Sundays
Rodney Bingenheimer and his KROQ radio show Rodney on the ROQ used to be on during prime time on Sunday evenings.
These days, KROQ management has relegated Rodney's show to a late/overnight time slot and that's just too bad.
I never saw the movie "Mayor of the Sunset Strip" because I find it odd to watch a documentary about someone I know.
This is what I know about Rodney:
Sundays nights for years, Pleasant and I would not only listen to his show, but frequently visit him at the station(and he put us on the air sometimes as well)even though we lived in Hollywood and the station was in Pasadena. It was the thing to do on Sundays. Rodney supported local bands and was often the first DJ to play any punk single, and he exposed so many bands to the big LA audience. For that alone, we give him props.
Rodney's passion for this music and his dedication to exposing local talent helped Lobotomy, the brainless magazine, a xeroxed fanzine that Pleasant and Randy Detroit started, that I took photos for, because it gave us a touch of credibility. It was a cottage industry, punk rock, but we fed each other this way.
Because Rodney played records by bands we wrote about, it gave us both cred. It gave the bands an audience. Rodney enabled us punk kids to do our DIY thing and yield results.
Back then, I thought we were just having fun. It was a lot of fun and you could never ever accomplish now what a little fanzine like Lobotomy accomplished back then. These days, no DJ is gonna let you waltz into the station during his shift, nor would he let you chat up an up and coming British punk rocker on his dime the way Rodney let us do with Billy Idol. No record company PR flack or band manager would let a fanzine anywhere near their client. No...back then we got to make up the rules. I think perhaps we started niche marketing...
Still, I look upon all this as youthful fun until I start hearing people all the time nowadays regarding my youthful scene with respect and awe - especially for Lobotomy, and looking back...
I guess we had our finger on something... or were witness to something legitimate. Its easy to see the long lasting influences of LA punk on fashion, graphic design, advertising and culture in general.
It makes me feel like Forrest Gump. Now where's my box of chocolates?
Comments