The first post

What do you do for an intro?  I suppose I could waste your time telling you a little about myself and where these strange ideas come from.  So here it goes.  I promise to make it enlightening and humorous.

I've been a music buff for many years.  I think it started as a small child growing up listening to my mother and father.  My mom performed in plays, sang in musicals from the time she was small until this day.  My dad also performed on stage, but fell in love with the guitar at age 12 and played it every day, performing live in bands and as a soloist, as well as recording in the studio and writing over 80 songs in his life until his passing in 2010.

For me, I did a little of all the above, however, I always saw myself as more of an Alan Freed/Dick Clark than an Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly.  I spent inordinate amounts of time as a teenager listening to radio stations, familiarizing myself with personalities on the radio and following trends in music.  My initial interests in music revolved around top 40 radio, but as my drive and hunger to find new and interesting music eventually drove me away from the small sliver of mainstream radio to more obscure but still profound music.  I fell in love with former Denver area radio stations KNRX - Castle Rock (92X) KTCL - Fort Collins and KXPK (The Peak).  I was particularly fond of KNRX.  I loved how in a few short months that station ripped away listeners from incumbent corporate rocker KBPI by playing the next wave of 90's era rock without having to listen to worn out Mötley Crüe hits first.  Perhaps it was a combination of what was happening in music at the time and my impressionable teenage mind in 1995 but 92X had an affect on me.  On February 27, 1996, 92X was turned into an R & B station and one year after that into a Hispanic pop station. 

I immediately flocked to KTCL 93.3 who was in the process of being purchased by Clear Channel predecessor Jacor.  The station was moved from Fort Collins to South Denver and the signal was boosted.  I was no longer having to attach a wire hanger to my antenna to pick up the station in stereo anymore.  It was about this time I decided I needed to get into radio for a career.  I began attending college in 2000, 4 years removed from high school and 1 year removed from serving a 2 year mission for the LDS Church in Southern California (where radio listening was prohibited).  I learned about the massive consolidation of the radio industry and how large corporations (particularly Clear Channel) had cut staff, and consolidated formats in an attempt to make radio profitable.  What ended up happening was limited play lists, prerecorded broadcasts and independent radio promoters who profited from selling pay-for-play.  A music nerd like myself would not be able to flourish in such an environment.

I trashed my career plans in radio and decided go on the attack for a few years.  I ran a website called denverradiosucks.com until about 2006.  The site got the attention of radio listeners and insiders alike.  I found out I was not the only one who disliked the majority of FM radio.  I received the support of thousands of Denverrites who felt the same way.  After a Best of Westword Award in 2003 and mentions in all of the Denver daily newspapers (Westword, Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News), I got bored with the site and decided to call it quits.  I had become a father, finished college and started a business in that time period and it became low on my list of thing to work on. 

So now that brings me to 5 years later.  My slant on this blog is to give me my soap box back.  My mother suggested recently I should do something like this and I often find myself needing to blog about music again.  So here it goes, bear with me.  I dedicate this venture to both my parents, who always encouraged me to be creative and open-minded.