When the first Cars record - called The Cars - came out, we played it on Deaconlight, but it did not get the attention on local commercial radio that it started getting in other parts of the country. It wasn't until Candy-O was released that WKZL picked up on it.

For those of you who don't know, WKZL was the big FM station in the Winston-Salem/Greensboro/High Point area at the time. During the mid-1970s it was more AOR (album oriented rock) but by the end of the 1970s, it was this weird hybrid of rock and top 40 tunes (like Cheryl Ladd and stuff). I worked at WKZL from August 1978 to August 1979 while all this was going on. (It wasn't until later when KZL switched to the Burkhart/Abrams formula that I went back and started the "New Generation" show.)

So when KZL started playing "Let's Go" from Candy-O in 1979, this was a big deal. Several good artists started squeezing the Cheryl Ladds out of the playlist, including Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, and even The Knack. So this definitely made working at KZL more fun, especially since the station added several cuts from the record, including "Since I Held You," "It's All I Can Do," and "Double Life."

Meanwhile, I was still in college at Wake Forest, so even though I worked full-time during mid-days and Saturday nights at KZL, the station's management let me keep doing Deaconlight. The problem I faced, however, was that Deaconlight was supposed to be an alternative to old commercial KZL, so it didn't make since for me to play the same songs on Deaconlight as KZL was. The great thing about this record is every song is good, so I still was able to have plenty of good songs, such as "Dangerous Type," "Nightspots," and the title song, left for Deaconlight.

-- April 30, 2005 (DD)