The Last DJ

I enjoyed listening to Jim Ladd's weeknightly radio show on Sirius XM and continued listening to him on Mondays when his schedule got curtailed to that day of the week.   When I first got satellite radio, I was hooked on his show almost immediately.  Here was the famous DJ from the City of Angels that I'd heard of, the one who played the best rock and roll, not the most commercial rock and roll, the guy who helped keep rock music relevant by focusing on what was fresh and not what what was stale - a mix of familiar tunes, obscure tracks, and new bands and solo performers.  He was one of those very few remaining radio pioneers who stood in the way of the businessmen who always ruining everything with their demographic studies and their money chasing.  And Sirius XM now gave me the opportunity to hear what this Ladd chap was all about.   

I caught part of the show Ladd did on Sirius XM's Deep Tracks channel on December 11, 2023, driving home from my stamp collectors' club's Christmas party.  It wasn't very inspiring that night - too much prog, it seemed - but it was still Jim Ladd as we and LA terrestrial-radio listeners always knew him, and a lackluster Ladd show was still better than any radio show on a terrestrial classic-rock station that paid lip service at best to the spirit of rock and roll.

I had no idea that I was listening to what would be his last show.

Jim Ladd died of a heart attack on December 16, 2023, and an era died with him.  As the leading and fiercely independent DJ at KLOS-FM and KMET-FM, he pushed free-form radio to its freest and most formless incantation, playing what he wanted regardless of whether it fit a conventional "rock" format or not, refusing to define the music according to market research.  He established many a rapport with several rock stars of the 1970s, including Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and California rocker Tom Petty, both of whom made records inspired by Ladd's career.  (Waters' second solo album was a concept record about radio and included Ladd himself on some tracks; Petty's song "The Last DJ" was an attack on greed in the music business, which led Big Radio to ban it.)

Ladd's passing most likely means nothing to a younger generation of radio listeners, most of whom are fans of the empty pop and electronica that dominate the charts these days, who probably listen to a former rock station that changed formats a couple of times after it stopped playing rock due to "demographic changes."  Nor does it likely matter to young sports fans in the Northeast who don't have satellite radio and never heard of Ladd - and listen to an FM simulcast of an AM sports station, blissfully unaware of the great rock music that once played on that same FM frequency.  Today's listeners are too tuned into the present and are thoroughly disconnected from a time when there was genuine variety on FM music radio and when radio was free - not just available without charge (unlike sat), but liberating and liberated.

And there goes the last DJ.  RIP. 😢