LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 57

urban contemporary, which all too often meant jazz luzak.) KQLZ likes to project a feisty outsider image. Last week, morning DJ and program-director Scott Shannon was even claiming that his Pirate Radio was last in ratings. Meanwhile, its owner, Westwood One, sends threatening letters to any other station that uses the word pirate in its identification. They want to be the exclusive capitalizes of this new format. If only we really did have pirate radio stations, stations that could play and say anything.

Unfortunately, the FCC, protectors of free speech that they are, will clamp down on any station that tries to operate without a license. And theyre constantly handing expensive legal hassles to the free-speech Pacifica network of radio stations. Sitting comfortably at the top of the ratings heap is one of the most rigid stations of them all: the techno-disco robot-rock of Power 106, with more Madonna sound-alikes than the Galleria has Madonna look-alikes. Music to shop by. Another PAGE 58 more Sting), and some '60s and 70s oldies, or, as these are now.

clas-sic rock. So the Edge and quality rock died for similar reasons: the concept was too amorphous. Radio listeners couldnt categorize it, and demographers couldnt pigeonhole a populace according to it. In the meantime, more rigid formats are prospering. Programmers at KQLZ Pirate Radio must be gloating in their mothership or secret Catalina Island transmitter or wherever thay claim theyre based.

Theyre surely overjoyed about the Edges passing: all those listeners will funnel directly to their dial. Indeed, on Saturday morning, a K-LITE announcer proclaimed: The Edge is no longer available. Those of you looking for the cutting edge of rock roll are advised to turn to KQLZ, Pirate Radio. And after all, it was Pirate Radio that supplanted K-LITE at 100.3 in the first place. Does this sound like broadcast conspiracy? (To be fair, we shouldnt forget that the Edge itself supplanted KUTE 102, The Quiet Storm, and it had thrived in the post-disco era as Blunting the Edge You asked for a LITE Anger Is an Energy BY DAVID CARPENTER Anger is a crowbar that you must team to fight Demon Rail, Live Skull dream to the soothing sounds of Barry Manilow.

As Friday midnight approached, the Edge DJs became increasingly maudlin and played poignant songs from the cutting edge of rock and roll. Jim Ladd (who had been through this two years ago, when KMET went under to the tune of the 80s Muzak of The Wave) turned over the microphone to JJ. Jackson, Edge program director. And he thanked everyone for supporting the noble experiment of the Edge. But why didnt the experiment work? Maybe the Edge wasnt experimental enough.

Sure, the Edge played great undergound and crossover music, and often it really was an alternative to the dinosaur known as KLOS (which still, God bless em, plays probably an hour of Led Zeppelin a day), or to that obnoxious newcomer KQLZ, a.k.a. Pirate Radio. But why didnt the Edge DJs, with all their format freedom, play cuts from the real radio outlaws, i.e., hard rap and speed-metal, or underground groups such as Sonic Youth or Camper Van Beethoven? Just as often as not, the Edge was content to play the safe sounds of superstars like Sting and U2, which are widely available elsewhere. Really, the tragedy of the Edges demise is not that its experimental format was sacrificed to the gods of business, but that, while it lasted, it was actually too tame. In fact, the format sometimes felt like that of another recently departed rock station that heralded itself as playing quality rock and is now oldies station KODJ.

The quality rock format never quite jelled, in the same way the Edges format never quite jelled. It featured a combination of some new rock (which could include some actual quality, such as Talking Heads or Graham Parker), some 80s blockbusters (Springsteen, Friday, May 12, just before midnight, radio station KEDG played its last cut of new rock. By Saturday, May 13, the same radio station had transformed into K-LITE, all soft hits and easy listening. The Edge is dead. Long live K-LITE.

you squeal. Why long live the frozen format, the sickly sweet love songs and the mushy ballads of K-LITE? Why celebrate the passing away of one of L.A.s most adventurous commercial radio stations, KEDG 101.9 FM? Well, thats just what I was doing last Friday night, when the Cinderellian dream that was the Edge changed back into the pumpkin that we know too well. With a glass of champagne I toasted L.A. radios brief fling (very brief the cutting edge format had been going just a few months, and the call letters KEDG were implemented only in the last month) with new and interesting programming. As cuts by Concrete Blonde, the Blasters and the Rave-Ups were being played for the last time before it all became Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers, I toasted the taste of L.A.

radio listeners. As the Edge disc jockeys gave their eulogies between cuts, I raised another glass. And as DJ Jim Ladd played the Stones You Cant Always Get What You Want, I agreed, because you usually get what you deserve. Come to think of it, I felt the same about the ascension of K-LITE as I did about the election of George Bush. If were not smart enough to vote down a turkey like him, then were every bit the fools he played us for.

Its all part of the growing homogenization and corporatization of America thats droning at us through a vaguely troubled sleep. And it will continue until some catastrophe or another wakes us up. In the meantime, well White Zombie, Live Skull uses full-frontal guitar assault as a tool to explore the middle ground between drone and thrash. Their music evokes vast and poisoned landscapes, sheer volume arc-lift by harmonies and feedback. Driven by aggressive low-end rhythms especially since Richard Hutchins joined the band on drums and fractured by dissonant vocals and guitar, their music travels even further into brooding introspection than the bands with whom they are most frequently compared.

Seven years and seven records after they began (their newest, Positraction, came out this spring on Caroline), Live Skull continues to pump out the dark, noisy rock roll that first put them on the audio map. With the exception of Zedek, formerly of Boston-based Uzi, the bands current members including guitarists Mark and Tom Paine, bassist Sonda Andersson and drummer Richard Hutchins grew up in New Yorks downtown music scene, and one senses that no matter how much touring the band has done, their hearts, their roots, and their sound PAGE 58 Thalia Zedek wasnt happy when she arrived at Bogarts for a sound check last week. The bartender had just told her that the band would have to carry their equipment all the way from the parting lot. No load-in ramp, no back door. Fucking guy in there is no help.

Ive been on the road three kicking weeks, got two hours sleep last night and Im sick. Hes got no fucking excuse It was a growl familiar to anyone whos seen live Skull perform. Singer Zedek, who didnt officially join the band until a little more than a year ago, stalks the stage with a merciless scowl, chanting and howling her lyrics with a pained expression that borders on disgust. Against the backdrop of Live Skulls relentless wall of guitar-noise, her vocals have been widely and rightly praised as raw, elemental, and filled with rage. dong with bands like Sonic Youth and MAY 19-MAY 25, 1989 LA WEEKLY 57.