I recently had a quick chat with veteran DJ Richard Blade, best known to Southern California alternative radio listeners for his longtime stint on KROQ/106.7 FM Los Angeles, about guesting on Berlin's latest album "Transcendance."
Below are a few excepts that didn't make into the main newspaper feature (see it elsewhere on this blog).
Q: What was your initial thought when Terri first asked you to contribute the voice of an infomercial huckster to the song “Show Me Tonight?
A: I was thrilled. I would do anything for Terri. We have a relationship that goes back to 1982 and she’s always been great.
Q: Did you come up with the spiel quickly?
A: Yeah, we did it in one take. They had the producers there running tape and I ran through it. Terri started laughing at the end and applauding. The guys said, ‘that’s it.’ I asked if they wanted any pickups or anything and they said, ‘no, that was great.’ I sat there another two hours hanging out with the guys. It was so much fun.
Q: Were you trying to channel some of those late night cable TV commercials from the ‘80s and ‘90s?
A: Absolutely. When it was back at 240p [video quality resolution], not 1080p. You’d put it on because there was nothing else on the television. And they would be going [in exaggerated voice], ‘If you call now, you will get this, but wait! There’s more!’ You see so much of it in this consumer society, it was very easy to pull out.
Q: Terri said you convinced her to put the remixed version of “Sex (I’m a)” on the album.
A: Absolutely. I’ve done so many gigs with Terri over the years. Particularly over the last 3-4 years, they’ve done incredible live versions of “Sex” and “Metro.” I said to Terri, over and over again, ‘I would love to play this on the radio. Get a version down.’ She said, ‘We’re thinking about it'...[They've revisited] a classic song without screwing it up. I’m sort of a music purist. I'm not someone who just plays a long version just for the sake of it.
It has to be good...I think I finally I wore her down and she put it on. People love it [in concert].
Richard Blade's 1st Wave show airs weekdays on SiriusXM from 12-6 p.m., Saturdays at 11-5 p.m. and Sundays at 1-7 p.m. Pacific Time. He can also be heard daily from 12-1 p.m. Pacific Time doing the "Flashback Lunch" on JACK FM/93.1 Los Angeles.
In 2017, Blade put out the excellent biography "World in My Eyes" and last November issued the historical adventure novel "SPQR." Both are currently available on Amazon.
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