KEOL 91.7 FM La Grande, OR. I had not been in town long when I was told about this radio station run by the students of Eastern Oregon State College. I tuned in quite a bit, but since it was a free form radio station where the DJs got to select their own music it was pretty hit and miss. The DJs at times sucked, and the music selections were sometimes horrendous. But when there was someone up there turning the right wax I was tuned in for their whole show.
Actually, I didn't start listening to KEOL right away when I moved to La Grande because for the first part of the first year we were there my family was living in an elk hunters camp site about 10 miles out of town. I listened to my walk man when we had batteries wearing out ZZ Top and Styx tapes, along with the few others I still had in my possession. We sat around the camp fire a lot and talked about stuff. But that is another story.
I moved to Pilot Rock, OR to live with my mom's Aunt and Uncle for a few months while my family settled in to some low income housing. More tapes... more music on buses. Everyone was into Ratt and Motley Crue not to mention the fore mentioned paintless Kiss.
The first summer I was back in La Grande, sleeping on the couch of my families low income apartment, I listened to the summer time skeleton crew at KEOL. One day I was getting ready to walk downtown and was sitting at the kitchen table listening to a DJ that just kept playing good songs. I could not leave. I kept telling someone (my sister maybe) that I would head downtown once the DJ played a song I didn't like. I wasn't going to be late for anything...I just wanted to go down and check out what was going on (it wasn't likely that anything was) but I just could not leave to radio.
Finally I called this guy up on their request line to talk to him and let him know that he was playing the soundtrack to my life and to ask him if he could play something else...I don't remember what. We talked for a while and he recognized me. We had a class together at school. The guy was the same age as me and was a DJ on the college radio station. I told him how lucky I thought he was and he pointed out that for $35 I could be lucky too.
So the following Fall term I went down to Eastern Oregon State College and signed up for a class that would teach me how to be a DJ. And the disk jockey who turned me on to this gig? He became my other best friend. We were pretty much inseparable for our Senior year of high school (except when I was hanging out with my new girlfriend.)
As a new disk jockey I was last in line when it came time to pick time slots. So I think I ended up with a late night Thursday 3 hour shift. I don't really remember, but I do remember that I was still into the power pop and heavy metal. I think if you looked at my old play list it would look like a heavy leaning classic rock station. But something happened when I started doing regular shows at KEOL. I had a nearly unlimited choice of music to listen to. That, combined with my new found aesthetic to listen with my tapping foot and feelings about what good music was, eventually lead me to more interesting musical choices. That is not to say I became a world music connoisseur over night, but the sheer exposure to all those different kinds of music was bound to wear off. And...it did.
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