10 Questions with ... "The Razor" Rey de Carlo

1) What was your first job in radio and early influences?

After interning there for a year, my first job was in promotions driving the "Pure Rock Patrol" van for the legendary L.A. metal station, KNAC. Talk about baptism by fire! Earliest influences were the Top 40 jocks on KTKT-A/Tucson. Ed Alexander, who I later got to know and briefly work with, was the first jock that made me realize that something was happening behind the scenes, and made me take note of the idea of a radio personality. When AOR came into play with KLPX, the late Bob Cooke is the guy who opened my ears to irreverence on the radio. That's when my wheels began churning, and I started making my own radio shows with a small tape recorder and a turntable, like a lot of aspiring jocks. Ha! I moved to L.A. in 1986, just three months after KNAC flipped to Pure Rock, and once I heard the jocks, I wanted to be one of them.

2) Was there a defining moment that led you to a career in radio and made you realize "this is it?"

Without realizing it, I was always preparing for this. I studied every liner note, learned my band history, attended concert after concert, discovered new music, learned to play guitar, studied journalism so I could write reviews, and became an all-around music-head. So, one day, about a year-and-a-half after I up and left Tucson for Los Angeles, I heard the late Tawn Mastrey doing a spot for Columbia School of Broadcasting in Hollywood, and I suddenly saw my future clearer than ever. I just knew what I wanted, and I was extremely driven to make it happen.

3) How long have you been rocking for Lotus in Tucson and what are your positions there currently?

I joined KLPX on Labor Day Weekend of 2010, so just over eight years. Currently I'm APD for KFMA and KLPX. I also hold down an air shift, and I make it a point to get my hands dirty in other departments once in a while. If need be, I'll handle production duties so our prod guy can have a vacation, or do some traffic reports. I've even sat in as morning show producer. Because we all know if you aren't multi-tasking in radio, you're not working. It's also how you sometimes find issues that you wouldn't have known otherwise.

4) Since you work with both KFMA and KLPX, let's first talk about the music on KLPX. Many Classic Rock stations have evolved into playing harder rock and '90s titles. How is KLPX positioned musically and what's your take on the format today?

Until just recently it was, like most, very '70s-based with your standard Zep, Skynyrd, Bad Co. fare, with some late-'60s fringe. We also spun hard-rockers like Ratt, Iron Maiden and Whitesnake a bit more frequently. We've now gone more '80s-based. Not hair bands, but more '0s Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel, Foreigner, Tom Petty, Genesis, Robert Palmer etc. And less of the '60s, which is now really Oldies. Of course, we still play lots of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but songs like "Stairway and Skynyrd's "Free Bird" are now in secondary positions. And bringing up the rear is the '90s. We had already been playing some grunge, but we know that as we near the 30-year anniversary of some of these artists, we'll have to add more of it sooner than later. In fact, we've started to play Smashing Pumpkins. Classic Rock will always be what that median target audience was listening to in high school. It's that sliding scale.

5) KFMA has long been considered one of the taste makers in the Alternative format, but over the last couple years it's evolved into a Rock station, and recently joined the Active Rock panel. I recently asked the same question to PD Larry Mac, but how has the transition from Alt to Active Rock worked out so far?

It's given Larry and I a stronger and more targeted musical focus. We don't feel like Jekyll and Hyde anymore. Research showed that Tucson wanted to rock, and having grown up here I had always known Tucson to be a rock town. We felt that it was most likely the case, and once we saw the research pointed that way, we wasted no time in picking our lane. Had it leaned pure alt, we would have taken it in that direction, which I think would have been an even bigger identity switch. We straddled that line between Alt and Active Rock as long as we could, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to play Bastille next to Metallica, and even more so to justify it. Alternative has really become the farm-team for Pop radio, so in a way, as we continued forward, it veered away from us.

6) How has the audience reacted to the KFMA transition to Active Rock?

In general our audience has always perceived us to rock a bit harder. Being an Active-leaning Alt station positioned us so we could still get cred with the KoRn Kids, who aren't actual kids anymore. So, the directional shift is really more subtle than it sounds. We've had a handful of people saying they've noticed that we're rocking a little more. Still it's too early to give a definitive answer as to how it's worked out audience-wise. We'll really have a greater handle on that in the first part of 2019. However, our initial research tells us we're on the correct path.

7) I also asked Larry about some of the shared artists, if any, that KFMA and KLPX are both playing...

When you own the top two male-dominated stations, you have to think about the guy who likes Guns N' Roses and can appreciate an older Pink Floyd tune, but also cranks '90s Metallica and rocks out to something more recent like Volbeat. Larry calls it flying wingtip to wingtip. The shared artists for that listener would be obvious choices like STP, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and even 3 Doors Down and Beastie Boys. As I mentioned, we're now playing Pumpkins on KLPX. A newer addition to KFMA is Black Sabbath. When I go to concerts I'll see listeners at a Pop Evil show, and the next week I'll see them at Styx. So there is definitely an audience going back and forth between the two stations, and we try to comfortably fit them in between. We've even set the clocks so that when one goes to spots the other is in music.

8) With KFMA's transition, what is your take on the current state of new music at Active Rock and the format as a whole?

I've been hearing the "rock is dead" chant as long as I've been a music fan. There may be some dinosaurs in the genre but rock's not going to be joining the dinosaurs anytime soon. Rock fans are just too passionate. There always comes a point where it needs a shot in the arm, and I think we're there. But as much as Greta Van Fleet is being hailed "rock saviors," I know they're not the band that will change the musical course. It'll be a band that, seemingly overnight, changes the landscape of local music, and has bands emulating them. That's when you know the impact. When GN'R came out I was in L.A. Suddenly all the hair bands on the strip looked like them. Same thing with Nirvana. I looked up and we had a bunch of lumberjacks running around with guitars. KoRn did it with Nu-Metal. Larry likes to say there's a group of kids in a van on the side of a road that have no clue that they're the next big thing. I just hope they emerge soon.

9) Now a couple of personal questions, first of all, what do you like to do for fun and relaxation when you're not in "work" mode?

Let me clarify that work IS fun for me. But when the mic is off, I play guitar in a band that is comprised of mostly guys from the station. We play station events and other high-profile gigs. I LOVE concerts, and go to as many as I can. I'm also a big comic book geek, and still collect them as well as action figures. None of which sounds relaxing at all.

10) Finally, you go by "Razor" Rey de Carlo. Care to explain?

Sonically, it's really just a natural extension of my first name. More in-depth, when I started at KNAC and was going to have a name used on-air, I was in the company of guys like Thrasher and Gonzo. You couldn't just be Darren, you had to be Dangerous Darren. So I was sitting in the studio with Jack Trash and a listener kept calling requesting a local band called Razor's Edge. After about the fourth time I said, "That's it! Razor Rey!" Jack suggested just Razor, and I refined it to The Razor. To me it's always evoked that image of the razor blade on the cover of British Steel from Judas Priest. When I was a kid I always wanted a cool nickname like Ace Frehley, and it's worked out pretty well so far. It was especially fun when I was introduced as Razor to Slash, as well as The Edge from U2. "Edge, Razor. Razor, Edge." Good times! I'm just glad we weren't eating trail mix. I could have been The Raisin!