In The Early '90s, MARS FM Channeled The Sounds Of LA's Underground House And Techno Rave Scene
In the early 90s in Los Angeles, if you are familiar with it, new underground sounds emerged: techno, house culture and raves. And to find out where to go and what's happening, the short-lived 103.1 March FM radio station with it on disc.
Freddie Snickskin recalls Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' famous airplane parked in Long Beach, an early tribute to Mars FM blasting from a car in the parking lot.
"It was an amazing experience to have all these different machines and all these people on the same musical page," recalls the LA DJ.
From May 1991 to August 1992, Mars broadcast The Voice of the New Decade. Snakeskin is best known as the program director and music director of Egils Vet at Swedish Radio Los Angeles, playing dance beats from the Los Angeles underground party world, especially techno and house.
“We were the first radio station to rotate techno and house, meaning we'd take songs like Moby's Go and play them over and over again. It sounds like every three hours,” says Egil from Sweden.
"When you do that, it really conveys the identity, sound and feel of the radio station, so you're really building a station," he added.
But Mars is by no means a RAV site. They have released new singles from alternative music stars such as Siouxsie, the Banshees, Marc Almond, The Human League and Morrissey.
They played new rock from Teenage Fanclub and Nirvana, as well as 80s hits from French band Magazine 60s Don Quixote.
We are the first radio station to regularly broadcast techno and house music.
- Swede Egel, music director of Mars
If you follow the ads, you'll see everything from Helter Skelter's Goose Party Show to Fashionables and Teen Night in Redondo Beach. It's a radio station that covers a variety of alternative music, reflecting and permeating different urban landscapes, and then something new.
History of March FM
"We wanted the '90s to have the same spirit that the original KROQ had around the '80s," says Mars Snake.
In the early 1980s, KROQ 106.7 produced what is now known as alternative music. Snakeskin and Egil were DJs there and the nice people from Mars had KROQ on the show.
"Mars probably wouldn't exist without the KROQ roots that most of us have," said Rick Reeb, who went from part-time KROQ employee to Mars operations director and associate program director.
There are also other connections. This is Ken Roberts, who owned KROQ in the early 1980s and sold it to National Infinity Broadcasting in 1986 for $45 million. This is what makes Mars FM possible and necessary.
"KROQ was a great marriage of all the alternative worlds with an extreme dominance of electronic influences," says former KROQ intern Michael Ivanke, who went on to become DJ Mike Fright.
New ownership led to personnel changes and eventually chose 106.7 FM. According to many respondents, this includes a strong focus on rock music.
Snake left the station in 1990 and collaborated with Roberts on an untitled radio project. The following year, Roberts purchased two small tracts of land along the Southern California coast. Both KSRF in Santa Monica and KOCM at 103.1 FM in Newport Beach are on board, and Roberts, who paid the duo $17.8 million, plans to take it over. New technology allows them to bypass San Pedro and Long Beach without traffic signals.
"It hasn't been done yet," said Frank Martin, chief engineer at the site of the synchronization process. "This is a test case." It worked.
Inauguration of Mars FM
Mars FM was officially launched on May 24, 1991. As program manager, Snakeskin assembled a broadcast crew for Mars that included radio stars and fans. Among them, Rachel Donahue's unique work in radio includes appearances on influential stations in Los Angeles such as KSAN, KMET and KROQ.
Donahue, who described Snake as a "generous and creative boss", provided unprecedented opportunities for DJs in the early 1990s. "I had some liberties that I knew would happen with Freddie," she said.
"As long as you're interested in what you're doing, you can run your own program, which is very rare."
As long as you're interested in what you're doing, you can run your own program just fine.
- Rachel Donahue, DJ Mars
Don Bowles, formerly the drummer for The Germs and later a member of the legendary Skins, hosted the Late Night Truck Driver Show and quickly added The Game to the lineup.
"It was a little scary," said Bowles, who had minimal radio experience before Mars. The program manager asked Snakeskin why he was kicked out of the regular program. The answer, he recalled, "is much easier to teach a personality to play radio than to teach someone with a personality how to play radio."
Focus on rave culture
Similarly, MARS has become a radio station with a personality that is reflected not only in the DJs but also in the music on air. They play a mix of clubs that might be on the radio elsewhere, imported versions that are hard to find in the US, and deep cuts from superstars like Depeche Mode.
You can hear a DJ recreate a seemingly random band like The Kinks. Then comes a new dance sound, lush and full of samples that you'll only hear if you love LA nightlife.
At KROQ, Swede Egil is a DJ with an ear for new dance music. As music director of MARS, he was able to develop the station's sound to reflect what was happening in the local nightlife. "We felt it approaching the highway," he said.
"That's when the punk culture really started to take off in Los Angeles," says Jeff Adachi, DJ/producer of Simply Jeff. In 1991, Adachi, later known as DJ Spin, came to Mars to work with Sweden's Egil on the station's Top 30 program.
Tuesday became the beginning of a mockery for the audience and some of the crew. "I saw and listened to the record," says DJ/producer Christian B "Of course when I got to MARS I met all the great promoters at the club, some of whom are still around today."
Many of these recordings were made specifically for clubs. They didn't think anyone would play it on the air, so they didn't have a short record.
- Daniel "The Pratt" Proz, DJ Mars
Acceptance of new methods
What makes Martian's mix of techno and house music so memorable is that it's different from what people hear on the radio. Designed to dance the night away. Some follow the structure of loud pop songs. But many others do not. Instead, artists try to create hooks that will resonate with audiences by drawing from movies, TV shows and interviews.
Also, since these songs are aimed at clubs and raves, they are longer than what you might hear on the radio. Daniel "Brat" Barassi, who edited several MARS songs for their airplay, says "many of these records were made specifically for the club." "They didn't really think anyone was going to play it on the air, so they didn't have a short choice."
Again Mars plays this music in the middle of the day. “All these people were walking by and they couldn't believe we played their song at 12:00. That's unusual, Adachi said. "For a short time, it was the only time stop in America, so it was recognized as extreme."
All this surprised the audience. "People always say the name of a song to express the joy of listening to it," said DJ Holly Adams. "It was a very positive environment for music and musical exploration."
Challenges to long-term success
However, the mission faced several obstacles. I think the biggest challenge is that not all sellers really understand the format. "In their minds, they don't understand why a sane person would hear that sound," Snakeskin said. "They are not expected to be very effective in persuading advertisers to join."
But it's a challenge they're ready to take on. "I think we beat most people as construction progressed," Snakeskin said. "By the end of the first year, they were our most passionate fans."
Another issue is site scope. The Santa Monica and Newport Beach station simulations will extend the coastal reach, but going ashore is another story. For the greater San Fernando Valley or parts of Los Angeles where mountains intervene, scanning Mars is a difficult experience, perhaps leading to the final sound or future sound of London's orbit.
"We couldn't get another station rate in the market because we didn't have the coverage," Adams said.
The pressure was in place without a fatal move. At one point they were ordered to ban techno. “A guy came in with the owner, Ken Roberts, and he doesn't like techno himself. They assured him they weren't getting more publicity for it," Snakeskin said.
Supporters of the site responded to the protests, submitting letters and petitions.
"Ken took this huge con to the bank that loaned him the money and said, 'Look, we play what the people want,'" Techno suddenly returned, Snakeskin recalls.
He added: "This patent is a rare opportunity to hear people speak for once.
The site has supporters. They respect other American radio stations asking for copies of their playlists. However, in the end, the MARS mission was terminated on August 20, 1992, when the crew was released and KSRF/KOCM prepared to switch to a soft jazz format.
Even then, MARS was an anomaly for commercial radio. "No corporate entity would risk such an opportunity, then or now," Snakeskin said. But Roberts, who died in 2014, was not one to avoid risk. It needs to be unique and special to someone who can see the benefits of having something like this.
After MARS, Snakeskin, currently hosting "Party Beyond Borders" for Portland station KINK, returned briefly to KROQ in an attempt to get some MARS jams with him. "They don't actually use it much," he said. Sweden's Egil started Groove Radio first as a syndicated show and then as a full-time station on the old iteration of MARS from 1996 to 1998. Groove streams online today. Meanwhile, many Martians are well-known as DJs, producers and/or editors in the dance music scene, including Holly Adams, Jeff Adachi, Daniel Barsi and Christian B.
By the end of the decade, many of the artists promoting MARS had gone on to become critical and commercial successes, including Moby, Prodigy, Orbital, London's Future Sound, Orb and Massive Attack. But the demise of MARS marks the end of an era when an independently owned commercial radio station could make a significant impact.
"It puts pop culture and music on a map that's foreign to a lot of people," says Snakeskin. "It's a shame they weren't allowed to continue because who knows what music could be in the spotlight today."
Mars FM puter playlist
Want to hear more? Check out the best MARS FM songs in the playlist below:
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