January 18, 2026 • 37 mins
On the morning of 98ROCK's 36th birthday, I had the pleasur eof reconnecting with the man who brought 98ROCK to life on a vision NO ONE thought would be a reality. I was lucky enough to have worked with Greg on the prototype for 98ROCK, WLRS-ROCK 102 "Pure Rock-n-Roll" in Louisville, Kentucky.
Here is the story of how quickly his decision would change ALL of our lives for the better. From breaking LEGENDARY BANDS, Trends, the one of a kinf Livestock Music Festival and so much more.
It's a story he's never told, until now. ENJOY!
Here is the story of how quickly his decision would change ALL of our lives for the better. From breaking LEGENDARY BANDS, Trends, the one of a kinf Livestock Music Festival and so much more.
It's a story he's never told, until now. ENJOY!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So joining me is Greg Mall. Greg Mall is the
program director of natiyet Rock at its origin, at its beginning,
and I got to know Greg when I was working
in Louisville, Kentucky at WLRS. We were a fledgling top
forty station that had a new owner that was looking
for a new identity, new direction, something that could help
us crack through. Entered Greg Mall and Rock one ZH
(00:22):
two pure rock and roll, which put the city on
its ear. We were doing things that you were told
forever you cannot do. You cannot play a loud rock
music in morning drive. It will not work, you will
have no ratings. But in about six months we showed
everybody that that methodology was way out the window. So
I'll let Greg take it from here as we work
together in Louisville, and how that segues into the beginnings
(00:44):
of ninety eight Rock.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Good Morning, Greg, Good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Ronnie. Was working at the Research Group in Seattle, which
was a marketing research firm for radio and television stations,
and I was putting together research questionnaire and getting the
results and then going into clients and presenting them the
research results and making suggestions as to what they could
(01:07):
do to strategically position their stations in the market, take
advantage of obvious holes. And like Ronnie said, one of
those stations was WLRS in Louisville. That's the one we
had the most fun with because the man was open minded.
He wanted something that would work, and he didn't really
care what it was. Tony Brooks, wasn't it, Yes, Tony Brooks, Well,
(01:31):
he figures into this story a little bit too. More
than just LRS. Tony had been running a group of
stations that included KBPI in Denver and w KRL in Clearwater,
and he had left the group and started his own
(01:51):
group with his station in Louisville, went in and worked
with Lisa Lyons, who was the program director in Ronnie,
I think you were music director at the time where
we used to kid hanging around.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I was still a kid part time or that was it.
Brad Harden was the music director and assistant program.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Right, That's right, Bradley. Well, anyway, we went in there
and I did the presentation and I came up with
the music list, and everybody was kind of a gape.
Is that what we were going to try and do?
But open minded, So we put it on the air,
and like you said, in a couple months we had
what was the name of those ratings back then before
(02:26):
went with Arbitron Birch. It was right rating. Yeah, it
was very reactive and we saw within a couple months
that we were on target with something. So anyway, enter
back to the research group. I was based in Seattle
and my clientele were all on the East Coast. So
every week I was traveling cross country, visiting with three
(02:48):
different radio stations in three different markets, and then on
Friday flying back to Seattle. And I loved it. I
learned so much about radio because we were actually asking
radio listeners what they wanted to hear and what they
were hearing, and it gave us an opportunity to look
and see where strengths and weaknesses in the market were
(03:09):
with the listeners. And we did that in Louisville, and
I got a call from a guy named Dave Milner,
who at the time was vice president of programming for
Great American Broadcasting out of Cincinnati, and he called it.
He said, well, we just bought Denver and we bought Tampa.
Which one do you want? And I'm like, well, you
(03:33):
know what, I'm really tired of traveling back and forth
across the country. And I've lived in Florida. I programmed
in Fort Myers at ninety six K rock for three
and a half years. I put it on the air
back in nineteen eighty six, and I said, well, I'm
going back to Florida, and he said, okay, it's yours.
You need to fly down and meet with the general manager,
Dan de Loretto and make sure you guys don't clash,
(03:56):
and if you don't, the job is yours. And when
do you want me to start? And he said yesterday day. Wow.
He said, we've already launched the format. We're doing all
that Zeppelin and all pink Floyd and we don't know
what we're going to be doing on the eighteen shows.
I flew back to Seattle and I said, look, I
(04:17):
love you, I'm putting in my two weeks notice, but
I've got to go to Tampa and put a radio
station on the end. And they said, okay, they gave
me a raise. Do you want to stay? And I'm like, no,
I'm going to Tampa. So I flew down met with
Dan and we had a good meeting. I explained to
him what I was doing. His eyes rolled back in
his head because he couldn't understand it. But Dave Milner
(04:41):
gave me the freedom to come in and do whatever
I wanted to do to make the radio station work,
because at the time WKRL was sitting with a one share,
and so on the flight back to Tampa, I had
my notebook and I was writing down the music that
would be in the library, and and got into Tampa
(05:03):
and made sure we had all the music. We had
to go to a record bar and buy quite a
few CDs that we didn't have in the radio station
and put the thing together and got it on the computer.
And at the time I had talked with our production
director John Guidry about taking the phone calls that we
had received during the led Zeppelin period about what the
(05:24):
radio station should be, and we edited those together into
about an eighteen minute track that led right up to
noon on the eighteenth, where we launched the radio station
and all of the calls where we need a rocker
in Tampa, YNF sucks And we had all that together
(05:45):
and then launched the format, and we had Dan read
a little statement on the air saying what we were
bringing to town, and he was doing that over the
intro of Hellspells from ACDC, and we launched this and
the first thing I had to do was go in
and take the microphones out of the studio because the
(06:06):
DJs were the same guys that had been there for
WKARL and they couldn't shut their mouths up, telling their
name every five seconds, telling I'm like, we just the
music is going to run this thing. Let's get the
microphones out of the studio. So we ran, and I
think we ran about three weeks with no nothing other
than the Voice of God Joe Kelly doing our ninety
(06:29):
eight rock promos, and the music and the phones went crazy,
and the competition went crazy. And my assistant program director,
who was the midday guy at WKRL ted Kamakazi, and
we did such stunts as go over to y F
and do some dumpster diving to see if we could
(06:50):
find any dirt on them that we could use either
off or on the air to create con more conflict
over there. And then one of their employees walked in
a couple of days into the format with a strategic
report that they had just had CBS conduct for them
to tell them how they could improve the radio stations,
(07:13):
and it named group leaders and put all the staff
in groups as to what they were to handle for
each of the two radio stations, because at the time
they owned w s UN I believe is their AM
station and Y and F, and they were looking at
the two together. So we started sending memos off to
(07:33):
the group leaders asking them how they were doing in
their perspective assignments. And it also strategically bought all of
ynf's billboards that they had around the county. I think
(07:53):
we had thirty in the two counties and their contract
ran out at the end of December, So at the end,
at the middle of January, when we lost the format,
we put up a billboard that showed the YNF being
ripped out and the ninety eight rock logo being placed
in its place, and a couple little mind screws if
(08:18):
you will like that, and it put us in position.
The music carried the day, and at the time it
was predominantly hair band music because that's what was popular
at the local clubs and with the people, and we
gently segued it into a little more modern sounding. We
(08:38):
started out playing Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone and some
other Seattle bands and James Addiction out of California and
Red Hot Chili Peppers and bands that were in the
format of what I envisioned already. And sure enough, within
a year we had the new Pearl Gym album. We
had out some chains, and we had the bands that
(09:01):
would make up the future of the radio station. So
we mixed those in with the hair bands, and over
time those bands took over the hairbands. I remember we
put together Livestock one. I think that was in our
eighth or ninth month of being on the air. The
Miller distributor was upset because the Budweiser distributor was working
(09:24):
exclusively with Y and F and he wanted us to
do something for him, and he had available a huge
farm up in Zephyr Hills, and they said, what do
you want to do, And I said, well, let's do
a weekend concert and I'll get all these bands in
here and we'll get people up here and we'll have
a good time. So the first Livestock, of course, featured Sabotage,
(09:45):
our local heavy metal band, and a bunch of hairbands,
Trickster and Sweetheart, and I can't even remember who all
was there.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I think we had Blackfoot on that first year or
too some because you had a mix of everything, had
the old school in there, you had the hair band,
and then you had a local element.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It was the perfect mix. It was a great trifactor.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And that's something that we stayed with the whole time. Later,
Livestocks had John k and Steppenwolf, and we reunited Leonard
Skinner to perform at a Livestock and that excited them
so much that they went out, put two new albums out,
and toward the country a couple of times. But they
were broken up at the time, and they accepted a
bid to reunite and come down and play the Livestock country.
(10:28):
I think that was Livestock for But we just carried
on with the music and carried on with bashing Y
and F as much off the air as we could
and as much on the air as we needed to.
And they had one thing that dominated their radio station,
and that was the Ron and Ron morning show. The
(10:49):
research showed us that that was their strength, so we
did anything but attack that. We as a matter of fact,
we complimented Ron and Ron on the air because that's
what our listeners were thinking. Fortunately for me, the company
would not pay to have a research group come in
(11:10):
and do the research, but I knew how to do it,
so I designed the questionnaires and hired a research staff
Kerrie Bauer, I think good Ben at the station, and
a couple of girls that she had worked with, Kim
and Denise Kelly, and a couple others, and we put
together a group of six people that did nothing but
stay on the phones from three in the afternoon till
(11:30):
nine at night, trying to catch our listeners and ask
them what they thought about the market. At the same time,
i'd put together with Brian Medlin who was my music director. No,
I hadn't even hired Brian yet.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
No, it was Austin Keyes.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
It was Austin Keyes. And later on, after we cleared out,
I think Peaked scribbts was doing overnights and.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Kelly Kelly Casey.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Kelly Casey was doing tend To too, and they really
weren't making the cut. My goal in starting radio stations,
and this was the fourth one I had started from scratch,
was to keep the staff that I had and work
with him and see if I couldn't get the best
out of them. And those two guys didn't make the cut.
Along with the morning show, which was horrible, and we
(12:22):
got rid of them immediately and played music in the mornings.
And then I hired Sea Bass, who I had worked
with before in Fort Myers, to come up and be
a character we named Buck Mauie, who floated up on
the beach one day and I drove by and saw
him and made him the Morning got and he played
(12:42):
the character real well, and it evolved into Sea Bass
and the morning show. But mornings was our least important
focus because we knew Ron and Ron were dominating and
there was nothing we could do about that. But the
research showed that the rest of the day WY and
F was completely vulnerable. Not to put these bands down
(13:03):
because they're some of my favorites, but you can't be
playing electric light Orchestra and consider yourself a rock station
in nineteen ninety that should be playing Motley Crue and
Airsmith and the baby hairbands extreme. There were so many
great hairbands out at the time that weren't exposed in
the market, so it was all fresh, and we put
(13:26):
that on the air, and the numbers came. We saw
it in the weekly research, and we slowly evolved the
music into more of the grungy Seattle sound, and it
really capped off with Nirvana. We were already there before Nirvana,
but when Nirvana came out, that was like the final
(13:47):
beat of WY and F and that they tried to
play it. Their numbers went down. They lost all of
their numbers outside of the morning show, which continued to
be successful, and they actually rewrote their budget to just
make their budget selling the morning show. They wrote off
(14:11):
the rest of the day. And Tom Marshall, a buddy
of mine, was the program director over there. He was
hired about the same time I was, and he went
in there saying, look, we're dominant twenty five to fifty
four adults. We need to leave this thing alone. And
they fought that, and they fought that, and while they
were fighting, we took the Rocket Club away from them.
(14:32):
We took a couple other rock venues in town away
from them. We started eating away with the concert promoters
and stealing access to the concerts because why an Effet
been so dominant for so long. The promoters weren't willing
to dump them, and I don't blame them, but I
had to up show them, and we showed them what
(14:52):
we could do, and we showed them when they did
promotions with us that they would sell them more tickets.
So eventually they came on board, and eventually Wynf fired
Tom Marshall and put Charlie Logan in into their program director,
and they started chasing us. They started playing hairbands, and
they started playing Nirvana, and they started playing those sort
(15:14):
of things. But at that time, all it did was
run off the rest of their audience, and we sat
there as the dominant rock station in town, and I
think with their morning show they had a three share.
And then to skip. A few years later, I got sick.
I had a subdual heemotomin was put in the hospital
for a month, and on the day that I went
(15:37):
in the hospital, Ron and Ron broke up, and I
was like, Oh, here's our opportunity. And the morning show
we had developed with Sea Bass had started to come along.
He had big, cheap meteorologists, and he had a few
other characters, and we had Helen the newsgirl, and we
had John Wolfe, the traffic guy, and we made a
(16:00):
show out of that, and all of a sudden, with
Ron and Ron gone, we were the number one rock
morning show in town, which meant we were solid twenty
four hours a day. And the next thing I knew, CBS,
parent company of Yannth had taken them into the warm
format and they were playing beautiful music.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
And on the day I got out of the hospital,
the cherry on top of the ice cream was the
dominant top forty station in town. Q one five changed
the country.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
It was a wild time. There was so much change there.
I mean, it was just like, oh my god. I mean,
two heritage brands were blown up, just like that.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yes, they were blown up, and it was because we
had come in and blown up the market and they
had nothing else to do, so they had to try
something else. But that's a little history of ninety eight
rock into the third or fourth year. I was there
seven years, and we had such a great time. It
was working in the morning from eight thirty because Dan
(17:02):
would have me in the station at eight thirty for meetings,
and then out at the Rocket Club till two in
the morning, and then back into station day thirty.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Oh yeah, man.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And they wondered why I was tired and why I
had some look in Potoma, and I just blew against
That's what it was. I mean, because it happened at
the time that the market really opened up for us.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
It was a wild time and to be there a
part of all that adventure, you know, it was just
so amazing because you know, there for years, all eyes
were always on us. You know, so many rock stations
across the country did not make a move unless we
did it first, and well.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
They didn't know what to do, right, They didn't research it,
and they couldn't know how to research it because they
didn't know what we were doing, so they started following
us to a degree. It took it took literally a
year for us to play Pearl Jam Alive before the
rest of the country figured out that there was something there.
(17:57):
And by the end of that year we were four
five tracks deep into that ten album, which was loaded
Jeremy and Black and so many great songs on that album.
And we did the same thing with Alison Chains. We
started with this first album. We played We Die Young
and a couple other tracks, and then the second album
came out and had Rooster on it and some just
(18:21):
amazing music, and we married that and by that time
our audience was really into Alice and James and sound Guard,
and they put out a brilliant album. We were so
lucky that that those bands were putting out brilliant albums
at the time that we needed them because we weren't
playing the old stuff. We were playing led Zeppelin and
(18:41):
Pink Floyd because you can't go wrong with those, But
we weren't playing Electric Light Orchestra, and we weren't playing
lover Boy, and we weren't playing Eddy Money, and we
weren't playing That's a funny story in itself. We had
announced the broadcast was going to start at noon on
the eighteen, and w Y and F took out a
OL page paper calling it Money Day, and they were
(19:04):
going to every time they played in any Money song,
they were gonna give away one thousand dollars. And they
played nine Eddie Money songs in a row and weigh
nine thousand dollars while we were rocking the bank.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
That was the gimmick.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Any Money didn't work and we didn't play any money,
so that was okay with us, man. But getting you
and Brian into town was a great story because, as
I mentioned earlier, we lost our overnight guy, and we
lost our ten to two person at night, and I
believe at that point i'd work with you, and I
prided myself in recognizing talent early and you were a
(19:41):
genius as you still are and it's probably why we're
doing this interview. But brought you into DO ten and
two and brought Brian into DO two am to six am,
and that completed the circle. We had Ted in the afternoons,
We had Scott ledger in uh in the late afternoons,
(20:01):
and then we had Austin Keys doing six to ten
at night. And Austin really got into the lifestyle. Man.
If you wanted to see how far he was into it,
you could just go out and look at the furniture
in the lobby and see all the taker tracks furniture
and that the groopies were lined up and they were
certainly taking advantage of them. And I don't know who
else in side Austin was well you.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
There were some wild times, man.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I'm like, I'm like, I have an apartment, people, I
don't need the lobby.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I have a place to live.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
My God, for Danny had to re re upholster the
furniture get the lobby as he was having clients coming
in and oh yeah, cor.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Oh, he was disgusting. I mean it was disgusting.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And it's funny because whenever Dan retired and we were
all at that party and Brian and I were there
and we were all talking and we were talking about
all those old stories and he was just like, man,
he goes all those meetings at the round table. I'm
I'm like, oh, yeah, Dan, we knew, and you were
always like, hey, you got a minute. It was like,
it's going nowhere good. Either we were in trouble for
something we did to Y and F with bumper stickers
at the Rocket Club, or it was another lobby incident
(21:10):
or whatever it was. And it's it's so weird walking
back into the feather Sound building. Now we're literally a
floor above where we were. So when we first went
back in the building, I went to the fifth floor
just to get off, and there's a I think it's
a law firm that's there now, and they had that
whole fifth floor and the configuration isn't that far off.
Come off the elevator, go to the left. That was
(21:32):
their lobby, and then it kind of goes back around again.
And I walked in the front lobby and I'm like,
I said, I'm not some weirdo. I'm like I used
to work on this floor in this building. I'm like,
we just moved back in. I just had to come
in here for a minute and just kind of like
get the full vibe. And the reception's like, oh no,
She's like, it's exciting to have you guys in the building.
I'm like, yeah, I'm like. There was a lot of
different feelings about that back in the nineties, because you know,
we were that raucous group and everybody was like, what
(21:54):
are those heathens doing up there?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
What are they doing?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Do you remember Love in the Elevator?
Speaker 2 (22:00):
No, I don't think I was here for that yet.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Well, Love in the Elevator was real hot off Airsmith's
Pump album, and we did a Love in an Elevator
promotion and we gave us particular winner a seat in
the elevator with three months Venus thirls, and we let
the elevator go up and down and if somebody on
another floor pushed the button open Love in the Elevator.
(22:27):
So we certainly got a name for ourselves rather quickly
that way.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Oh yeah, you know, if only you would have had
social media back then, the cameras and the videos you
could have made.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Oh my gosh, we hardly even had pictures. Yeah, no,
it doesn't exist, but it exists in our memory.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, you know, I'm lucky enough to be the keeper
of most of our livestock photo albums, so those those
had stayed around forever. So as we were moving out
of Gandy, I was hoarding all that stuff together to
get it into storage and you know, keep all those
sacred pieces of our past. So nothing ever happened to them.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
And it's just.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
It's fun every now and again just to flip back
through those and just be like, oh my god, man,
because it's funny.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
The fun thing about flipping through every livestock and the
one thing they all had in common with the women
sitting up on their guys, yeah, shoulders with their shirts off.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, that's it man, I mean that's what it was.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
That's how it was. People hear that today and they're like, no,
I'm like, oh yeah, it was. It was that way, yeah,
And it's it's funny.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The commonality and all the livestock photos we had sick
with the booty man, it's just that could happen today,
could well?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
No, you know, And and we we tried once or
twice to try and then it was like, first of all,
it was just trying to get the insurance to pull
it all together. And the insurance alone was just ungodly
because people are like, this has a history, we know
what this could be, and there's no way you can
do this, and you know, Mike Sierra is not around
anymore for that, so it was really we actually had
(24:01):
talked to Danny Wimmer, who does you know Rockville and
all that stuff, because he wanted to do something, and
we tried to get that wheel turning, and I think
after a while he was like, there's just no way
we can do that, and we were like, yeah, we know,
because it's just it's you just can't the history of it,
and you know, Pasco County was like, okay, we don't
want any of that. So yeah, and it would have
(24:22):
been perfect too, because I don't know if you remember,
as things were starting to go south there, they were
selling it off to a developer. So what they ended
up doing was where the campground is. It was and
I haven't been up there lately, but after the developer
went belly up, they had put all the streets in
street lights and everything back where the campground was and
(24:43):
it was perfect. I'm like, oh my god, this could
be the perfect campground. Now it's roads, it's paved, it's lit,
it's everything. And the last I checked, and it was
about a year and a half two years ago, an
auto salvage company bought the property and they do auctions
up there. So the barn that we did all of
our interviews and stuff and is still there, and then
the racetrack is still there, and then the area where
(25:05):
we had the stage, the big concrete pad all that
they bring the cars out, they do the auction there
and that's what it is today.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So unfortunately there's there's just no hope for doing that again.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Well, they've modernized it, Ronnie. You know, we we did
have tragedies at Livestock. The one I was I was
talking with someone just the other day about Chris Oliva. Yeah,
the pall that that put on that Livestock sabotage had
just played that Saturday night and Chris lived in Saint
Pete and he was heading back home and a drunk
(25:36):
driver head on him on on the main highway heading
back to Tampa and killed him. And that word got
back to us and it was devastating. I think John
was still up there, but that pretty much ended Sabotage
and John started trends Siberian Orchestra, yeah, and has done
(26:01):
real successful I don't know that he's still involved with it,
probably financially.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well. He was just here, Yeah, he was just out
there on the tour.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
He wasn't performing, but he was there this time being
out there with it because it was the anniversary and
it was so important for him to be there, because
you're right, I mean, that was a legacy move right.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
There, right. Well, I know they played Charlotte here did
a night, and I knew they were traveling the country
doing night selling out arenas. And I'm so proud of
him because that's much bigger than Sabotage ever got. Yeah,
but the night we lost Chris and then the other
tragedy I'll never forget is the night that the asshole
(26:38):
in the station wagon who was messed up on some
kind of drugs, plowed into a crowd of people that
were walking up to the concert and he killed two
and injured ten. And of course we got sued over
then and we had to pay out because it was
our fault we didn't separate. Who would have thought that
(27:00):
you needed to separate the people walking from the road
where people were driving. At the time, I mean, it
didn't even consider it. But since then you hear of
all these cars driving into crowds of people, and that
was the first time I'd ever heard of that. But
it happened that livestock, and that put pretty much a
(27:22):
pall on that show too. And I'll never forget I
got the radio call that we had an emergency to
come over because I was in a golf cart with
the radio tied end with the Sheriff's department and Mike Sierra,
the guy that owned the property, and I went over there,
and in the offices where they ran the show, Uh,
(27:43):
there was a guy hogtied laying there on the ground,
going Jesus Christ, I'm Jesus Christ, and I'll leave out
the expedit. But he was laying there on the ground
shouting hogtiede And I drove on over and saw what
had happened, and I couldn't stay. I had to get
out of there and went back by the asshole who
(28:04):
was still in on the ground and he, as far
as I know, it's still in jail or he ought
to be. He killed two people and injured ten more
on purpose. So I hope he's still in jail. But
that was a tragedy, and I understand why insurance companies
wouldn't write insurance on it, because we did have some
(28:28):
bad things that happened to livestock.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
No, I mean from years on we separated the walking
traffic from the driving traffic so that could never happen again.
But it was people driving into the campground and walking
out of the campground.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Who would have thought, well, that's it is, because that's
it's how it always had been. And it wasn't just
our show. Anybody who had camping at their shows and stuff.
That's a regular thing. Just like when you go to
a theme park. There's people walking where people are driving
the park.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
So you just don't expect someone to be in that
situation to do something like that.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
We learned and we didn't let that happen again. And fortunately,
I think that was the last great tragedy of Livestock,
and I was there through Livestock seven. Yep, yep, that
was the last great tragedy that I'm aware of that happened.
I think we had everything secure from then. Stories of
cows getting slaughtered and cooked over pit fires.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Dude, it was. It was sodom and Gomorrah, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
It was what was a good time, and it solidified
us people. I still get emails from people who remember
those early livestock Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, the videos are out there on YouTube from people
in their old camquarters. If you search not Eat Rock, Livestocks,
ever Hills on YouTube, you will find countless videos of
of all that action.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It's insane.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Wow, yeah, I know. I found the video of the
Sygun Kick show that we did at the City Park
in Tampa. Oh God, they were foolish enough to let
us have a city park to do a freak show.
And we put up a little stage and Saigon kick
was playing, and I swear there were forty thousand people there.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
It was not.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And at the same time, yn F was at a
bar in downtown Tampa doing therefore at July party and
it was empty.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Well cars since like it was Saigon kick Man, that
was the rise of Florida greatness and everybody wanted to
be a part of that.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yep, and they were. And those photos that you can
see on YouTube show the crowds going back into the
woods as far back as you can possibly see. Oh yeah,
I think that. And later free Fourth at July events
that we did, we did them at the Fairgrounds in
Saint Pete and they drew that kind of crowd too,
(30:43):
But nothing like that first Segunk Kicks.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
No, that was that was intense.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, other than watching guns and Roses in the Thunderdome
or something like that, I never saw that many people.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Oh yeah, no, those were great in the wagon Wheel
flea market. Yeah, they're in Penello's Park. When we would
do those world's largest barbecues, I mean, my god, that
one year we had the Goo Goo Dolls and Sugar
Ray and all those bands and everybody that was coming.
I mean those are crazy times, man, I mean there
was nothing like it, and they were free. People didn't
have to be a dam dogary you showed up. I mean,
it's such a weird different world.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Now.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Well, the bands didn't charge us to come in. All
we had to do was pay for the production, and
the guys that produced the shows typically sell our door
or fantasma. They did us a deal on stage and
sound and lighting and all that, so we didn't have
a lot out of pocket. We let vendors in at
(31:37):
a small price, and I don't think we made any
money off of them. I think the sales department did
in selling adjacencies leading up to the events as sponsors
of the event, But as far as the programming department,
I wasn't out to make money. The station should make
its money on its own way. We were giving them
the numbers and they did it. But the programming department
(32:01):
was all about the listeners. And the first Livestock show,
if I'm not mistaken, was either the tickets or either
two ninety eight or three ninety eight. It was.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
It was ridiculous, Oh it was.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
It was very ridiculous, Yeah, because like you said, back then,
we weren't absorbing the cost of having to pay the bands. Now,
a baby band, just a baby band is seventy five
thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Bill, the most I ever paid. I paid twenty five
thousand dollars to Leonard Skinner for them to reunite for
Livestock four, and that's the most I ever paid. Now
we later at Livestock oh six. I think it was
the two biggest bands in the country at the time
were bands that we happened to be on early and
(32:46):
supported and they owed us, and I paid eight thousand
dollars to fly Hoody and the Blowfitch from Matoon, Illinois,
down to Saint Pete and we transfer them up to
the event and they played the show for us on
that Sunday afternoon, and then they had just happened to
have that day off, and then we flew them back
(33:09):
to Illinois so they could make the show the next night.
And then the other band that played that that didn't
charge us anything was Live because we had been on
Throwing Copper since the second that came out, and at
time of the concert, those two albums were number one
and number two in the country. And Hoody went on
(33:29):
and sold like thirty million albums of Crafty Review and
I believe Live sold about ten million copies of Throwing Copper.
And both of those are bands that people were going
to Why is ninety eight Rock playing Hoody and the
Blowfish And I'm like, because it's a freaking hit. At
that point, we were big enough we could play the
(33:51):
hits and I'll never forget it. We did a research
Oh what do you oh?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
One of the ots yeah, yeah, group yeah, focus.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Group, yep, and we I got to group into an
argument because one guy said, well, who do in the
Bluefish ain't rock and roll? And another guy stood up
and got on the table and duty and the Bluefishes
rock roll yep, yep. And we were sitting there watching that,
and I was about to bust a gut because our
audience would support us at that time no matter what
(34:26):
we did.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
And it gave us so much freedom. The whole thing
was about freedom, from the very beginning of playing what
I thought needed to be played in the market to
make it work, to what we then knew via our
research department, which really drove it because every song on
the radio station was tested. We knew whether or not
the audience was behind it and for it to get
(34:49):
into power rotation, we were looking at seventy five percent
positives on a song and uh, and when people got
tired of it, we were looking at ten percent negatives
and at that point would slow it down. And it
was really that simple. It was math. Brian and I
would get together and do the music meeting every week
in Loude just transcribe the math from the research reports
(35:12):
and figure out what music we needed to be playing.
It wasn't gas. Everybody thought it was wild, that's gassing,
but it wasn't except for the very beginning because we
didn't know because nobody had ever heard those songs before.
But once they got familiar with it, we researched the
hell out of that station and that's why it dominated.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Greg Mall, the originator of Natti I Rack Pure Rock
and Roll January eighteenth, nineteen ninety when it signed on,
and it put a huge change in Tampa Bay radio
history forever. And thirty six years later, here we sit
thirty five years. For me, February twenty third will be
my thirty fifth year here, which is really really weird.
(35:55):
So I sit here trying to be the gatekeeper, still
trying to keep the train on the tracks and just
do what we do, man. I mean, we still play
the best new rock, we still play the killer classics
and a lot in between. And it's an amazing ride.
And I hope to ride it till the end. I
hope you never know, but you hope.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Well, I know I'm old, so you're getting there.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh hell yeah, I am.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
I just hope you can keep doing it, man. I
want you to keep it alive because you're the connection
between the very beginning and where it's at now. And
I'm so proud of you. That was one of the
greatest tires I ever made.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I gotta tell you, man, I mean because you were
the one in that LRS meeting when we all had
submitted our air checks, and you stood up in that
meeting and you played my aircheck just before you announced
who was going to do seven to midnight.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
And I was just like, oh.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Crap, because you know I paid your aircheck, and I said,
this is what I wanted to sound.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Love Yep, yep, that was just wild. That was just wild.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Man.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Greg maull joining us here as we celebrate thirty six years.
Thank you so much, Greg for all the time. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Man.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
This is such a fun
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Here Ronnie Shape the interview and thirty six years later
we finally get to tell the story.
So joining me is Greg Mall. Greg Mall is the
program director of natiyet Rock at its origin, at its beginning,
and I got to know Greg when I was working
in Louisville, Kentucky at WLRS. We were a fledgling top
forty station that had a new owner that was looking
for a new identity, new direction, something that could help
us crack through. Entered Greg Mall and Rock one ZH
(00:22):
two pure rock and roll, which put the city on
its ear. We were doing things that you were told
forever you cannot do. You cannot play a loud rock
music in morning drive. It will not work, you will
have no ratings. But in about six months we showed
everybody that that methodology was way out the window. So
I'll let Greg take it from here as we work
together in Louisville, and how that segues into the beginnings
(00:44):
of ninety eight Rock.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Good Morning, Greg, Good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Ronnie. Was working at the Research Group in Seattle, which
was a marketing research firm for radio and television stations,
and I was putting together research questionnaire and getting the
results and then going into clients and presenting them the
research results and making suggestions as to what they could
(01:07):
do to strategically position their stations in the market, take
advantage of obvious holes. And like Ronnie said, one of
those stations was WLRS in Louisville. That's the one we
had the most fun with because the man was open minded.
He wanted something that would work, and he didn't really
care what it was. Tony Brooks, wasn't it, Yes, Tony Brooks, Well,
(01:31):
he figures into this story a little bit too. More
than just LRS. Tony had been running a group of
stations that included KBPI in Denver and w KRL in Clearwater,
and he had left the group and started his own
(01:51):
group with his station in Louisville, went in and worked
with Lisa Lyons, who was the program director in Ronnie,
I think you were music director at the time where
we used to kid hanging around.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I was still a kid part time or that was it.
Brad Harden was the music director and assistant program.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Right, That's right, Bradley. Well, anyway, we went in there
and I did the presentation and I came up with
the music list, and everybody was kind of a gape.
Is that what we were going to try and do?
But open minded, So we put it on the air,
and like you said, in a couple months we had
what was the name of those ratings back then before
(02:26):
went with Arbitron Birch. It was right rating. Yeah, it
was very reactive and we saw within a couple months
that we were on target with something. So anyway, enter
back to the research group. I was based in Seattle
and my clientele were all on the East Coast. So
every week I was traveling cross country, visiting with three
(02:48):
different radio stations in three different markets, and then on
Friday flying back to Seattle. And I loved it. I
learned so much about radio because we were actually asking
radio listeners what they wanted to hear and what they
were hearing, and it gave us an opportunity to look
and see where strengths and weaknesses in the market were
(03:09):
with the listeners. And we did that in Louisville, and
I got a call from a guy named Dave Milner,
who at the time was vice president of programming for
Great American Broadcasting out of Cincinnati, and he called it.
He said, well, we just bought Denver and we bought Tampa.
Which one do you want? And I'm like, well, you
(03:33):
know what, I'm really tired of traveling back and forth
across the country. And I've lived in Florida. I programmed
in Fort Myers at ninety six K rock for three
and a half years. I put it on the air
back in nineteen eighty six, and I said, well, I'm
going back to Florida, and he said, okay, it's yours.
You need to fly down and meet with the general manager,
Dan de Loretto and make sure you guys don't clash,
(03:56):
and if you don't, the job is yours. And when
do you want me to start? And he said yesterday day. Wow.
He said, we've already launched the format. We're doing all
that Zeppelin and all pink Floyd and we don't know
what we're going to be doing on the eighteen shows.
I flew back to Seattle and I said, look, I
(04:17):
love you, I'm putting in my two weeks notice, but
I've got to go to Tampa and put a radio
station on the end. And they said, okay, they gave
me a raise. Do you want to stay? And I'm like, no,
I'm going to Tampa. So I flew down met with
Dan and we had a good meeting. I explained to
him what I was doing. His eyes rolled back in
his head because he couldn't understand it. But Dave Milner
(04:41):
gave me the freedom to come in and do whatever
I wanted to do to make the radio station work,
because at the time WKRL was sitting with a one share,
and so on the flight back to Tampa, I had
my notebook and I was writing down the music that
would be in the library, and and got into Tampa
(05:03):
and made sure we had all the music. We had
to go to a record bar and buy quite a
few CDs that we didn't have in the radio station
and put the thing together and got it on the computer.
And at the time I had talked with our production
director John Guidry about taking the phone calls that we
had received during the led Zeppelin period about what the
(05:24):
radio station should be, and we edited those together into
about an eighteen minute track that led right up to
noon on the eighteenth, where we launched the radio station
and all of the calls where we need a rocker
in Tampa, YNF sucks And we had all that together
(05:45):
and then launched the format, and we had Dan read
a little statement on the air saying what we were
bringing to town, and he was doing that over the
intro of Hellspells from ACDC, and we launched this and
the first thing I had to do was go in
and take the microphones out of the studio because the
(06:06):
DJs were the same guys that had been there for
WKARL and they couldn't shut their mouths up, telling their
name every five seconds, telling I'm like, we just the
music is going to run this thing. Let's get the
microphones out of the studio. So we ran, and I
think we ran about three weeks with no nothing other
than the Voice of God Joe Kelly doing our ninety
(06:29):
eight rock promos, and the music and the phones went crazy,
and the competition went crazy. And my assistant program director,
who was the midday guy at WKRL ted Kamakazi, and
we did such stunts as go over to y F
and do some dumpster diving to see if we could
(06:50):
find any dirt on them that we could use either
off or on the air to create con more conflict
over there. And then one of their employees walked in
a couple of days into the format with a strategic
report that they had just had CBS conduct for them
to tell them how they could improve the radio stations,
(07:13):
and it named group leaders and put all the staff
in groups as to what they were to handle for
each of the two radio stations, because at the time
they owned w s UN I believe is their AM
station and Y and F, and they were looking at
the two together. So we started sending memos off to
(07:33):
the group leaders asking them how they were doing in
their perspective assignments. And it also strategically bought all of
ynf's billboards that they had around the county. I think
(07:53):
we had thirty in the two counties and their contract
ran out at the end of December, So at the end,
at the middle of January, when we lost the format,
we put up a billboard that showed the YNF being
ripped out and the ninety eight rock logo being placed
in its place, and a couple little mind screws if
(08:18):
you will like that, and it put us in position.
The music carried the day, and at the time it
was predominantly hair band music because that's what was popular
at the local clubs and with the people, and we
gently segued it into a little more modern sounding. We
(08:38):
started out playing Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone and some
other Seattle bands and James Addiction out of California and
Red Hot Chili Peppers and bands that were in the
format of what I envisioned already. And sure enough, within
a year we had the new Pearl Gym album. We
had out some chains, and we had the bands that
(09:01):
would make up the future of the radio station. So
we mixed those in with the hair bands, and over
time those bands took over the hairbands. I remember we
put together Livestock one. I think that was in our
eighth or ninth month of being on the air. The
Miller distributor was upset because the Budweiser distributor was working
(09:24):
exclusively with Y and F and he wanted us to
do something for him, and he had available a huge
farm up in Zephyr Hills, and they said, what do
you want to do, And I said, well, let's do
a weekend concert and I'll get all these bands in
here and we'll get people up here and we'll have
a good time. So the first Livestock, of course, featured Sabotage,
(09:45):
our local heavy metal band, and a bunch of hairbands,
Trickster and Sweetheart, and I can't even remember who all
was there.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I think we had Blackfoot on that first year or
too some because you had a mix of everything, had
the old school in there, you had the hair band,
and then you had a local element.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It was the perfect mix. It was a great trifactor.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And that's something that we stayed with the whole time. Later,
Livestocks had John k and Steppenwolf, and we reunited Leonard
Skinner to perform at a Livestock and that excited them
so much that they went out, put two new albums out,
and toward the country a couple of times. But they
were broken up at the time, and they accepted a
bid to reunite and come down and play the Livestock country.
(10:28):
I think that was Livestock for But we just carried
on with the music and carried on with bashing Y
and F as much off the air as we could
and as much on the air as we needed to.
And they had one thing that dominated their radio station,
and that was the Ron and Ron morning show. The
(10:49):
research showed us that that was their strength, so we
did anything but attack that. We as a matter of fact,
we complimented Ron and Ron on the air because that's
what our listeners were thinking. Fortunately for me, the company
would not pay to have a research group come in
(11:10):
and do the research, but I knew how to do it,
so I designed the questionnaires and hired a research staff
Kerrie Bauer, I think good Ben at the station, and
a couple of girls that she had worked with, Kim
and Denise Kelly, and a couple others, and we put
together a group of six people that did nothing but
stay on the phones from three in the afternoon till
(11:30):
nine at night, trying to catch our listeners and ask
them what they thought about the market. At the same time,
i'd put together with Brian Medlin who was my music director. No,
I hadn't even hired Brian yet.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
No, it was Austin Keyes.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
It was Austin Keyes. And later on, after we cleared out,
I think Peaked scribbts was doing overnights and.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Kelly Kelly Casey.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Kelly Casey was doing tend To too, and they really
weren't making the cut. My goal in starting radio stations,
and this was the fourth one I had started from scratch,
was to keep the staff that I had and work
with him and see if I couldn't get the best
out of them. And those two guys didn't make the cut.
Along with the morning show, which was horrible, and we
(12:22):
got rid of them immediately and played music in the mornings.
And then I hired Sea Bass, who I had worked
with before in Fort Myers, to come up and be
a character we named Buck Mauie, who floated up on
the beach one day and I drove by and saw
him and made him the Morning got and he played
(12:42):
the character real well, and it evolved into Sea Bass
and the morning show. But mornings was our least important
focus because we knew Ron and Ron were dominating and
there was nothing we could do about that. But the
research showed that the rest of the day WY and
F was completely vulnerable. Not to put these bands down
(13:03):
because they're some of my favorites, but you can't be
playing electric light Orchestra and consider yourself a rock station
in nineteen ninety that should be playing Motley Crue and
Airsmith and the baby hairbands extreme. There were so many
great hairbands out at the time that weren't exposed in
the market, so it was all fresh, and we put
(13:26):
that on the air, and the numbers came. We saw
it in the weekly research, and we slowly evolved the
music into more of the grungy Seattle sound, and it
really capped off with Nirvana. We were already there before Nirvana,
but when Nirvana came out, that was like the final
(13:47):
beat of WY and F and that they tried to
play it. Their numbers went down. They lost all of
their numbers outside of the morning show, which continued to
be successful, and they actually rewrote their budget to just
make their budget selling the morning show. They wrote off
(14:11):
the rest of the day. And Tom Marshall, a buddy
of mine, was the program director over there. He was
hired about the same time I was, and he went
in there saying, look, we're dominant twenty five to fifty
four adults. We need to leave this thing alone. And
they fought that, and they fought that, and while they
were fighting, we took the Rocket Club away from them.
(14:32):
We took a couple other rock venues in town away
from them. We started eating away with the concert promoters
and stealing access to the concerts because why an Effet
been so dominant for so long. The promoters weren't willing
to dump them, and I don't blame them, but I
had to up show them, and we showed them what
(14:52):
we could do, and we showed them when they did
promotions with us that they would sell them more tickets.
So eventually they came on board, and eventually Wynf fired
Tom Marshall and put Charlie Logan in into their program director,
and they started chasing us. They started playing hairbands, and
they started playing Nirvana, and they started playing those sort
(15:14):
of things. But at that time, all it did was
run off the rest of their audience, and we sat
there as the dominant rock station in town, and I
think with their morning show they had a three share.
And then to skip. A few years later, I got sick.
I had a subdual heemotomin was put in the hospital
for a month, and on the day that I went
(15:37):
in the hospital, Ron and Ron broke up, and I
was like, Oh, here's our opportunity. And the morning show
we had developed with Sea Bass had started to come along.
He had big, cheap meteorologists, and he had a few
other characters, and we had Helen the newsgirl, and we
had John Wolfe, the traffic guy, and we made a
(16:00):
show out of that, and all of a sudden, with
Ron and Ron gone, we were the number one rock
morning show in town, which meant we were solid twenty
four hours a day. And the next thing I knew, CBS,
parent company of Yannth had taken them into the warm
format and they were playing beautiful music.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
And on the day I got out of the hospital,
the cherry on top of the ice cream was the
dominant top forty station in town. Q one five changed
the country.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
It was a wild time. There was so much change there.
I mean, it was just like, oh my god. I mean,
two heritage brands were blown up, just like that.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yes, they were blown up, and it was because we
had come in and blown up the market and they
had nothing else to do, so they had to try
something else. But that's a little history of ninety eight
rock into the third or fourth year. I was there
seven years, and we had such a great time. It
was working in the morning from eight thirty because Dan
(17:02):
would have me in the station at eight thirty for meetings,
and then out at the Rocket Club till two in
the morning, and then back into station day thirty.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Oh yeah, man.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And they wondered why I was tired and why I
had some look in Potoma, and I just blew against
That's what it was. I mean, because it happened at
the time that the market really opened up for us.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
It was a wild time and to be there a
part of all that adventure, you know, it was just
so amazing because you know, there for years, all eyes
were always on us. You know, so many rock stations
across the country did not make a move unless we
did it first, and well.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
They didn't know what to do, right, They didn't research it,
and they couldn't know how to research it because they
didn't know what we were doing, so they started following
us to a degree. It took it took literally a
year for us to play Pearl Jam Alive before the
rest of the country figured out that there was something there.
(17:57):
And by the end of that year we were four
five tracks deep into that ten album, which was loaded
Jeremy and Black and so many great songs on that album.
And we did the same thing with Alison Chains. We
started with this first album. We played We Die Young
and a couple other tracks, and then the second album
came out and had Rooster on it and some just
(18:21):
amazing music, and we married that and by that time
our audience was really into Alice and James and sound Guard,
and they put out a brilliant album. We were so
lucky that that those bands were putting out brilliant albums
at the time that we needed them because we weren't
playing the old stuff. We were playing led Zeppelin and
(18:41):
Pink Floyd because you can't go wrong with those, But
we weren't playing Electric Light Orchestra, and we weren't playing
lover Boy, and we weren't playing Eddy Money, and we
weren't playing That's a funny story in itself. We had
announced the broadcast was going to start at noon on
the eighteen, and w Y and F took out a
OL page paper calling it Money Day, and they were
(19:04):
going to every time they played in any Money song,
they were gonna give away one thousand dollars. And they
played nine Eddie Money songs in a row and weigh
nine thousand dollars while we were rocking the bank.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
That was the gimmick.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Any Money didn't work and we didn't play any money,
so that was okay with us, man. But getting you
and Brian into town was a great story because, as
I mentioned earlier, we lost our overnight guy, and we
lost our ten to two person at night, and I
believe at that point i'd work with you, and I
prided myself in recognizing talent early and you were a
(19:41):
genius as you still are and it's probably why we're
doing this interview. But brought you into DO ten and
two and brought Brian into DO two am to six am,
and that completed the circle. We had Ted in the afternoons,
We had Scott ledger in uh in the late afternoons,
(20:01):
and then we had Austin Keys doing six to ten
at night. And Austin really got into the lifestyle. Man.
If you wanted to see how far he was into it,
you could just go out and look at the furniture
in the lobby and see all the taker tracks furniture
and that the groopies were lined up and they were
certainly taking advantage of them. And I don't know who
else in side Austin was well you.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
There were some wild times, man.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I'm like, I'm like, I have an apartment, people, I
don't need the lobby.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I have a place to live.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
My God, for Danny had to re re upholster the
furniture get the lobby as he was having clients coming
in and oh yeah, cor.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Oh, he was disgusting. I mean it was disgusting.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And it's funny because whenever Dan retired and we were
all at that party and Brian and I were there
and we were all talking and we were talking about
all those old stories and he was just like, man,
he goes all those meetings at the round table. I'm
I'm like, oh, yeah, Dan, we knew, and you were
always like, hey, you got a minute. It was like,
it's going nowhere good. Either we were in trouble for
something we did to Y and F with bumper stickers
at the Rocket Club, or it was another lobby incident
(21:10):
or whatever it was. And it's it's so weird walking
back into the feather Sound building. Now we're literally a
floor above where we were. So when we first went
back in the building, I went to the fifth floor
just to get off, and there's a I think it's
a law firm that's there now, and they had that
whole fifth floor and the configuration isn't that far off.
Come off the elevator, go to the left. That was
(21:32):
their lobby, and then it kind of goes back around again.
And I walked in the front lobby and I'm like,
I said, I'm not some weirdo. I'm like I used
to work on this floor in this building. I'm like,
we just moved back in. I just had to come
in here for a minute and just kind of like
get the full vibe. And the reception's like, oh no,
She's like, it's exciting to have you guys in the building.
I'm like, yeah, I'm like. There was a lot of
different feelings about that back in the nineties, because you know,
we were that raucous group and everybody was like, what
(21:54):
are those heathens doing up there?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
What are they doing?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Do you remember Love in the Elevator?
Speaker 2 (22:00):
No, I don't think I was here for that yet.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Well, Love in the Elevator was real hot off Airsmith's
Pump album, and we did a Love in an Elevator
promotion and we gave us particular winner a seat in
the elevator with three months Venus thirls, and we let
the elevator go up and down and if somebody on
another floor pushed the button open Love in the Elevator.
(22:27):
So we certainly got a name for ourselves rather quickly
that way.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Oh yeah, you know, if only you would have had
social media back then, the cameras and the videos you
could have made.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Oh my gosh, we hardly even had pictures. Yeah, no,
it doesn't exist, but it exists in our memory.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, you know, I'm lucky enough to be the keeper
of most of our livestock photo albums, so those those
had stayed around forever. So as we were moving out
of Gandy, I was hoarding all that stuff together to
get it into storage and you know, keep all those
sacred pieces of our past. So nothing ever happened to them.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
And it's just.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
It's fun every now and again just to flip back
through those and just be like, oh my god, man,
because it's funny.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
The fun thing about flipping through every livestock and the
one thing they all had in common with the women
sitting up on their guys, yeah, shoulders with their shirts off.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, that's it man, I mean that's what it was.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
That's how it was. People hear that today and they're like, no,
I'm like, oh yeah, it was. It was that way, yeah,
And it's it's funny.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The commonality and all the livestock photos we had sick
with the booty man, it's just that could happen today,
could well?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
No, you know, And and we we tried once or
twice to try and then it was like, first of all,
it was just trying to get the insurance to pull
it all together. And the insurance alone was just ungodly
because people are like, this has a history, we know
what this could be, and there's no way you can
do this, and you know, Mike Sierra is not around
anymore for that, so it was really we actually had
(24:01):
talked to Danny Wimmer, who does you know Rockville and
all that stuff, because he wanted to do something, and
we tried to get that wheel turning, and I think
after a while he was like, there's just no way
we can do that, and we were like, yeah, we know,
because it's just it's you just can't the history of it,
and you know, Pasco County was like, okay, we don't
want any of that. So yeah, and it would have
(24:22):
been perfect too, because I don't know if you remember,
as things were starting to go south there, they were
selling it off to a developer. So what they ended
up doing was where the campground is. It was and
I haven't been up there lately, but after the developer
went belly up, they had put all the streets in
street lights and everything back where the campground was and
(24:43):
it was perfect. I'm like, oh my god, this could
be the perfect campground. Now it's roads, it's paved, it's lit,
it's everything. And the last I checked, and it was
about a year and a half two years ago, an
auto salvage company bought the property and they do auctions
up there. So the barn that we did all of
our interviews and stuff and is still there, and then
the racetrack is still there, and then the area where
(25:05):
we had the stage, the big concrete pad all that
they bring the cars out, they do the auction there
and that's what it is today.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So unfortunately there's there's just no hope for doing that again.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Well, they've modernized it, Ronnie. You know, we we did
have tragedies at Livestock. The one I was I was
talking with someone just the other day about Chris Oliva. Yeah,
the pall that that put on that Livestock sabotage had
just played that Saturday night and Chris lived in Saint
Pete and he was heading back home and a drunk
(25:36):
driver head on him on on the main highway heading
back to Tampa and killed him. And that word got
back to us and it was devastating. I think John
was still up there, but that pretty much ended Sabotage
and John started trends Siberian Orchestra, yeah, and has done
(26:01):
real successful I don't know that he's still involved with it,
probably financially.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well. He was just here, Yeah, he was just out
there on the tour.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
He wasn't performing, but he was there this time being
out there with it because it was the anniversary and
it was so important for him to be there, because
you're right, I mean, that was a legacy move right.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
There, right. Well, I know they played Charlotte here did
a night, and I knew they were traveling the country
doing night selling out arenas. And I'm so proud of
him because that's much bigger than Sabotage ever got. Yeah,
but the night we lost Chris and then the other
tragedy I'll never forget is the night that the asshole
(26:38):
in the station wagon who was messed up on some
kind of drugs, plowed into a crowd of people that
were walking up to the concert and he killed two
and injured ten. And of course we got sued over
then and we had to pay out because it was
our fault we didn't separate. Who would have thought that
(27:00):
you needed to separate the people walking from the road
where people were driving. At the time, I mean, it
didn't even consider it. But since then you hear of
all these cars driving into crowds of people, and that
was the first time I'd ever heard of that. But
it happened that livestock, and that put pretty much a
(27:22):
pall on that show too. And I'll never forget I
got the radio call that we had an emergency to
come over because I was in a golf cart with
the radio tied end with the Sheriff's department and Mike Sierra,
the guy that owned the property, and I went over there,
and in the offices where they ran the show, Uh,
(27:43):
there was a guy hogtied laying there on the ground,
going Jesus Christ, I'm Jesus Christ, and I'll leave out
the expedit. But he was laying there on the ground
shouting hogtiede And I drove on over and saw what
had happened, and I couldn't stay. I had to get
out of there and went back by the asshole who
(28:04):
was still in on the ground and he, as far
as I know, it's still in jail or he ought
to be. He killed two people and injured ten more
on purpose. So I hope he's still in jail. But
that was a tragedy, and I understand why insurance companies
wouldn't write insurance on it, because we did have some
(28:28):
bad things that happened to livestock.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
No, I mean from years on we separated the walking
traffic from the driving traffic so that could never happen again.
But it was people driving into the campground and walking
out of the campground.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Who would have thought, well, that's it is, because that's
it's how it always had been. And it wasn't just
our show. Anybody who had camping at their shows and stuff.
That's a regular thing. Just like when you go to
a theme park. There's people walking where people are driving
the park.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
So you just don't expect someone to be in that
situation to do something like that.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
We learned and we didn't let that happen again. And fortunately,
I think that was the last great tragedy of Livestock,
and I was there through Livestock seven. Yep, yep, that
was the last great tragedy that I'm aware of that happened.
I think we had everything secure from then. Stories of
cows getting slaughtered and cooked over pit fires.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Dude, it was. It was sodom and Gomorrah, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
It was what was a good time, and it solidified
us people. I still get emails from people who remember
those early livestock Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, the videos are out there on YouTube from people
in their old camquarters. If you search not Eat Rock, Livestocks,
ever Hills on YouTube, you will find countless videos of
of all that action.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It's insane.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Wow, yeah, I know. I found the video of the
Sygun Kick show that we did at the City Park
in Tampa. Oh God, they were foolish enough to let
us have a city park to do a freak show.
And we put up a little stage and Saigon kick
was playing, and I swear there were forty thousand people there.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
It was not.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And at the same time, yn F was at a
bar in downtown Tampa doing therefore at July party and
it was empty.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Well cars since like it was Saigon kick Man, that
was the rise of Florida greatness and everybody wanted to
be a part of that.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yep, and they were. And those photos that you can
see on YouTube show the crowds going back into the
woods as far back as you can possibly see. Oh yeah,
I think that. And later free Fourth at July events
that we did, we did them at the Fairgrounds in
Saint Pete and they drew that kind of crowd too,
(30:43):
But nothing like that first Segunk Kicks.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
No, that was that was intense.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, other than watching guns and Roses in the Thunderdome
or something like that, I never saw that many people.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Oh yeah, no, those were great in the wagon Wheel
flea market. Yeah, they're in Penello's Park. When we would
do those world's largest barbecues, I mean, my god, that
one year we had the Goo Goo Dolls and Sugar
Ray and all those bands and everybody that was coming.
I mean those are crazy times, man, I mean there
was nothing like it, and they were free. People didn't
have to be a dam dogary you showed up. I mean,
it's such a weird different world.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Now.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Well, the bands didn't charge us to come in. All
we had to do was pay for the production, and
the guys that produced the shows typically sell our door
or fantasma. They did us a deal on stage and
sound and lighting and all that, so we didn't have
a lot out of pocket. We let vendors in at
(31:37):
a small price, and I don't think we made any
money off of them. I think the sales department did
in selling adjacencies leading up to the events as sponsors
of the event, But as far as the programming department,
I wasn't out to make money. The station should make
its money on its own way. We were giving them
the numbers and they did it. But the programming department
(32:01):
was all about the listeners. And the first Livestock show,
if I'm not mistaken, was either the tickets or either
two ninety eight or three ninety eight. It was.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
It was ridiculous, Oh it was.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
It was very ridiculous, Yeah, because like you said, back then,
we weren't absorbing the cost of having to pay the bands. Now,
a baby band, just a baby band is seventy five
thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Bill, the most I ever paid. I paid twenty five
thousand dollars to Leonard Skinner for them to reunite for
Livestock four, and that's the most I ever paid. Now
we later at Livestock oh six. I think it was
the two biggest bands in the country at the time
were bands that we happened to be on early and
(32:46):
supported and they owed us, and I paid eight thousand
dollars to fly Hoody and the Blowfitch from Matoon, Illinois,
down to Saint Pete and we transfer them up to
the event and they played the show for us on
that Sunday afternoon, and then they had just happened to
have that day off, and then we flew them back
(33:09):
to Illinois so they could make the show the next night.
And then the other band that played that that didn't
charge us anything was Live because we had been on
Throwing Copper since the second that came out, and at
time of the concert, those two albums were number one
and number two in the country. And Hoody went on
(33:29):
and sold like thirty million albums of Crafty Review and
I believe Live sold about ten million copies of Throwing Copper.
And both of those are bands that people were going
to Why is ninety eight Rock playing Hoody and the
Blowfish And I'm like, because it's a freaking hit. At
that point, we were big enough we could play the
(33:51):
hits and I'll never forget it. We did a research
Oh what do you oh?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
One of the ots yeah, yeah, group yeah, focus.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Group, yep, and we I got to group into an
argument because one guy said, well, who do in the
Bluefish ain't rock and roll? And another guy stood up
and got on the table and duty and the Bluefishes
rock roll yep, yep. And we were sitting there watching that,
and I was about to bust a gut because our
audience would support us at that time no matter what
(34:26):
we did.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
And it gave us so much freedom. The whole thing
was about freedom, from the very beginning of playing what
I thought needed to be played in the market to
make it work, to what we then knew via our
research department, which really drove it because every song on
the radio station was tested. We knew whether or not
the audience was behind it and for it to get
(34:49):
into power rotation, we were looking at seventy five percent
positives on a song and uh, and when people got
tired of it, we were looking at ten percent negatives
and at that point would slow it down. And it
was really that simple. It was math. Brian and I
would get together and do the music meeting every week
in Loude just transcribe the math from the research reports
(35:12):
and figure out what music we needed to be playing.
It wasn't gas. Everybody thought it was wild, that's gassing,
but it wasn't except for the very beginning because we
didn't know because nobody had ever heard those songs before.
But once they got familiar with it, we researched the
hell out of that station and that's why it dominated.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Greg Mall, the originator of Natti I Rack Pure Rock
and Roll January eighteenth, nineteen ninety when it signed on,
and it put a huge change in Tampa Bay radio
history forever. And thirty six years later, here we sit
thirty five years. For me, February twenty third will be
my thirty fifth year here, which is really really weird.
(35:55):
So I sit here trying to be the gatekeeper, still
trying to keep the train on the tracks and just
do what we do, man. I mean, we still play
the best new rock, we still play the killer classics
and a lot in between. And it's an amazing ride.
And I hope to ride it till the end. I
hope you never know, but you hope.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Well, I know I'm old, so you're getting there.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh hell yeah, I am.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
I just hope you can keep doing it, man. I
want you to keep it alive because you're the connection
between the very beginning and where it's at now. And
I'm so proud of you. That was one of the
greatest tires I ever made.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I gotta tell you, man, I mean because you were
the one in that LRS meeting when we all had
submitted our air checks, and you stood up in that
meeting and you played my aircheck just before you announced
who was going to do seven to midnight.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
And I was just like, oh.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Crap, because you know I paid your aircheck, and I said,
this is what I wanted to sound.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Love Yep, yep, that was just wild. That was just wild.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Man.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Greg maull joining us here as we celebrate thirty six years.
Thank you so much, Greg for all the time. I
really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Man.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
This is such a fun
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Here Ronnie Shape the interview and thirty six years later
we finally get to tell the story.
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