WOWE

WOWE Rock 105


This was the station that came the closest to defining what a rock station should be like. I wanted to work for this station so badly that it took me 3 years as a professional to get the gig. And it would be over in a year's time. It was the last album rock station in Chattanooga. During my reign as it's night time announcer the station would double its overall rating to its highest pedestal while losing its right or left channel and having the engineer wire it so the good channel would be played in both speakers with enough seperation to keep the stereo light on in the car. It was at this station that I got to play the extended versions of Planet P Project's Why Me, 'til Tuesday's What About Love, Bruce Cockburn's If I had A Rocket Launcher, Glen Frey's Party Town, as well as old standards like King Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King, CSNY's Deja Vu, and Iron Maiden's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Other artists that I enjoyed playing here included The Rainmakers, The Beat Farmers, The Nails, Wall of Voodoo, The Beatles, The Pretenders, Etc. There were a few that I wished we could play a little more often that we couldn't including Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa. We had a cool syndicated program called Flashback. Features included Thirsty Thursday, New Notes, Both Sides Now (An album played all the way through brought to you by bikers emporium), The Rock of Ages (Oldies album rock), and Crank it or Tank it. I truly loved this station even though I seemed to work at it all the time in very long shifts (For radio). The station was bought out when it got higher ratings. The buy-out represented all that is wrong with radio today, just another piece of real estate. The music that replaced it was soft rock (I would choose soft pop as a better description) and the station doubled our highest ratings that had doubled its previous high. This shocked me because none of my friends would have been caught dead listening to this crap. Rock was dead. And still is. The classic rock of today is a greatest hits version of album rock and pop as if you take how you would think the song did in the past based on today's leanings which were sculpted by the same men who gave us adult contemporary, the same people who softened the oldies too.