KFML, Wax Trax, and How to Wreck Your Life

A group of us were asked recently if we could name the 'record album' that had changed our lives. Judging from the massive response, a lot of people feel that a given album by a particular band DID change their lives.

But I had to be honest. For me, it was not an album - it was a radio station and a record store.

The radio station was KFML, and driving to Golden High School in 1977 in my oil-burning 1972 Chevy Vega, it was the hippest thing going. I found it by accident, and the DJs were so shocking, I kept it on just to see what would happen next. The first song I heard was one that I had never heard before in my life - "Concrete Jungle," by The Specials.

KFML Memories

The record store was a frequent advertiser on KFML - Wax Trax, in downtown Denver. Run at that time by two wonderful women and their many cats, it had not one single LP by any band I had ever heard of, other than what I had heard on KFML. My first visit, I left clutching a copy of "Concrete Jungle" by The Specials, and I soon came back for "Mirror Star" by The Fabulous Poodles.

Wax Trax Records

I could spend hours recalling all the time I spent there - all the friends I dragged in - all the people I met there. It was there that I found out about the "Rocky Horror Picture Show," and subsequently mispent the next two summers, attending every midnight show at the Ogden and trying to dress like Eddie. I used Wax Trax as a Gom Jabbar of sorts - if I took a friend there and they didn't *get it,* we'd never be friends - we were too different.

In every young person's life, there comes a time when he or she must decide if they like bands like Kansas and Boston and AOR music in general (or whatever the current bands are that fill this slot), or if they think those bands suck and thus forever mark themselves as a person who will not accept the status quo; a person who will be always be disliked by the mainstream lamers.

Down the first path is happiness and contentment, and a soul-numbing blandness that soothes while it destroys.

The second path - well, it's all I know. And I would not go back for anything. But it is not for the weak; only for the disturbed.

Thanks, Wax Trax. Thanks, KFML.