FLY LOW

I just got back from Cleveland, where I was able to cross two more names off a long list of interviews for a book I’m writing about KROQ from 1972 to 1986 (the book’s called "The Sound Salvation"). It’s part history – how the station inadvertently birthed the alternative rock industry; and part memoir – a look at the connection it had to young listeners such as myself, who couldn’t deal with the cock rock and stoner ramblings of dinosaurs like KMET, KLOS and KWST.

I realize that KMET was once considered L.A. radio’s holy grail, but by the late ‘70s it had become a straitjacket of hesher rock; it was suburban whiteboy music, all spandex, ridiculous facial grimaces, and Paraquat Kellys. KROQ, on the other hand, sounded like it’d been beamed in from another planet. In those pre “Roq of the ‘80s” days, the station was a mess of beautiful noise – deejays that sounded like they wandered in from the street, it had a non-playlist in which jocks played what they wanted -- Queen coexisted with the Ramones -- and very few commercials. For suburban kids like me, who felt hopelessly on the outside looking in, the station was a godsend: I was finally hearing sounds on the radio that spoke my language. KROQ didn’t play favorites; it let everyone inside. Which, of course, meant it wasn’t cool.

My destination Saturday was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Now, before I say more, you won’t get any Cleveland jokes from me. I kind of like it. Other than the fact that its downtown shuts down on weekends, it’s a perfectly serviceable mid-sized metropolis with a lot of stuff crammed into a small space. Whoever’s in charge did a nice job of cleaning the place up.

At the Rock Hall, I visited with Dusty Street, who broadcasts two Sirius radio shows from a booth on the fifth floor. Dusty was at KROQ, on and off, for a decade from 1979 to 1989. She wasn’t like the other station jocks. Most of ‘em were kids. She was a real woman, a boozy older broad with a little more authority, a little more professional. And she was a woman with a past – truth was, she was an FM radio pioneer. Street’s career started at KMPX in San Francisco – generally acknowledged as the birthplace of freeform rock – in 1967.

At KROQ, she played a weird combination of Depeche Mode, Naughty Sweeties and Fad Gadget on her daily nighttime broadcast. She was a voice of wisdom in the dark night, and when I was growing up, it was Dusty Street who helped me make it through boring, hot, confused nights in Granada Hills. She was like the mom who’d let me do anything.

When rules came to KROQ, she broke them. And that was okay for a while. But when the suits from Infinity came in, they were less willing to tolerate a badass with a drug problem and Dusty was sent on her way. She bounced around in L.A. in the ‘90s and wound up working in Vegas before landing in Cleveland with Sirius.

I had a great few hours with her. I caught the end of her broadcast, we had lunch, she told stories from a memorable life, details of which she says she can't remember, lost to drugs and booze. Now past 60, she no longer parties, and is slowed by back and knee replacement operations, but she’s a ray of light, and all about the music. She broke the rules because it was always about the music. It’s an odd thing, sitting with someone who’s touched your life. It can sometimes be a letdown, but it’s the rare radio jock whose feet really leave the ground careerwise. Like most entertainment and media gigs, it can humble you real quick. Dusty Street has eaten her fair share of shit and all she wants to do his play the music she loves. Imagine that? Such an old-school sentiment.

Maybe that why she’s in Cleveland and not in L.A. Format’s here are tighter than a drum and DJ’s when you hear them have been neutered to the point of irrelevance. In some ways it saddens me that, after 40 years in the business, there’s no place for her on terrestrial radio. I guess that probably says more about radio than it does about her. Though she’s eligible for the Denny’s discount, the voice is still as seductive as ever; when I sit in the booth as she wraps up her show, I can close my eyes and transport back to the house on Encino Avenue, circa 1980, with the septic tank and the junked-out old Buicks that were parked on the grass of our overgrown lawn. It’s a beautiful voice, a voice of real rock history. Sad, in a way that it’s preserved in a museum and not out in the real world, but also a good thing – it’s a museum of rock history, and visitors who watch her at work get to see rock history in the moment, still alive, still vibrant, still doing what she loves, still flying low, avoiding the radar.