Dusty Avenue, the radio disc jockey who shot to recognition in Southern California whereas working at KROQ-FM, died Saturday in Eugene, Ore. She was 77.
“We’ve misplaced one among our personal. Dusty Avenue has handed away after 77 joyous journeys across the solar. And sure, Dusty Avenue was her actual identify,” SiriusXM Deep Tracks, Avenue’s most up-to-date employer, shared Sunday in a Fb publish.
“Dusty was one of many first feminine rock jocks on the West Coast, working at KMPX and KSAN in San Francisco from 1967 by way of 1978 earlier than heading to Los Angeles, the place she held courtroom within the evenings from 1979 by way of 1996 on KROQ. … We’re heartbroken, Fly Low Pricey Good friend and Keep away from the Radar.”
Avenue obtained her begin within the radio enterprise in San Francisco within the late Nineteen Sixties, working at KMPX, KTIM and KSAN as one of many nation’s first feminine FM DJs. She discovered her method into the Los Angeles market in 1978 after touchdown a job at KROQ, one among L.A.’s premier rock stations. She briefly left KROQ in 1980 and frolicked at native rock stations KLOS and KWST, earlier than returning to anchor KROQ’s night programming from 1981 to 1989.
Of her time at KROQ, Avenue advised author/DJ Liz Ohanesian in 2007, “It was all in regards to the freedom. It was by no means in regards to the cash, it was by no means in regards to the acclaim, it was all in regards to the freedom. I attempted to keep up that freedom because the belt grew tighter and tighter across the business, and that freedom, that love of freedom, ultimately obtained my ass canned from KROQ, in 1989.”
Avenue claimed that she was let go from the station for being a “renegade.”
“[It] was type of ironic as a result of that was just about the muse that KROQ was based upon — the truth that we have been all renegades and the music was, uh, renegade-al,” she stated. “No one within the nation was taking part in what we have been taking part in after we began.”
During the last twenty years, Avenue had been in Cleveland — understanding of the fifth ground on the Rock and Rock Corridor of Fame — as a DJ for SiriusXM, most not too long ago on the Deep Tracks station.
Usually requested whether or not her DJ identify was her actual identify, Avenue — who grew up within the Bay Space — needed to continuously inform people who, sure, that was truly her identify.
“[My full name is] Dusty Frances Avenue,” Avenue advised The Instances in 1985. “My father’s identify was Emerson Avenue, and we used to reside on Emerson Avenue in Palo Alto. Drove the postman out of his thoughts.”
Avenue was one among radio’s most outspoken personalities, particularly in regards to the makes an attempt by such teams because the Mother and father Music Useful resource Middle to use a score system to rock music lyrics, which was the topic of a 1985 U.S. Senate listening to.
“How come [The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’] wasn’t unhealthy 10 years in the past, and the way come individuals who have been listening to the Stones for 10 years aren’t out on a rampage killing everyone?” she advised The Instances. “[The criticism of rock lyrics] is just a bit too foolish for me to take to coronary heart. However I’m very afraid that that is going to lead to a type of censorship … For those who begin controlling whether or not an album might be bought due to the lyric content material, then file firm executives are going to leap proper down the artists’ throats.”
Longtime KLOS DJ Geno Michellini shared a message Saturday on Fb concerning the pioneering DJ’s dying.
“I’ve been in Eugene the final two days at Dusty Avenue’s bedside. The quite a few afflictions that she has been so indomitably preventing these final years lastly caught as much as her. I’m writing with a damaged coronary heart to say that Dusty left us tonight,” Michellini wrote. “She died peacefully, quietly and surrounded by love in a superbly serene location overlooking essentially the most lovely lake you can ever need. As befitting the queen that she was.
“Tonight I misplaced probably the greatest pals I ever had and the world misplaced a radio and music legend … She was all that and a lot extra. There’ll by no means be one other Dusty Avenue. The queen is gone, however she’ll by no means be forgotten.”
In an interview with WKYC, an NBC TV affiliate based mostly in Cleveland, Avenue expressed her views on the function that radio ought to play in individuals’s lives.
“I’ve at all times thought radio must be a mixture of leisure and schooling,” she stated. “I’m residing and dealing in a spot the place you get to coach individuals with out jamming it down their throat.”
