Back in 2003, my coworker told me about his uncle who worked parking at Universal City Walk. Due to an accident sustained while there, he was able to get concert tickets to The Universal Amphitheater. I only ever took advantage of it once, as things kept coming up during the shows I really wanted to see. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t on A.I.M. with my middle school friends saying “Hey, let’s get a gang together and go see The Offspring and Manic Hispanic play.” Much like everything else, it fell apart.
The one time that it didn’t was on December 13, 2003, when we had the fortunate luck of getting tickets to KROQ 106.7’s Night 1 of Almost Acoustic Christmas. It was a cavalcade of the early 2000’s faces: Thrice, Chevelle, The Distillers, Puddle of Mudd, A.F.I., P.O.D., Pennywise, The Offspring, and headliner Linkin Park. We had mosh pit tickets and wore Santa hats as a way to spot each other in a crowd. Among the highlights for me was disliking the P.O.D. set so much that I flipped off singer Sonny Sandoval and he responded by mentioning “the college kid with no Christmas spirit.” I like to think that video exists somewhere on the internet. Running out to buy a Los Angeles Times on Monday to read a review was a pastime that I carried for years, loving how the journalist made my wild time into a coherent narrative.
In some ways, I felt bad that I never went to another KROQ concert because they used to be part of the Southern California cult. You wore Lakers shirts and listened to KROQ. Those were your requirements along with anything beach culture and thinking that Sublime’s “40 oz. to Freedom” was the greatest album ever released. There was so much of an identity that we bought into in part because KROQ’s music back then had more of an edge than it does now. As that Almost Acoustic Christmas line-up proves, it was that time when late-90s fads like grunge and nu-metal were fusing with a resurgence of punk rock. It was a time when the station felt youthful and actually felt like a reasonable competition to stations like KLOS 95.5., Star 98.7, and 93.1 Jack FM.
Part of that came with their DJs, who pretty much set the trends. I still remember hearing Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom” on Stryker’s Catch of the Day months before it became a radio staple. There was the morning when The Kevin & Bean Show premiered the Eminem song “Without Me” and it felt like the world was changing. The song was so boggling at the time that I still remember the song coming to an end and somebody saying “Let’s play that again.” It’s one of the few times when I can remember a radio station purposely doing that. I, unfortunately, missed the premiere of Green Day’s monumental “Jesus of Suburbia,” touted as this nine-minute magnum opus, because I had to go to stupid high school.
Basically, the morning zoo used to be much different up until maybe 2010. There was a cult of personality based around the DJs who would entertain you while commuting to work.
You looked forward to the morning because around 7:45 A.M. there was Ralph Garman (pre-Kevin Smith) giving the Hollywood beat. It was one of the places where I fell in love with dumb jokes, as the station had a fascination with chronicling R. Kelly’s hip-hopera “Trapped in the Closet.” It was a deconstruction of lyrics and madness, and the fact that it ended on a cliff-hanger where Kelly’s basically saying “Where’s the package?” only encapsulated what was so, so wrong with it. Nobody actually knew what the package was, and Brad Pitt’s probably still yelling at him about it. The station also brought us the early careers of Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel before they went on to bigger things.
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| Subtle |
If there was any sign of how crude KROQ was compared to its competition, one merely needs to check out the name of their Christmas charity albums. Among their titles were:
“Bogus Christmas”
“We’ve Got Your Yule Logs Hangin’”
“Santa Claus, Schmanta Claus”
“No Toys For O.J.”
“Christmastime in the LBC”
“Santa’s Swingin’ Sack”
“The Real Slim Santa”
“Swallow My Eggnog”
“Fo’ Shizzle St. Nizzle”
“The Year They Recalled Santa Claus”
“Christmastime in the 909”
Yes, they weren’t above some crude humor. Their albums mixed rock bands contributing rock songs with random skits. They weren’t all dirty, though that was part of their euphemistic charm. They even got Jerry Springer to sing a dysfunctional family song called “Pink Flamingos.” They sold them at Best Buy and there were some years where we hoofed down there after school and bought them along with the newly designed KROQ stickers. There was a lot to like about the albums. Songs like Jimmy Eat World’s “If You Were Born Today” deserve more airplay around Christmastime.
And yet something began to change around 2010. It could’ve just been me, but the glory days of KROQ were starting to wane and I stopped listening. I turned to the classic rock alternative Mark & Brian Show on KLOS because they had a more welcoming dynamic. I followed them until their demise and never really felt comfortable going back to KROQ after that. It was in part because as I listened to the station more, it sounded like things were changing in radio in general. The cult of a DJ was ending and suddenly it was better to just invest in podcasts, form your own playlist, and let the good times roll.
I accept that trends have shifted and I am no longer in the demographic, but it’s disappointing how similar KROQ and Star 98.7 have become. In the old day, they were a rock station that flirted with edgy material and interviewing Snoop Dogg as he said: “What it do, nephew?” Nowadays it’s not uncommon to hear The Lumineers, Imagine Dragons, or Post Malone in their afternoon line-up. I’m not saying they’re bad (though Imagine Dragons remains a career-long shrug for me), but they’re not what I want to hear when I turn on KROQ.
I recognize that it’s an impact of getting older and my tastes changing. We can’t always have loud and angry music dominating the radio, though why not? Why doesn’t a lot of the new music reflect the underlying anxiety that we’re all facing? Sure we got Billie Eilish to calm our jittered nerves, but what else is there?
By some delusion, I had this naïve belief that I would return to The Kevin & Bean Show one of these days to find that it was still this blast of fresh air to my morning. I would be able to look over and hear the entire gang sitting around microphones and cracking jokes, interviewing the latest celebrities on their upcoming project. While Mark & Brian had disappeared, there was a piece of Southern California still on the radio, serving as a great alternative to the less interesting DJs that had cropped up in the years since I transitioned into podcasts.
The closest that I came to this was sometime last year. I had fallen so much in love with Lana Del Rey’s “Norman Fucking Rockwell” (it may be in my Top 10 by now) that I wanted to just watch interviews with her. Among them was one with KROQ, which made me think that this was the moment that I got to see the magic. Through a YouTube video, I watched her discuss the title track with the group.
That was August 2019 and I already felt like something felt off. I could see Kevin, but it felt like Bean was checked out. Considering that I dropped out years ago, I wasn’t familiar with most of the supporting cast of players. Where was Ralph Garman or Lisa May? It didn’t feel right. I learned that Bean was leaving November 2019, and I guess that stopped me from ever giving the show another chance. I learned about Garman’s unceremonious departure, feeling some disappointment since I was never really a fan of his Hollywood Babble-On podcast.
Then it was late last week that I got the terrible news, first from Jimmy Kimmel who wrote on Twitter that: "Shame on you, @kroq 'management' for caring so little about the people who gave you so much. Especially now."
To clarify, The Kevin & Bean Show was an institution to more than me. As I’ve mentioned, they had annual concerts that were largely promoted through the morning show. They released charity records that sold out in a day. This wasn’t just filling up airtime with cheesy jokes. It was forming its own Southern California cult. It had been since New Year’s Eve 1989 and to see it fall short during its 30th anniversary is a bit of a shame.
This wasn’t just a departure. Bean got a proper send-off whereas Kevin and the surviving crew just left. According to Kevin, they were escorted out of the building without any warning of how things were going to wind up. He suggested that:
"Our boss said, 'You know, there's never a good time for this.' No — but there is a bad time for this, and it's during a global pandemic when all the businesses are basically shutting down. It's not a great time to be looking for a job."
Apparently, this was because they had fallen in the ratings. Kevin had gotten a call the day before, meaning that there was no time to perform a ceremonious goodbye. Even Mark & Brian got a farewell that amounted to a week-long celebration including live events, celebrities dropping by to remember old times, and a farewell sign-off that went long into the next broadcast. There was an understanding of their status as legends. Kevin & Bean (now Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen) were just as much a part of radio’s identity in Southern California, and I guess with several significant departures it just got to be too much. Even then, the lack of fanfare for a 30-year institution like that is highly unprofessional on KROQ’s part.
I suppose that I am as much to blame for those low ratings as everyone else. With exception to a random minute when my alarm went off, I never actually tuned in regularly. Still, it was the last beacon of my fondness for morning radio. Between Kevin & Bean, Mark & Brian, and the “blink and you’ll miss it” morning shows of Indie 103.1, there was a time when I looked forward to tuning in. I’m sure KLOS’ new guys Frank & Heidi are good, but I’ll need some convincing before I have them on and feel the same company that these other DJ’s meant.
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| Left to right: Stryker, Snoop Dogg, and Klein |
KROQ says they’re retooling their image. I guess that’s fine. I’m sure longtime fans will protest yet again, as I’m sure they’re in large part to blame for the lowered ratings. I’m not mad, though that’s because I’ve moved onto podcasts and alternative driving material. Still, I’m not entirely mad at their replacements: Stryker & Klein. As I mentioned, I liked Styker as an afternoon DJ. However, much like The Sound 100.3 using former KLOS afternoon DJ Joe Benson for their morning show, it feels like a bad omen despite having something so foolproof and appealing.
With the end of an era, I continue to realize that as much as I’ve moved on from a lot of my youth, there are things every now and then that make me nostalgic for a different time. At one point I felt annoyed that late-night TV wasn’t “the same” because Jimmy Fallon and James Corden preferred viral bits instead of spontaneously absurd gags like David Letterman or Conan O’Brien (though I do still like Seth Meyers). However, that doesn’t mean that I keep the spirit alive and watch Conan religiously. I don’t even know what he does anymore. Then again, I didn’t even know that Bean was gone. For things that I personally didn’t think about for months at a time, I seem to feel strongly about its absence. I think it’s because a door is officially closed to an era. I didn’t go through it often when it was open, but now that it’s locked, I kind of wish I could.
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