebroadcasts at 10 p.m. Mondays
• Shemekia Copeland's Blues Show: The blues queen just launched her show; 11 a.m. Saturdays
• Shade 45: Eminem produces the uncensored hip-hop channel Shade 45.
• Radio Margaritaville: Jimmy Buffett programs this music channel
XM SATELLITE RADIO
All times are for new installments; each show repeats several times throughout the week.
• Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour: Recorded on tour and at home, Dylan plays themed music and interviews guests; 8 a.m. Wednesdays
• Snoop Dogg's Welcome to the Church: The rapper plays music and interviews guests in his Los Angeles home; 9 p.m. Fridays
• Ludacris' Open Mic: Uncensored hip-hop and commentary; 8 p.m. Saturdays
• Tom Petty's Buried Treasure: Music, interviews and commentary from Petty; 8 a.m. Mondays:
• Note: Non-subscribers to either XM or Sirius Satellite Radio can get free online trial previews to check out their shows.
In the beginning
A look at some musical stars who started as DJs:
• B.B. King: The blues legend played live and was a DJ on WDIA in the '40s in Memphis. His nickname at the time (Beale Street Blues Boy), was later shortened to "B.B."
• Rufus Thomas: Also a DJ at WDIA in the '40s and '50s, Thomas was influential in Memphis by bringing many artists, including King, to a wider audience.
• Waylon Jennings: Starting his radio career at age 12 in Texas, Jennings wound up at Lubbock station KLLL in the '50s, where he befriended Buddy Holly and eventually played in his band. Jennings famously gave up his seat on the doomed flight that killed Holly in 1959.
• Willie Nelson: Nelson spun vinyl at Fort Worth's KCNC in the mid '50s as he wrote songs and played clubs on the side. It was a route that led to his writing Crazy for Patsy Cline.
• Sly Stone (Sylvester Stewart): While recording with a band, he worked on KSOL in San Francisco in the '60s; clips of him on-air can be heard at www.airchexx.com. He gave up his day job when Sly and the Family Stone became a phenomenon.
• Peter Wolf: DJ-ed on Boston's WBCN in the '70s, hosting "The All-Night House Party" while in college. Around that time he played in clubs and helped found the J. Geils Band.
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