Internationally syndicated DJ Jonathan L. Rosen, higher referred to as Jonathan L, died Wednesday, Sept. 12. He was 76.
Jonathan L launched his radio profession at Tucson radio station KLPX in 1982. For the subsequent 4 many years, till he retired from broadcasting his “Lopsided World of L” present from Berlin earlier this 12 months, he was devoted to exposing his viewers to new underground and little-known acts.
Tucson musicians who launched their careers within the late Seventies and early ’80s remembered him as an enormous supporter of their early work.
Howe Gelb, chief of Large Sand, credited Jonathan L with shaping the Tucson music scene, first by way of his newspaper, the Mountain Newsreal (later simply Newreal) and later along with his radio present.
“Jon was the primary one to make the Tucson scene a scene manner again within the ’70s,” Gelb mentioned. “A devoted sonic journalist and the one one who cared sufficient to spotlight the bands right here on the town manner earlier than anybody, to share with one another in print and eventual airplay. We had been fortunate to have him. And he cherished having us.”
Gelb remained buddies with Jonathan L all through the years and visited him at his residence in Berlin earlier this 12 months. Gelb mentioned that though Jonathan L was affected by lung most cancers, he remained enthusiastic about finishing a memoir.
“He was enthusiastic about his new challenge, like he knew he wanted to immerse in some work as if it was a part of the treatment, and was thrilled about having some of us contribute to his memoir, ‘Pleasantly Annoying,’” Gelb remembered.
Brian Smith, a Tucson Weekly columnist and former member of the Arizona bands Beat Angels and Gents Afterdark, mentioned he was “shocked to listen to of his loss of life, and actually saddened.”
“Man, Jonathan L. Past the scope of the person’s profession in music, which, if you get proper right down to it, was basically serving to others get heard — the underdog, the native, the ignored, the worthy — he was a category act to me,” Smith mentioned. “My previous band Beat Angels as soon as performed his birthday celebration in a venue in Los Angeles, the place he was heading up Album Community journal. He was so grateful he paid us extra, by far, than we’d ever earned enjoying in Los Angeles, and we’d had a couple of good ones. Plus, all of the free booze, on his tab, and I can’t even think about the accounting on that one. He didn’t have some huge cash — hell, he was from radio and journalism. He knew we had been broke.”
David Slutes, leisure director at Resort Congress and a member of native band the Sidewinders, remembered that Jonathan L “actually was distinctive in his discipline. His ardour and affect shall be missed.”
“He was so fiercely unbiased—such an anomaly in industrial radio,” Slutes mentioned. “He was all the time a champion of the unknown artist. He was all the time so proud to make use of his soapbox to advance the careers of artists he believed in.”
The Sidewinders had been among the many bands he boosted.
“On a private notice, he was the primary radio character to place our band on radio, interviewing us as if we had been actual artists. It was thrilling,” Slutes mentioned. “He continued to help us after we acquired our first document main label document deal. You might inform he felt—rightly—that he shared in our success.”
Jonathan L launched his radio present, “Virgin Vinyl,” in 1982. It ran on Sunday nights from 7 p.m. to midnight. He would play unknown acts and his visitors included the likes of Joey Ramone, Henry Rollins, the Circle Jerks and the Meat Puppets.
He left Tucson for the Phoenix market in 1986 and labored at a number of radio stations, together with KUPD, the place he hosted “Virgin Vinyl” from 1988 to 1992. Within the mid-’90s, his returned to print journalism as editor of the music business commerce publication Nearly Different and he later launched an unbiased document promotion firm. He would return to radio in 2005, launching “Lopsided World of L.”
He moved to Berlin in 2010 to be with the lady who would later change into his spouse, Gaby Rosen, and continued to create “Lopsided World of L” for syndication to quite a few radio stations across the globe.
Larry Mac, program director at KLPX, remembered being a fan earlier than he was a good friend and colleague at radio stations within the Phoenix space. Mac mentioned he was “the annoying child who would name him up on the radio and ask him concerning the music I heard him play. … I even bothered him for a job at a Shriekback live performance he placed on on the Satan Home. He employed another person.”
Mac mentioned Jonathan L “was a terrific instructor, a pacesetter, a really loyal good friend. A music fan. He noticed issues in individuals, and introduced out the very best in them. He was identified to lots of people as ‘The Godfather of Different,’ however he was greater than that. He cherished all types of music. Didn’t stay previously. All the time tried to see and listen to new music of any type.”
Mac remembers that Jonathan L would inform him that he “ought to be capable of depend your closest buddies on one hand. They’re your ‘5.’ Individuals can go out and in of your ‘5’ relying on life circumstances and paths. He was certainly one of my ‘5,’ and I’m fairly certain I used to be certainly one of his. However there have been so many individuals that cherished him, I don’t know how he may maintain it to 1 hand, not to mention two. When he was your good friend, he was your good friend for all times.”
Jonathan L grew up on Lengthy Island, residing on the streets in his teenagers. After a stint in a juvenile detention facility, he wrote music articles for an underground Lengthy Island paper, The Specific.
He left New York in 1973 to maneuver to California along with his then-wife however after stopping in Tucson to recuperate from an sickness, he determined to settle right here quite than proceed to the coast. In 1974, he launched the Mountain Newsreal, an underground paper that had a serious give attention to native music.
Doug Biggers, who based the Tucson Weekly and Edible Baja Arizona, acquired his begin within the publishing biz by working on the Mountain Newsreal places of work in 1978 whereas attending courses as a freshman on the College of Arizona.
“For a lot of of us remembering Rosen, he’s lauded for his impression on Tucson’s music scene with the later incarnation of Newsreal as a music journal, and his a few years working in radio as a DJ ,” Biggers mentioned. “For me, Rosen will all the time be the scrappy writer of the Mountain Newsreal, the final underground newspaper within the US, with a direct connection to the countercultural icons and zeitgeist of the late ’60s and early ’70s.”
Biggers mentioned that hanging out within the Newreal workplace was an expertise that formed his profession as a writer. With out that have, he would have by no means had the abilities essential to launch the Weekly in 1984.
“The Newsreal workplace was a locus for writers, artists, photographers, activists, and an countless stream of out-of-town guests that regularly blew my thoughts, together with individuals like legendary satirist Paul Krassner and the notorious Yippie Aron Kay, famend because the Pie Man for his excessive profile “pie-ings” of well-known literary and political figures,” Biggers mentioned. “I first met Edward Abbey there when he dropped by looking for a again situation and invited us to interview him at his fireplace lookout on Aztec Peak. An incessant conversationalist with a raspy Brooklyn accent and cigarette in hand, Rosen would maintain court docket with no matter solid of characters confirmed up—and as a 19-year-old I might merely marvel that I used to be within the midst of all of it.”
Chris Wagganer, a musician and videographer whose footage of the Tucson music scene within the Eighties was lately featured within the movie “A Story of Two Homes,” remembers studying about native music in Newsreal and listening to it on “Virgin Vinyl.”
“I nonetheless have a few of the cassette tapes with parts of his present which I taped off the air on my increase field,” mentioned Wagganer, who now works in Hollywood. “He was a sort and delicate soul and an enormous supporter of native bands and musicians. He was actually right down to earth— the type of man you possibly can simply chill and have a beer with on the bar at Ninos. He by no means went in for any of that loud, flashy stuff that many radio ‘personalities’ appeared to suppose was obligatory. All through his lengthy profession as a radio DJ he helped many new artists break by way of and lots of owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. As I perceive it, he was simply placing the ending touches on his memoir, and I hope to see that sometime quickly.”