St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 63

st. louis post-dispatch ARTS ENTERTAINMENT Sunday, april 21,2002 I A forum for: beliefs, opinions, new approaches stray thoughts Hey hey, my my Rock and roll can never die Vwre's more to the picture, tlian meets the eye Hey hey, my my Neil Young All's clear sBgral Entrepreneur Greg Marecek is expanding his all-sports broadcasting coverage, thanks to a fortuitous chain of events. HvOj rvf CD 1 1 mm 1 lr comes VoaaDDdl flltoe clock metal and teen idols, I frH After a run of rap it's time again for bass and a he. A V-sr -5fc. if .1 WSLV By Diane Toroian Of the Post-Dispatch When Greg Marecek set out to buy a sister station to sports outlet KFNS (590 AM and 100.7 FM); he faced few of the worries that hinder other would-be owners.

He did not need new jocks; most of the station's sports programming would be syndicated. He did not need studio space or equipment; KFNS already had offices in Webster Groves. Nor did Marecek need a crew of sales representatives, engineers and producers; the existing KFNS staff would do just fine. But what he did need what every radio station needs is a decent signal. Thanks to a possible act of arson and an unusual deal between two stations hundreds of miles away, Marecek got the fare commodity he wanted.

"They're taking a small suburban station and turning it into a viable opportunity in St. Louis," said JT Ander-ton, an authority on signal coverage. Radio fans can debate whether St. Louis needs more sports programming. KFNS, KMOX-AM (1120) and KTRS-AM (550) air a number of college and professional sports and open-line shows.

And they can debate whether Marecek, whose KFNS stations attract about 1 percent of the listening audience, is the broadcaster to do the job. But when the station signs on next month, no one can deny his new station will come in loud and clear in most of the metropolitan region. "The station has just been sitting there," said Marecek. "Now, it will have as signal as strong as any other in the city." 9 The station, which went by the call letters KHAD, now is KRFT-AM (1190). KHAD served De Soto listeners for 34 years until a fire gutted the station in 2000.

No one was hurt, but the blaze destroyed the building and its equipment. Police suspected arson but never made an arrest. The station was only days away from being sold to the Rev. Larry Rice for $225,000. Then a company named, of all things, Radio Free Texas bought KHAD.

Its engineers realized they could redirect the station's daytime signal to St. Louis, the nation's 19th biggest radio market. So it built five towers in Illinois to shoot the station's signal southeast over the city. The rub: It could not broadcast at night. That would take an additional license and more towers.

The station went back on the market, but for much more than the $225,000 Rice offered a couple of years back. Marecek picked it up for $1.6 million. "We fanned cars out all over (to see how strong the signal came in), and it was unbelievable," said Marecek, who plans to apply for a nighttime license soon. KRFT's new life as a St. Louis but-let is the direct result of a deal between New York station WILB-AM and WOWO-AM, a powerhouse in Fort Wayne, says Anderton.

Like KRFT, both stations are located at 1 190 on the AM dial. What happened is this: WOWO carried a Class A license, which guaranteed it broad protection from signal interference. As a result, the sound of drums. New and noteworthy ROCK RECORDS "White Blood Cells" The White Stripes "Is This The Strokes "Electric Sweat" The Mooney Suzuki "VeniVkliViscious" The Hives B.R.M.C. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club 3 ful), we've got to do something We were always really into this music." Yet it's because these artists do sound so fresh, despite borrowing liberally from the rock and punk of the 1960s and 1970s, that they are attract- See Rock, F8 if 1 1 THE MOONEY SUZUKI: (from left) Jody Stone (drums), Mike Michaels (bass), Sammy Tyler (lead guitar) By William Lamb Of the Post-Dispatch 1997, in the course of pro-, claiming electronic dance music the next big thing, Rolling Stone magazine asked: "Is techno the new alternative?" The suggestion, quickly and widely supported elsewhere in the music press, was that the venerable guitar-bass-drums approach to rock 'n' roll had run its course.

While electronica quickly fizzled as a popular genre, the rise of teen pop and the fusion of hard rock and rap known as nu-metal did little to debunk the magazine's grim prognosis for rock 'n' roll. But talk of rock's demise may have been premature. Almost overnight, a new crop of back-to-basics rock acts has set about reclaiming rock 'n' roll's rightful place in the mainstream with an electrifying sound drawn from 1960s garage rock and early New York punk. The most famous is the Strokes, a New York quintet with tight jeans, tousled hair and a lean sound that recalls the literate 1970s punk of the Modern Lovers and Television. The Strokes' debut album, "Is This It," has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release in October, proving that a critically acclaimed rock album can find a mass audience.

Now that the door is open, the Strokes have plenty of company. Dozens of like-minded bands have emerged over the past year, with the loudest buzz swirling around the White Stripes, The Mooney Suzuki, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the French Kicks, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Sweden's the Hives. Together, these groups have sparked something of a rock 'n' roll renaissance, their sudden popularity suggesting that a hunger is developing for an alternative to the bland fusion of rap and metal that dominates mainstream rock radio. "Maybe it's just a random swing of the pendulum," said Mooney Suzuki singer and guitarist Sammy James on the phone from his apartment in Manhattan's East Village. "You know, things go one way then they go the other.

And, you know, this music that everyone's currently getting excited about has been around. Kids have been playing in these back-to-basics rock bands for years. "On the other hand, maybe it's not such a coincidence, because what is popular right now is glossy, overproduced pop and the kind of cartoonish metal bands that wear makeup and dress up in monster costumes. So ob- THE HIVES James Jr. (vocals, guitar), Graham THE WHITE STRIPES are Meg and Jack White, who dress exclusively in white and red and passively encourage speculation over whether they are brother and sister (as they claim) or onetime spouses (as the British tabloids have reported).

viously everybody's sick of that. I don't think people really even like that stuff in the first place." The Mooney Suzuki, whose members dress in black and wear sunglasses indoors, is among the more unabashedly retro of the new rock groups. Their second album, "Electric Sweat," which was released this month, opens with a shock of guitar feedback, followed by 35 minutes of blistering rock 'n' roll reminiscent of the propulsive Motor City proto-punk of Stooges and the MC5. The band has built a reputation on the strength of its manic hve show, a highlight of which is the sight of lead guitarist Graham Tyler playing fuzzed-out solos on his back, on his knees, behind his head, in the crowd and perched atop James' lanky shoulders. "Obviously, the kind of stuff that we and bands like us are doing is attractive to people because it's the opposite of what's going on right now," James said.

"But that's not to say that we're responding to Sync or Britney Spears and saying, 'This stuff is (aw- stations across the Midwest including St. Louis could not broadcast on the 1190 frequen cy. Other stations, like WILB, could broadcast at 1190, but only during the day, when AM signals stay closer to their home tower. But WILB wanted to be on air at night, So WILB paid WOWO to down grade its signal. WOWO still broadcasts at full-strength, 24 hours a day, but its shield of protection no longer extends so far.

"It provided an opportunity for other stations across the country to make changes to their facilities," said Edward Delahunt of the Federal Communications Commission. While Anderton believes KFRT is one of the stations to take advantage of the changing signal landscape, media broker Bill Cate, who found KRFT for Marecek, isn't so sure. He says the FCC would have given the station the go-ahead to broadcast to St. Louis regardless of the WOWO deal. He said KRFT's arrow-like signal pierces the St Louis market without bleeding outside of the region.

Either way, Mareck is happy to double his small sports empire. "When I was approached almost two years ago about this, I thought what in the world is this WOWO," said Marecek. "It certainly opened the door for us." A. i f) (l A 1 I Pelle CSl I 1 Nichotaus Arson (lead guitar) Ml.