Looking back at KLOL 11 years after its demise

Seeing the KLOL logo anywhere makes some of us older guys and girls really happy. Seeing the KLOL logo anywhere makes some of us older guys and girls really happy. Image 1 of / 167 Caption Close Looking back at KLOL 11 years after its demise 1 / 167 Back to Gallery

Eleven years ago this week Houston lost one of its last great rock stations in Rock 101 KLOL. On November 12, 2004 the Clear Channel station went from hard rock to Spanish-language reggaeton with the flip of switch.

When the station went from playing hard rock, modern rock, and the occasional heavy oldie and morphed into Mega 101 FM, "Mega Musica de Houston” it confused most everyone, except of course fans of high-energy Latin hip-hop.

KLOL had debuted in 1970 and the first song (and later the last song) ever played over its airwaves was “I'm Free” by The Who.

You will still hear grumblings about the demise of KLOL from rockers in Houston who say that on that day they lost a virtual rallying point on the FM radio dial. Their own table in the Houston radio cafeteria if you will.

KLOL is on a long list of Houston hallmarks that are still mourned to this day. The Houston Oilers franchise, the Shamrock Hotel, AstroWorld, The Summit, Marvin Zindler, and some day soon the Astrodome will more than likely join those ranks.

Anytime there is mention of Jim Pruett, the grand old man of KLOL and the other half of the Stevens & Pruett duo, you will no doubt hear everyone’s favorite KLOL memory.

Maybe it was hearing the S&P on the way to school in the morning, or listening to the drive-time show on the way home from work, your knuckles white with tension but the rest of your body chuckling. Maybe you discovered you were a metal head in the middle of an Ozzy Osbourne two-fer on a Tuesday.

Pruett’s partner at KLOL for more than a quarter-century, Mark Stevens, died in October 2011 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 76.

On Wednesday night during his nightly KPRC-AM program one of the station’s most-enduring personalities, Outlaw Dave Andrews, detailed the run-up and aftermath of the events on that cloudy, rainy day a decade ago.

“There had been rumors that Clear Channel was going to make some changes,” Andrews said on his show. “As it got closer to the end of the year some information was being put out on (online) radio forums.” In hindsight he sees the leaks as taunting clueless KLOL staff and not gentle warnings.

A series of phone calls from Clear Channel brass on the night of Nov. 11 sounded concerning to Andrews and he cleaned out his belongings from the station’s offices soon after.

“The timbre in their voice was a tip off,” Andrews says.

The next morning after Walton and Johnson ended, the station played Metallica’s “Sad But True” and then The Who and that was that. TV camera crews were waiting outside as Andrews rode off on his Harley. That night he and some other KLOL alums met for drinks at a local bar.

He had grown up in Houston listening to the station as a kid and was what made him chase his radio dreams.

“The impetus for blowing up the station wasn’t ratings it was actually a lack of revenue,” Andrews said. Once the ratings books were released months later once the deal was done, Andrews says that the station saw some of its highest ratings. The rest of it can be boiled down to the sometimes callous business of radio.

Last night it was asserted on Andrew’s show that the fall of KLOL lead to the rise of conservative talk radio in Houston. Left without a community hub, which KLOL was for many listeners, they instead switched over to AM radio and tuned in to syndicated and local talkers. If they wanted Sabbath and Zeppelin they would flip over to the Arrow 93.7 FM to get their fix, which itself would be gone in a decade.

“Suddenly those people really didn’t have a radio station. The Arrow was a bit poppy for the KLOL crowd and some of them didn’t get the new music on the Buzz,” Andrews says now.

Talk radio, in a way, filled that hole he says. There is a community interactivity with talk radio -- especially the conservative kind -- that soothed the masses.

KLOL always took lots of phone calls, Andrews reminds.

These days you can find KLOL artifacts on eBay, YouTube, local antique malls, and Andrews himself had plenty of posters and trinkets at his bar off Washington Avenue, Outlaw Dave's Worldwide Headquarters. The bar closed in May 2015 and Andrews now broadcasts from his own studio space in west Houston and remotely from other locations as needed.

Some even proudly display tattoos of the station’s “runaway radio” logo on their bodies. It’s become a hieroglyphic of sorts signifying a part of Houston community history that won’t be replaced.

Andrews was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame on Nov. 1, 2014, joining many of his former KLOL colleagues.

Pruett and fellow one-time KLOLer Colonel St. James always make time for Andrews on his current nightly KPRC show, telling stories about the great old days of Houston FM radio.

KLOL mascot Locke Siebenhausen still makes the occasional appearance on Andrews’ show when he feels like it.