there's one in every crowd, for cryin' out loud...

if you happen to find me on myspace.com (and i hope you don't), you will see a random list of folks that i hope to "meet". i've met a few of them. i use it as a list of inspiration (i don't really care that much about meeting anyone at all), and i sincerely hope that the list grows to a million miles long, and that you... yes, you, yer own name gets on their sooner or later. anyway, a name that i've had on there since i've started it is that of rodney bingenheimer.

if you haven't seen it, i wholly recommend the documentary "the mayor of sunset strip". it's a documentary about rodney, a strange little southern california byproduct of fame and admiration and starfuckery, and one of the few examples of people who do what they do for love and curiosity and passion and maybe a few other reasons that we'd rather not dwell upon, but those which reside in us all. but we'll get into that in a moment: rodney is most famous for being either a: an extremely influential dj on kroq radio in l.a. (he broke everyone from bowie to blondie to x to the smiths to coldplay on american radio), or the extremely well connected creator of "rodney bingenheimer's english disco", arguably the first "punk" club in los angeles. he knows everyone, and everyone knows him.

i learned about kroq a long time ago, when what was then called alternative radio came to portland. at that time, there were college radio stations nationwide, where pasty stoned kids played whatever would freak out the status quo (but probably never the band "the status quo", unfortunately). portland did not have such a station. we had kboo, which as far as i know, is still there and chugging along, trying to cater to just about every segment of the minority demographics... and really pleasing no one in particular with a hodgepodge of news, ethnic interest, comedy, local affairs, and finally... if there's some time... music. anyhoo, around the same time i got out of high school, a strange radio station popped up on the am dial, and played a relatively bland mix of "college rock" and raw album versions of songs that really gained their popularity from danceclub clientele and dj's. i was impressed enough with this "new" format (understand that as bad as it was, it seemed to be a giant leap forward in portland's bland oldies/top 40/country radio landscape) that i asked anyone who would know about it, and everybody finally referred me back to kroq, out of los angeles. my only other point of reference for kroq was fucking "less than zero" by bret easton ellis, in which he referenced ol' rodney on the roq. horrible book. horrible author. aw well.

anyway, i knew this guy was pretty much the man when it came to servicing the masses about the sorts of bands that should, by all rights, be entrenched in our own national musical heritage. yeah, rodney was (and is) the west coast john peel. but there is a whole lot i never really knew or could imagine about the guy. radio has an amazing ability to hide characteristics of people, and yet reveal sides of people that you would never pick up upon by sharing a drink with them, or running into them with your car. f'rinstance, by all accounts: he's like the nicest, most earnest guy in the world, frequently to his detriment. ain't a person in this movie with a cross word about him, and while that's not rare in a documentary or biopic, his ability to get close to people who would otherwise walk across him like he was common carpeting would leave you to believe he's more than just a boygroupie that hopes the starlight reflects back upon him.

i suppose that what interested me most was this: no matter the scene, there is always room... no wait, there must always be one lone fella that just, by all rights, shouldn't belong... and yet, the scene seems to spin around them. the catch is, there is only ever room for one. the scene, no matter what scene it is, has the usual grip of manipulators, promoters, pretenders, also-ran's, competent competitors, mavericks, den mothers, wheel greasers, opportunists, scribes, and haters. you've met them, you know them, you are one. you studied how to become one. folks like ol' rodney though... you could hope, and train, and aspire, but it'll never happen for you, for one thing, there's only room for one, and second, if you try too hard, you don't deserve it. weird. i guess the magic just happens.

rodney's still on the roq, tucked away on sundays from midnight to 3am. and that radio station that sounded so new to me in 1990? it's still there, and boy howdy, it sucks, for lack of a better term, out loud. aw, hell, it stunk then too, but it was a big deal for me to hear bands like ride or teenage fanclub or even husker du or camper van beethoven on radio. as far as the rolling stone-reading mainstream is concerned, that sound went from college to alternative to some sort of mall approved punk and is now crossbred with whatever white kids think might scare the old folks at home. radio's crap, and as long as i've been alive, it's continued to serve it's purpose: $$$. but it's still good to know that in little pockets, out there somewhere, there are earnest people like rodney, required by scenester law to drop in and do their job for the love of new music.

on now: fat freddy's drop "cay's crays" from "based on a true story"