The Mighty Met

If you asked me what I listened to, musically, growing up, I would proudly proclaim, without thinking twice, “oh I loved progressive rock – bands like Rush, Genesis, Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, Supertramp, and of course Pink Floyd.”

Turning Point was a very questionable and sketchy store which billed itself as a “head shop” that sold records (those old-timey vinyl round things) as well as all sorts of paraphernalia used in the ingestion through various means of drugs. It always had an odd smell about it that was a combination of patchouli oil and something else. I know today that something else was marijuana, but at the time I didn’t have a clue.

I didn’t have a record player, so when I’d hear something from Supertramp’s Crime of the Century like “Dreamer” or “Bloody Well Right” on my clock radio while listening to KMET 94.7 (“The Mighty Met”) in Los Angeles, I’d ride my bike down to Turning Point, find the Supertramp bin in the rows and rows of records, take one out, and pretend like I was going to buy it but wanted to hear a few tracks first.  So they’d put it on a turntable and play it for me on their sound system.  The guy behind the counter was so stoned he never caught on that I never bought anything.  Or maybe he did and he just didn’t care because he got to listen to the albums I picked too.

Coming of age in the early 80s and being a child of the era, I was torn between the prog rock of the 70s and the New Wave of the 80s.  In LA, that conflict was mirrored on the FM radio dial.  Up at the top end (or over on the right) you had KROQ 106.7 whose tagline was “the rock of the 80s.”  At the other end, KMET 94.7, whose station id, “A little bit of heaven, ninety-four point seven – KMET – tweedle-dee” had been written by the station’s program manager, Shadoe Stevens, and sung by, of all people, the Pointer Sisters!  In between you had KLOS at 95.5, KLSX at 97.1, KRTH (K-Earth) at 101.1, KOST (“the coast”) at 103.1, and KBIG at 104.5.  If anyone doubts I was, and am, a music fanatic, I recalled all those stations and their call signs from memory almost 50 years later sat here in Palm Springs and I haven’t lived in LA for almost two decades.

There was another at 100.3, but I can’t remember its call sign; it might have been 10Q (Ten-Q is bouncing around my noggin, and looks like their 100 MHz broadcast frequency on the dial when written out numerically).  Stevens, who had previously created and launched KROQ, developed the freeform format KMET was known for, where the disc jockeys chose their own music (playlists) based on their musical tastes and often opined on the events of the day in the city, the state, the country, or the world, while introducing the tracks.  An example of this was longtime DJ Jim Ladd whose late-night laid-back philosophical commentary would lead into a song that amplified his point. I fell asleep to Ladd’s deep, smooth-as-silk voice many a night during the Mighty METal Hour, which he hosted from 10pm to midnight.

Another KMET innovation at the time was the mixing of comedy with their music programming.  They would regularly broadcast hilarious and/or satirical sketches by the Firesign Theatre and the Credibility Gap.  And on Sunday night, there was always Dr. Demento, whose offbeat selection of “comedy music and variety” would become the most listened-to Sunday evening radio program in Los Angeles.  I never missed it!  I still remember “All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon when we’re poisoning pigeons in the park,” from Tom Lehrer.

Adding to their success was the broadcasting of live concerts taking place in and around Los Angeles.  Bootleg copies of these broadcasts went on to become much sought-after collectors’ items.  One such bootleg of David Bowie’s show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on the 20th of October in 1972 during the Ziggy Stardust Tour as aired by KMET was traded far-and-wide by fans before being officially released in 2008 by Bowie himself, who remastered KMET’s original broadcast.

To underscore KMET’s subversive, countercultural, outside the mainstream ethos, their billboards (again, a creation of Program Manager Shadoe Stevens) were always backwards. Those listeners who “got it” would affix their bumper stickers to their cars upside down in solidarity, creating a city-wide “inside joke” and an esprit de corps shared by listeners.

The 1978 movie FM, written by former employee Ezra Sacks, was said to be based on KMET and his time there.  The station thrived throughout my childhood and early teenage years, becoming one of the most successful FM radio stations in the country.  But times and tastes change.  The advent of New Wave and the New Romantics (which became KROQ’s calling card) coupled with prescribed playlists by ownership and station managers and an increasingly “canned” approach to on-air chatter that was typical of the more mainstream stations and the new album-oriented rock format led to a steady decline and then the death of an icon.  The Mighty Met went off-air at Noon on February 14, 1987, with one last poignant message delivered to listeners with “The End” by the Beatles:

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

KMET was inducted into the Rock Radio Hall of Fame in the “Legends of Rock Radio-Stations” category in 2014. For us Angelenos of a certain age, it was more than just a radio station – it symbolized the spirit of Los Angeles itself.

KMET was replaced in Los Angeles by KTWV “The Wave” at 94.7, broadcasting unlistenable new-age woo, pan flutes, and, today, smooth jazz and an assault on all that is good in this world called “adult contemporary.”  All things must pass.  But I have fond memories of a childhood spent hearing a song on KMET then riding my bike down to Turning Point to listen to the album.  It was bliss.  Although that was probably just the contact high from all the pot.