The History of the Valley 80's

The Valley Eighties story. 

The Valley Eighties Story is the prequel parallel to the Big49 Story. The original Big49 format was the Valley Eighties. It was the inspiration of two guys in their post high school precollege years with a pirate radio station in Southern California who grew up listening to the 80’s on KROQ Pasadena. Both wound up working at KROQ in “some” capacity, to be honest one of them was a phone intern at KROQ and the other became the KROQ station Engineer for four 94-98 years. And eventually worked for many radio stations thru the Los Angeles radio market. The Valley Eighties story takes many twists n turns, who knows maybe Moto Man will write a book on his many adventures in the LA Radio Scene. But if you’re looking at the inspiration of the Valley 80's it all stems from two phone calls with Mike Kaplan (Former PD of KROQ) and Michael Martin (Programming president for Audacy media group). The Format was a Guilty Pleasure of Moto Man, because he worked at KROQ In the Mid 90’s and grew up listening to the ROQ of the 80’s, he knew the vibe and the playlist for the format inside out. “Moto Man”, “I tried to listen to KROQ HD2 one night to see how well they were keeping with the traditional KROQ Vibe, after 15 minutes of pre roll commercials and a Madonna song that was thrown into the mix I was Infuriated. I called Mike Kaplan (Former PD KROQ)  "dude" WTF are you doing this is not KROQ this is bad 80’s pop. He reluctantly agreed with my opinion, at the time We had Big49 Radio on the air Motocross & Rock, and I said Let me do it. Let us run KROQ HD2 Let me help you fix it. It’s not uncommon for companies to outsource operations especially today. Did you know your Vans Skate sneakers are made in the same factory with Adidas? This happens all the time. Mike refused, So I called Mikes boss Michael Martin, whom I have known for 20 years and asked him. His Reply was the best “Dude I am sure you could fix it, but it will never happen, we protect the KROQ brand like I-Heart protects KIIS Sorry man.” So, my reply to Mike was “OK watch out You do know I am competitive”. Michael’s reply was the best. “Dude we love competition”.. Thus, the Valley 80’s is born. We would be forever remised if we didn’t give a thank you to all our Former Coworkers at KROQ for inspiring this launch.  Thank you to Kevin Weatherly for coming back to KROQ after Mike Kaplan’s Exit from KROQ. Thank you to my dear friend James Harness ... F A R T.. Love that dude like a brother, thank you to my Dear friend Richard Blade we have some radio history together, thank you to Rodney Bingenheimer, who’s relentless passion for the format and the music drove a generation with Rick Carroll and Andy Shaun to create a movement of music. Rodney never gets enough credit. Thanks to Jay Tillis (Lightning) For being cool AF and letting the past be the past. Thanks to Sluggo for warning me Dalts food is poison. Late nights installing Audio Vault the Chicken fingers looked so good and made a crime Scene in the bathroom. Thank you to James Christopher Pratt, who’s Imaging skills are the best and the only person I ever knew who gets smarter after 10 Vodka Cranberries. Thank you to Smiley for always being cool. And most recently thank you to Kevin Ryder for saying .. “Dude you won Scott Mason is Dead” It sounds Fucked up. But it’s funny. There are many other people some at I-Heart media who always supportive and obviously to the team at Strems HiFi who have long history at KROQ .. The Valley Eighties was done as a musical attitude and vibe that we all grew up with here in Southern California.