Alternative Famous Firsts
Kenny Wall
Founder/Partnered Programming Group & Program Director
KXNA (The X 104.9)/Fayetteville, AR
Started one week out of high school in 1984 at KVOM in Morrilton, AR. I was actually spinning records at that time. We didn’t have a playlist, we just had three boxes of music we chose from and played them. There was some method to the madness, but not much. Taught me about programming early. Also, a lot of how I treat people now comes from the lessons I learned from the station owner Stan Willis. Lots of lessons learned.
Willie Nelson with Delbert McClinton at the Pine Bluff Convention Center in Pine Bluff, AR I believe in 1980.
I think it was the 45 of “You Decorated My Life” by Kenny Rogers. Not proud of that.
Keith Whitley. He was such a nice man. He was playing a show at a local bar and invited me to the show. Afterwards, he brought me onto the bus and showed me the video to the song “When You Say Nothing At All”. It had not been released yet. One thing I remember him saying was, he refused to kiss the actress in the video because he felt that would be disrespecting to his wife. Solid dude.
At KVOM, I was doing the evening show. Now, I was also in college and was partying pretty hard. One night I was particularly tired. I put on “There’s No Way” by Alabama and decided to rest my eyes. What I think was about 10 minutes later, I woke up to the clicking sound of the record and the phone ringing. Luckily, nobody working at the station heard that. Lesson learned.
Lexi Ziccardi
On-Air Afternoons / Promotions Director
WEDG (103.3 The Edge)/Buffalo
Board op for WBEN 930 AM.
NSYNC at "The Ralph", totally epic.
When I was in first grade my mom got me out of school early and took me to the store to buy the Brittney Spears, Oops I did It Again CD. It was the year 2000.
When I first became a talent on Alternative Buffalo in May of 2017, we held our big summer festival Kerfuffle in June. After only being on-air a few weeks, Nik Rivers threw me in to interviewing the Mowglis. The band is from California...and my first question was "how's the weather in California"... They laughed with me but I was as nervous and embarrassed as I ever could be.
Back when I was a middayer on Buffalo's Star 102.5, we had just built a "fishbowl" studio in the front lobby so listeners could see us when we were on-air. I didn't know it worked like a remote access, and went on the air without switching the station over. I had to run to the other side of the building to turn my mic off after 2 full minutes of dead air. At the time I was the youngest in the building on the air, and felt like a total rookie.
Brian "Hammer" Panerali
Afternoons
KXTE (X107.5)/Las Vegas -- (Bonus Stations: KFRR (New Rock 104.1)/Fresno Afternoons & WMTE (Eagle 101.5)/Manistee, MI Weekends)
Promotions Assistant at WXRK (K-ROCK) in NYC
Weird Al @ The Bottom Line in NYC (It'll also be my son's first concert in June here in Vegas)
Well, it was a cassette... Weird Al’s self titled debut, (notice a trend?) which was already four years old at the time but it was brand new to me! I ended up listening to it so many times I had to get a replacement.
By the time I got to Phoenix I had already interviewed a lot of "up-and-coming bands" but my first big "real interview" was easily Kurt Hammond from Metallica... They were doing a show down in Tucson and my PD at the time (the great Steve King) asked me if I wanted to go down there and talk to him... a question to which the answer is always “YES!”... the venue didn’t have a lot of room for us to sit down and talk so we ended up having to go to a supply closet sitting down about a foot away from each other... Ended up talking to him for a good 45 minutes, easily one of the top 5 most down to earth, laid-back coolest, artists I’ve had the pleasure talking to.
WBAB/Long Island, NY... first time cracking the mic during the weekend overnight shift. Talking up the ramp of a Led Zeppelin song and ended up running over the vocals... I was so pissed at myself that I threw together an epic string of curse words, only to realize that I had accidentally left the mic on... 2AM on Monday morning... no phone calls, asking me what I just said, no listener reports to the program director. Talk about the luck, I ended up working there for another two years, thankfully. Dead Air? No, but it could’ve possibly turned into a dead career for me! Sorta the same thing, right?
