10 Questions with ... Radio From Hell

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

Kerry: Started in 1982 at KHQN/Spanish Fork where I grew up. I walked in station when I heard it was sold and there was one guy there trying to do office work and play records at the same time. I've worked at Country, Top 40, Rock stations on-air and was PD for a brief period of time. Then KJQ happened.

Bill: I've essentially only worked at one radio station in my entire life. I started in 1980 in Ogden, UT thinking it would be temporary and wanted to get out of the bar business and move to New York, because I was looking to get enough money together for acting. That radio stations has gone through several permutations throughout the years from 1980 until now, but has essentially been this radio station.

Gina: I was going to the University Of Utah and did Student Radio at KUT. My friend Christian and I did a show called the Feuding Wenches. We were fans of the Radio From Hell Show starring Kerry Jackson and Bill Allred. They had a contest for a band we really liked called Faith No More to come up with a creative invitation and band would come to your house and perform a free concert. We didn't win, but they were charmed enough by us to invite us to the house party and later invited to be a guest on the morning show. From there I got overnights with KJQ, and then I worked at a Rock station and first all-Sports Talk FM in Salt Lake before being rescued back to KJQ.

Bill: From the very beginning, just like today, you have been riding our coattails.

Gina: You invited me onto your coattails. I didn't just grab on.

Bill: No, we invited you to the damn house party.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Radio From Hell decided to answer this 10 Questions interview live on-air during their morning show on February 15th & 16th and sent in this mp3.

1. How did you first become interested in radio?

Kerry: I was listening to the night DJ KCPX (AM 1320) Skinny Johnny Mitchell. He would play records at night and do a battle of records and I listened every night and I thought it would be a great way to meet girls.

Bill: I became interested in radio when I listened to the radio with my mother. She liked to listen to radio talk shows.

Gina: I became interested in radio by radio talk shows starring my father Tom Barberi, who was a local radio host for 35 years here in Salt Lake City.

2. Time sure does fly. Congrats on 25 Years Of Radio From Hell! Assume your position and explain your role on the lords of morning radio.

(Richie-Producer) X96 started February 14, 1992. Kerry & Bill started their first show together June 9, 1986.

Gina: If you count all the way back to KJQ, Radio From Hell has been together 32 years.

Bill: That's amazing because I'm only 35.

Gina: Kerry is the captain.

Kerry: I run the board because I don't trust anyone else to do it for me. I help with the flavor of the show and help decide the direction.

Gina: You're our geek news expert.

Bill: And provide all the drop-ins and many snarky comments along the way. My role is much easier to explain. It's to yell.

Gina: You're Utah's most trusted news man.

Bill: I yell things to people here in the room and people at large. And I do the news.

Gina: You mostly yell at me!

Bill: Oh no, I yell at legislature and I yell at the President.

Gina: My job is to poke the bear.

Bill: That being me!

Gina: Incomplete sports, traffic, and weather (SFX, girlfriends on the radio).

Bill: And of course, a feminine touch.

3. How would you describe your on-air style?

Gina: Can I just explain this for all of us? This is something that bugs us about other people that do radio. They don't talk like people. They feel like they have to put on some radio voice. We're just three people here having a conversations, whether they are in a microphone or at home.

Kerry: I hear people talk on the radio and wonder if they go home and talk to their families or children the same way.

4. What is your show prep routine and explain your Boner Of The Day segment, Tuesday Tunes With Todd, and the other benchmarks on Radio From Hell?

Kerry: Everything we do is show prep.

Bill: Life is show prep.

Kerry: And all day long.

Kerry: I get up at 3 and go downstairs to my home studio and I do research. I read everything that happened while I was asleep. Then I leave the house at 5ish.

Bill: I get up at 3 O'Clock as well and I take a shower.

Kerry: Oh yeah, I left that out.

Bill: I take all of my various medications, make sure my hair is brushed and put on my bathrobe and go upstairs attic/office and peruse the news for potential boner candidates because I come up with six of them every morning.

Gina: I sleep until the last possible second and get dressed in the dark and sneak out of the house so I don't wake up my husband, my kid, and my dog.

Bill: Which explains why you look the way you do in the morning.

Gina: It's just sad.

Bill: Boner means mistake. It's like an old fashioned word your grandpa used to say. So that's all it is, we take three stories, now six stories of stupid errors in the news and we let people vote on what they think is the worst (SFX, When I was your age, I pulled a few boners).

5. What's it like working for your longtime boss Todd Nuke'Em?

Kerry: This is where you tell the story how you hired Todd.

Bill: Yes, we get along great with Todd. I originally hired him for his first job in radio many years ago.

Kerry: At KJQ.

Bill: Isn't it odd that he became my boss. He was working at Golden Corral. He was in charge of the potato bar.

Kerry: Yes, specifically. He said, you boy, you over there. My favorite part of this story is when Bill called him to say come report to work as board operator running the cart machines.

Bill: Before he hung up the phone.

Kerry: He didn't hang up fast enough. He yelled. I GOT IT!

Bill: I GOT THE JOB ON THE RADIO STATION! (click). He was so excited.

Kerry: He was cute!

Bill: Now he has been beaten down and is tired.

Kerry: It's true!

Gina: It happens to everybody!

Kerry: It's sad.

6. What is your favorite part of the show?

Bill: My favorite is the first 10 minutes.

Kerry: There are a lot of people that say it's like a rock band hitting the stage. It's all unscripted, we never know what's going to happen.

Bill: No, almost never.

Kerry: We don't have anything planned.

Bill: We don't usually talk about what's going to happen before the microphones open. It's just fun, I like it.

Gina: My favorite part of the show, always, forever, it's just for me and nobody cares, Jean's Wall.

Bill: But that's not really a part of the show. That's an old bit, but that's not a part of the show.

Gina: It's my favorite.

Bill: What? You want us to do it every day? Let's make it a regular feature, where we do the rodeo clown, Jean's Wall (They all laugh).

Kerry: That's my favorite part of the show, Tea Kettle Gina when she is laughing and squeaking at the same time.

Bill: Just so you know, Jean's Wall that came from a grocery store here in town called Reams. They also sell Levi's. I think it's mostly Lee jeans.

Kerry: Well, it's all kinds of Jeans.

Bill: They have a big wall full of jeans.

Kerry: It goes all the way up to the ceiling. There's a latter and you have to send somebody up to get your size, sometimes.

Bill: So they advertise their Jean's Wall. I thought that sounded like a rodeo clown. So I became a rodeo clown named, Jean's Wall. So Kerry became the announcer. We're not going to do it right now, Shawn.

Gina: Come on, you have to.

Kerry: It doesn't apply anymore because it was before they mic'd rodeo clowns. Now they are all mic'd.

Gina: Just do it! Quickly!

Bill: Okay, if we can remember. Let's see, so I'll be Jeans.

Bill: Hey runner!

Kerry: What's that, you say, Jeans?

Bill: I threw the clock out the window.

Kerry: You threw the clock out the window. What did you do that for?

Bill: I wanted to see time fly.

Kerry: Oh, you wanted to see time fly. OK, alright.

Bill: I used to love that at the rodeo. The announcer Gene Feist was the rodeo announcer in Ogden and he had to do the bit.

Kerry: I've been told my attorney Ed Brass, my favorite part of the show, is when he comes in and does very important stuff.

Gina: I agree.

7. The three of you grew up in the area and have worked together a long time. What annoys you most during the show?

Kerry: I don't understand the question

Gina: This is where you say, when I interrupt you.

Bill: Thanks for putting words in my mouth yet again. I would say this, sometimes we get into arguments on the show that turn sort of real.

Gina: Oh yeah!

Kerry: Oh yeah, that's happened. It's uncomfortable.

Bill: It's uncomfortable, but I think it indicates that is what we do.

Gina: It's real, it's real!

Bill: I don't like it when it happens and it makes me feel weird and bad but it happens.

8. What may surprise people to learn about about Radio From Hell?

Gina: There's no surprises here.

Kerry: How about this. We're people with feelings and not cartoon characters.

Bill: You feel like people treat you that way sometimes?

Gina: Like when people send us nasty emails or nasty chat room stuff.

Bill: But that doesn't happen a lot.

Gina: Sure it does.

Bill: Really? Am I just oblivious to it?

Gina: Yeah.

Bill: Okay.

9. Who is your favorite on-air personality not on your staff and why do you like them?

Gina: Let me go first, it's my dad.

Kerry: Tom Barberi - radio legend

Bill: I've been listening to Don Imus, he's retiring. I've been listening to him a lot lately but I listened to him a lot in his heyday. Maybe I enjoy him because he is cantankerous and says what he wants to say most of the time.

Kerry: If it's a local show, I'd have to say Hans Petersen?

Gina: Really?

Bill: He's long gone.

Kerry: I enjoyed listening to Hans Peterson. I'd have to say Phil Hendrie.

Bill: That's a good one!

Gina: I've been blocked by Phil Hendrie. I can't listen to Phil.

Kerry: He blocks you and unblocks you, I don't understand. What do you do?

Bill: I wish I knew how to do that, cause I'd block you if I could.

10. Fill in the blank: I can't make it through the day without _________?

Bill: My cup of Milcreek Coffee! It's so delicious! I have some Milcreek Coffee every single day.

Kerry: (Laughs) Cut the check!

Gina: I don't think there's a better answer than that.

What are weekends like for you?

Gina: Soccer, Basketball, kids, driving things everywhere.

Bill: Usually foggy. Just foggy.

Kerry: I don't have any kids. I just spend it at home usually with the dogs.

What are your hobbies?

Gina: Soccer, Basketball, kids, things.

Kerry: Gina doesn't have any.

Bill: Drinking.

Gina: That's your hobby?

Kerry: I'm into Sci-Fi, comic books and all that stuff.

First record ever purchased?

Gina: The Clash

Kerry: Which one?

Gina: It was a 45. Rock The Casbah.

Bill: I don't remember the name of the album, but it was the one that had Salt Lake City on it.

Kerry: The Beach Boys?

Bill: The Beach Boys

Kerry: Mine was Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

First concert?

Gina: Rick Springfield

Kerry: Mine is embarrassing.

Gina: Rick Springfield is embarrassing.

Kerry: It's better than mine.

Bill: It might have been The Doors.

Gina: Go with that.

Kerry: The Village People. WE DIDN'T KNOW! WE WERE KIDS.

Bill: We thought they were cool.

Kerry: It was still a great show

Favorite band of all-time?

Gina: Oh, that's hard.

Kerry: I can't pick just one, depends on my mood.

Bill: Yeah, me either.

Kerry: I would say The Kinks, Pink Floyd, and Oingo Boingo.

Bill: Rolling Stones, really deep early Rolling Stones I love. The Clash. Stuff we play now, I like Green Day a great deal.

Gina: [Green Day] They are up there for me too.