There was a time — and I swear I’m not making this up — when the weirdest, most wonderful thing on your radio came out of… Pasadena.
KROQ-FM.
It wasn’t polished.
It wasn’t safe.
Half the time it sounded like they’d duct-taped the transmitter to a palm tree and said, “Eh, we’ll see what happens.”
And then—bang—out came Depeche Mode, The Cure, Oingo Boingo, Missing Persons, The Smiths, INXS… all the misfits, all the outsiders, all the bands your parents thought were going to corrupt the dog.
A huge part of that madness?
Rick Carroll.
Rick didn’t program radio like a consultant.
He programmed it like a kid who’d just discovered a secret candy store and refused to tell the grown-ups.
He helped build that “Roq of the 80’s” sound — sharp, rebellious, neon-lit — and suddenly the rest of the country is calling L.A. asking:
“…what the hell are you people doing out there?”
And right in the middle of it all?
Richard Blade.
That voice. That accent.
Like your cool British cousin who shows up at Thanksgiving, steals the stereo, and somehow makes everyone okay with it.
Richard wasn’t just playing records — he was introducing characters. He made the scene feel like a place. A world. A late-night club at the edge of town where everybody wore black and nobody judged you for dancing badly.
And woven through all of that — like a secret back door into the scene — was Rodney Bingenheimer.
Rodney championed bands before anyone else would, slipped them onto the air, and somehow made the weird kids feel seen. If Carroll rewired the system and Blade brought the party, Rodney was the connector — the guy who whispered, “Hey… listen to this.”
And then — because this was KROQ — they had to push it further.
Every April 1st, they’d mess with you.
Fake announcements. Fake format flips. Wild stories.
For a few hours you’d swear the station had been sold, moved, shut down, or turned into polka.
One year, they even leaned into the joke and did a whole “Pirate Radio” day — like they’d been taken over by hijackers with questionable ethics and great hair.
Listeners freaked out. DJs cackled. And somewhere, management probably needed Tums.
It was chaotic. It was juvenile. It was completely unnecessary.
And it was perfect.
Because KROQ wasn’t about being respectable.
It was about reminding you that music was supposed to feel alive — unpredictable — like the night might go anywhere if you just kept the dial right where it was.
So here’s to the Roq.
To Carroll changing the rules.
To Blade making the whole thing feel like home.
To Rodney quietly opening the door for the next wave before anyone realized what was happening.
To every April Fools’ prank that made us yell at the radio and then laugh at ourselves.
And to that glorious stretch of time when a station in Pasadena helped rewired the whole damn decade.
This is Rock of the 80’s signing off for tonight — not sad, exactly… just remembering. And remembering sounds pretty damn good.
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