‘Last DJ’ Jim Ladd in Deep with SiriusXM
December 2, 2011
Veteran rock DJ Jim Ladd is going underground — via satellite.
Ladd, recently fired by longtime employer KLOS in Los Angeles, has found a home at Deep Tracks, the satellite radio channel reminiscent of the free-form FM stations of the 1960s and ’70s.
He celebrated the news by blasting the “stagnant, preprogrammed fodder that passes for radio today.”
Ladd, dubbed the “last DJ” by Tom Petty, was one of the few major-market rock radio hosts allowed to work without a playlist. He launches his nightly four-hour show in January, on SiriusXM Channel 27.
“I will be playing everything I want, from Pink Floyd to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, from the Doors to Moby Grape, freely and with no playlists,” Ladd said. “As I have always done throughout my career, I will be choosing all my own music (and) creating thematic sets.”
Ladd should prove a good fit for Deep Tracks, which focuses on lesser-known songs by top “underground” artists of the 1960s and ’70s, such as Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
The station’s stated concept is to play songs that didn’t chart, B-sides and live tracks. SiriusXM neighbor Classic Vinyl (channel 26) plays the era’s FM hits.
Deep Tracks is the closest thing to a psychedelic station on the satellite service. The channel’s “The Blacklight” program — “the finest in psychedelic rock” — is similar to Ladd’s hourlong “Headsets” segments. The Grateful Dead also have a channel of their own.
Deep Tracks’ big-name DJs are Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, both of whom do weekly free-form shows. Dylan’s show is so popular that archived episodes of his “Theme Time Radio Hour” now run 24/7 on an Internet-only SiriusXM channel (805).
Ladd seems eager to burn his bridges with terrestrial broadcasting: “Traditional FM radio has turned its back on the very thing that made rock radio the magical experience it was intended to be,” he said in the SiriusXM announcement of the deal.
“SiriusXM is kicking down the doors of the stagnant, preprogrammed fodder that passes for radio today by encouraging me to do my free-form show so we can all share this experience live as it happens.”
KLOS’ firing of Ladd came in a wave of layoffs created by Cumulus Radio’s buyout of Citadel Broadcasting. He wasn’t allowed a farewell show, so a local AM station offered him a one-time 3-hour slot to communicate with his fans. Rockers Roger Waters, John Fogerty, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Slash and George Thorogood were among the well-wishers who phoned in.
Waters included Ladd in one of his concept albums and tours. Petty’s “The Last DJ” song was written about Ladd.
Ladd, who calls himself “The Lonesome L.A. Cowboy,” built his audience on the legendary L.A. station KMET. He wrote the tell-all book “Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial” (1992). A critic of the time greeted the release by saying that Ladd remains “trapped in a 1960s-1970s time warp.”
For his satellite show, Ladd plans regular interviews with rock stars as well as listener call-ins. The Deep Tracks host most affected by the Ladd signing would appear to be Meg Griffin.
Before the satellite deal was announced Dec. 2, Ladd reportedly was in talks with the city’s 100.3 The Sound.
SiriusXM chief Scott Greenstein said: “Jim Ladd is a classic rock radio icon who turned curating a list of songs into an art form. We are proud and excited to welcome his free-form style to SiriusXM.”
Original MTV VJs Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn also have shows on the satellite service.
Furthur live on Sirius; town halts show
June 27, 2010
Reason to be grateful: Sirius XM is doing a live broadcast of Furthur’s tour stop in tiny Jim Thorpe, Pa.
Reason to be bummed: The July 5 show at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont was abruptly canceled because of fears of damage to the facility. One angry fan called it “Grateful Dead paranoia at its best.”
The Tuesday, June 29, concert on satellite radio comes from Penn’s Peak, a 1,600-seat club, making it the most intimate performance of Furthur’s current tour. (The concert, of course, is rock solid sold out.) The live broadcast begins at 7 p.m. ET on the 3-year-old Dead Channel.
Satellite radio fans will hear the Furthur concert on XM channel 57 and Sirius 32. The co-host of the Grateful Dead Channel’s “Tales from the Golden Road” talk show, Gary Lambert, will take calls from Deadheads during the break.
Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s project is one of the many descendants of the Grateful Dead
Of the canceled Vermont show, the band said it was “regrettably unable to find a suitable alternate venue in Vermont,” and switched that date to the Sherman Theatre in Stroudsburg, Pa. Tickets from the Vermont show will be refunded, but not honored at the Sherman gig, which sold out in eight minutes.
The Vermont promoter complained on the Furthur web site: “For these concerns to materialize in the 11th hour and our solutions to be deemed ‘inadequate’ is short-sighted.” The show would have been part of the Ben & Jerry’s Concerts on the Green series.
The town’s fears of Furthur, apparently, were of problems with Dead heads showing up on the museum grounds without tickets.
“This is Grateful Dead paranoia at its best,” one local fan told the Burlington Free Press. “This show was no threat to the museum or anyone else.”
Paranoia about concerns certainly runs deep in the Northeast this month after a near riot in Manhattan at a free show by rapper Drake. An expected crowd of 10,000 fans turned into 25,000 and the show was canceled without the performer taking the stage.
The (latest and second) lineup of Furthur consists of Weir (guitar, vocals), Lesh (bass), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards), John Kadlecik (guitar), Joe Russo (drums), and Sunshine Becker and Jeff Pherson (vocals). The musicians have ties to the family of Grateful Dead-related acts such as Dark Star Orchestra and RatDog.
The ever-changing set list looks familiar to Deadheads, of course: “Touch of Grey,” “Looks Like Rain,” “Eyes of the World,” “Here Comes Sunshine,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Ship of Fools,” “Truckin’” and “Turn on Your Lovelight.”
Furthur is named for the 1939 school bus owned by Ken Kesey and used in the ’60s as psychedelic transport for the trippy writer and his extended family, the Merry Pranksters.
More Grateful Dead content:
- Jerry Garcia biopic brewing in Hollywood
- Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
Porpoise Mouth Radio: wide open
December 29, 2008
Before Psychedelic Site there was Porpoise Mouth the Internet radio station. Tune in now.The Last.fm-based project follows this site’s philosophy that psychedelic music need not be from any particular era or genre.
And so along with Jimi Hendrix, Love, Pink Floyd, Traffic and the usual suspects from the 1960s, you’ll find sonic adventures from Ornette Coleman, Bernard Hermann, They Might Be Giants, Thelonious Monk, Nick Drake and Kate Bush.
The online collection is a psychedelic crazy quilt. The criterion for inclusion remains that the artists’ music provides some of the fuel for our sonic journey. Porpoise Mouth Radio seeks to challenge and elevate listeners in ways that over-the-air radio rarely does. (Continued below.)
While some commercial songs exist in the database, quite a few are explorations that would get a DJ fired PDQ. No radio format does Sun Ra. We love him.
The subtitle for the lastfm station is “Music for mushrooms and night people.” That comes from an FM program that played late nights during the late 1960s on WGBS in Miami. The first progressive radio I’d ever heard.
Of course, these are not a real radio stations. They’re big mix tapes, put togther by one guy. You can do it, too. Last.fm and similar services allow music lovers to create DIY stations without copyright concerns, another treat from the cosmos that is the Internet.
The Psychedelic Sight collection has several hundred songs. Each week, some come and some get the boot. Check out the Porpoise Mouth library. You’ll need a lastFM account (free).
The station is quality-controlled on a Mac with good strong speakers and a trippy screen saver.
Yes, we take requests … and yes, there are no ads.
If you have a similarly exploratory Internet radio project, please leave the URL in the comments below.
