kay kay kay arrarr arr arr arr roah queue!

I don’t know how it happened, but I found myself reading An Oral History of KROQ the other night. I thought it would make a good post for blogging.la, so I went looking for a classic 80s KROQ graphic to use in my post.

That search lead me to a site called Roq of the 80s.

"Oh," I thought, "I bet this is going to be a bitchin’ fansite for the golden age of KROQ."

What I found was infinitely cooler.

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18 thoughts on “kay kay kay arrarr arr arr arr roah queue!”

  2. Kewl! Is there still a KROQ? I lived in LA during the first half of the 1980s and though I haven’t thought of KROQ for probably years, your title made it all come back. :o)

  3. Duh… That’s what happens when I post before FOLLOWING THE STUPID LINKS.
    Wil, thanks so much! This is so great. Just told my husband too, he’s very excited. (Listened to Adam Ant for the first time in years!)

  4. KROQ was all I listened to growing up. If you have Sirius satellite radio you can hear Richard Blade and the Swedish Egil, two jocks from that era playing those same songs on channel 22 First Wave.

  5. I just recently visited LA for the first time in years, and *finally* had a chance to sample the mighty KROQ. And though it was probably much more wonderful back in the day “when music really meant something, man!” I still enjoyed it.

  6. Like, oh mah gawd! I TOTALLY had, like, tears in my eyes! Seriously, that is about as much 80’s nostalgia as my aging 42 year old heart can take. KROQ was all I listened to (except for the occasional Dr Demento) in high school and college. There are an awful lot of memories wrapped up in the music of one little radio station. Thank you so much for the link. Now I can rock out with my six year old to the ROQ of the 80’s! Sweet!

  7. Wil, I have been reading your blog for years, but I never commented… until now. Thank you! I had no idea this existed until tonight. While there are plenty of places to hear this music, there is nothing like all the original KROQ drops between the tracks. It is 1988…6 of us packed in a tiny Honda Civic hatchback…headed to Pasadena to see Depeche Mode at the Rose Bowl…

  8. Oh. My. God. I’m hooked. The first song I heard online was “Ship of Fools” by one of my all-time favoritest bands ever, World Party. I couldn’t tell you the last time I heard World Party played by someone not me.
    Also, I’m with you, Wil. NO MORE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS! I have never understood their appeal…except for Flea playing on “Bust a Move.”

  10. Hmm? I remember it as “kay kay kay kay arrarr arr arr arr arr Uh Oooohhh queue! (Totally hip, it’s the only thing happenin’)”
    I stumbled upon the HD2 80’s looking for the “listen live” link on their site mid last year. I have it on all day at work. They were giving away a lot of concert tickets to promote the station last year. 80’s music is my prozac!

  11. Whoa. This is … well, the word “tubular” comes to mind but that conjures unfortunate memories of permed hair, jelly shoes and bubble miniskirts, so maybe not. Suffice it to say that it brings back some really fun memories of my early SoCal adolesence — a world apart from grown-up life in NY! Thanks for passing this along.

  13. Thank you for linking such awesome music sources. That being said, I am driven insane by streaming audio that requires its own browser based flash player. After much painstaking research, I present to you: http://208.80.52.60:80/KROQHD2DIALUPCMP3
    This can be fed into your streaming audio player of choice for browser free listening. I am still working on accessing the higher quality stream, but it is a start.

  14. Thank you, Wil.
    I am now happily reliving my high school years (despite sitting, at this moment, typing away in a stark gray cube in New England).
    I just about blew my load when I heard Oingo Boingo’s “Goodbye, goodbye” just now.
    Yay, interwebs!

  15. Good Lord, this may actually replace pornography as the most useful thing on the internet. I’ve had this running since I read the post this afternoon and I don’t think I’ll ever turn it off.
    Duran Duran “Save a Prayer” at the moment…

  17. I was someone who had the chance to be at KROQ a lot, starting back in 1990. I used to be the guy who got Richard Blade his Depeche Mode exclusives (if you ever heard the phrase “Depeche Mode” and “KROQ listener Daniel”, you knew you were in for a treat). Later on, my remixes actually got aired on KROQ. I was a big fan of the classic KROQ format, and was a longtime listener (1983, until they starting sucking massive ass – around 1993).
    When Egil formed MARS, I went with him (doing production work and remixes). I would still go visit KROQ (since they were 9 blocks from my home in Burbank). I would literally watch Blade announce a song, turn the mic off, and say “What a piece of crap”. Then, just in the studio monitors, he’d play me a new techno song he found, that the station wouldn’t let him play. I watched “the machine” of new KROQ crush the souls of the employees there. Sure, they were paid, but their hearts were not really there. Jed must get paid dirty money to still put up with the current format. No man in his right mind could sit through all the current “whine rock”, and still keep his sanity. Well…I am talking of Jed. He probably has enough residual drugs in his system so that he can just zone out from time to time. I kid, I kid. Jed is a cool guy. 🙂
    I miss what KROQ used to be. Sometimes, I used to play my DATs of station IDs (I made a point of making copies of almost everything down at the station, usually when Rodney was on air – less people there to catch what I was doing), just to enjoy a memory or two.
    I knew about the HD channel, but did not know they were streaming. It’s cool to hear the music and jingles mixed together again. I just wish it sounded better (audio purist – sorry).
    To “mmerner”: Many people have tried hacking the CBS radio player to extract the high quality signal, but to no luck. Hell, I even tried the simple hack of replacing the word “DIALUP” with “BROADBAND”, but no luck (I literally would have had a brick pop out if it was that easy of a hack). I annoyed my girlfriend last night for about two hours, trying all kinds of “do javascript” AppleScript hacks to the CBS site(s), and their Flash player. I found nothing usable (unless I want to have access to their cover art supply). 😉
    I have an appearance of Wil’s on KROQ from years back (I used to tape KROQ all the time). If there’s enough interest, I might throw a mp3 of it on my site. Or…if Wil pays me enough blackmail money, I might keep it off the net. 🙂
    Man…I miss old KROQ. Trip Reeb and Andy Schuon ruined it. They turned a profit, but lost a lot of listeners in the process. Thanks guys, for making me lose faith in the power of radio.
    Daniel

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