TANGENT SUNSET

"Waves On The West Coast"
by Alex Cosper

"Waves On The West Coast" was my first studio recording ever in 1989. I was Music Director of KWOD in Sacramento at the time as well as the 10p-2a Air Personality. I guarantee anyone who listened regularly to KWOD that summer heard the song. With the permission of the Program Director and the General Manager I was able to play my own song on the radio and it became an actual hit in Sacramento.

Conflict of interest? I didn't think so. Not to sound egotistical, but it would have been a bigger conflict with the audience not to play the song once it hit the airwaves. At one point it became the number three requested song of the week. We finally decided to back off the song in September even though it was still getting massive requests. To this day people still remind me of that magical feeling of having a regional radio hit that summer.

To separate my on-air persona from my musical endeavors, the artist name was billed as Tangent Featuring A.C. and Harrison Price. "Harry" produced the record at the studio where he worked in Sacramento called The Lasting Impression. It was issued as a 45 rpm on my own label called Stress Free Records. The flipside was an instrumental of the same song with Harry's experimental effects that was entitled "Psychedelic Waves."

The recording project began in the Spring of 1989 with me giving Harry a home-recorded cassette tape I did of "Waves On The West Coast." It was basically an acoustic guitar and vocal demo. My idea was to create a modern recording of a sixties-inspired song about the beach. I was definitely a Beach Boys fan, but I could never sound like them. Vocally I simply did not have that kind of range. I wanted it to sound unique anyway. Another reason for making the record was that there simply were not a lot a great upbeat records at that time as pop radio was drifting toward too much sleepy balladeering. I believed that was one of the reasons Top 40 radio across the country was spiralling downward in the ratings at the time. So I wanted to do something upbeat and modern yet nostalgic with a feel-good summer theme.

The finished product was a 16-track recording in which I sung lead vocals, Harry played guitar and all the electronic instruments while a singer named Stephanie Lords did background vocal harmonies with Harry and me. I picked Harry to produce the record on the recommendation of radio friend Rick Neal, who I helped get a job at KWOD. Harry was fairly well-known in the local scene as a techno musician. I was heavily into the techno/pop sound of groups like Love & Rockets and Information Society at the time. In fact, Harry patterned the electronic drum track of "Waves" after the Information Society hit "Walking Away."

The project took several sessions to record even though by professional standards it was a very simple tune. The reason for the extensive work had a lot to do with the fact that I was a novice vocalist who was very alien to the studio environment, plus I had a hard time conveying to Harry how I wanted the music to sound. I simply did not have the musical vocabulary to communicate what I was hearing in my head. Somehow, though, with Harry being the accomplished keyboardist that he was, we were able to put it all together. But due to technological limitations of the studio, the recording had to be mixed to one inch tape and then pre-mastered on a VHS cassette. The result was a rather thin sound compared to most major label releases.

One of the first persons to hear the finished recording was an A&R representative named Marc Nathan, who worked at Atlantic Records. Because I dealt with industry people at KWOD I was able to get him to come down to the studio and check out the recording. He seemed positive about it but restrained at the same time, just as most people in his position act. Marc was a great contact. At the time one of his signings was Kon Kan, who had a hit called "I Beg Your Pardon." In the nineties Marc went on to sign 3 Doors Down for Universal.

I felt the finished product could be a hit, but then again, I was very biased. I was actually blown away how the record sounded, considering my lack of studio experience. I always felt that if a song was well-written, it would be hard to mess up the performance and I felt very strongly that it was a well-written song. The lyrics went as follows:

WAVES ON THE WEST COAST

Waves on the West Coast
sunshine on the beach
classrooms look so empty
everyone enjoys the heat in the sun

Motor down the highway
cruisin' with my shades
roll along the shoreline
lookin' for a place to stay

(chorus)

Waves on the West Coast
layin' in the sand
wait all year for summer
just to get a tan

Waves on the West Coast
surfers everywhere
radios are blasting
all the guys just like to stare at the girls

June through September
beach parties every night
that's why I rent a condo
I need adventure in my life to survive

(repeat chorus several times)

© 1989 Killer Betty Music, BMI/Orange Underworld Music, BMI. All Rights Reserved.

The first time it hit the airwaves on KWOD was on a feature we did called "Like It Or Spike It" on June 2. The jock was Pat Garrett ("The Nighthawk"), who was a very wild and crazy guy. He did 6p-10p before my show. At 7 o'clock he announced he had a mystery singer to play for the feature and he asked listeners to guess who it was. After he played the song the first caller guessed it was me right off the bat. I simply had a very familiar and unique voice on the station. Everyone at the time knew me by my initials "A.C.," which was usually what I called myself on the air, although occasionally I gave my full name. After the first caller gave it a thumbs up, Pat took several other live comments on the air and it was overwhelmingly positive. After a half hour of tallying the votes, Pat announced that the overall verdict was "Like It!"

From there we left the song in the studio. Even though the music was programmed and the jocks pretty much had to follow a strict playlist (which was the industry standard), other jocks said they liked it and wanted to play it. Somehow it got played around the clock even though it wasn't on the list. It was the kind of record you could sneak in without getting in trouble with the programming staff, which included me. Next thing you know the song started getting lots of requests and it actually felt like it could be a real hit record.

Three days after the song's radio debut I was at a movie theatre with fellow jock Dean Stevens introducing one of our premieres for our contest winners. Dean introduced me to the crowd as the singer of "Waves On The West Coast." Based on the cheers, either the crowd was polite, they just liked my show or they knew the song. It had been played here and there on the air but usually it took several weeks for a new record to become widely familiar. By June 6 it was the most requested song of the day, but I told Pat Garrett not to include it in the "Hot 8 at 8" countdown because I didn't want people to think we were hyping one of our own staff member's records.

I started sending copies of the song on cassette to friends in the industry. I received instant positive response from my old friend Mr. Ed Lambert, who was my original radio mentor at KWOD throughout the '80s. He was now working at a station in Minneapolis. Even Joel Denver, who was the CHR Editor of Radio & Records at the time called me to say he liked the record. On June 9 the music industry trade magazine Hitmakers mentioned the song in a small blurb, but only because I had regular conversations with the magazine about new music.

The following week I had Harry send the recording to a record manufacturer to press 500 copies on 45 rpm. Even though the CD had taken over by then and 45s were being phased out of the cultural landscape, I had always been a collector of 45s and just wanted to see it on vinyl. But on June 26 my dream of having a hit went sour when KWOD's General Manager Ed Stolz told me to discontinue playing the record, simply because he didn't feel it was a record we needed to play, although he said he liked the song. So for awhile the song went away and I accepted the idea that it wasn't going to be a hit.

Then on July 13 boxes of the record arrived from the manufacturer. I had already gotten the okay from Tower Records at various locations to put it on sale in their stores, and the record officially went on sale the next day. I only put about 50 copies total at stores and saved the rest to give to friends and industry people. When Ed saw the physical copy of the record he seemed impressed and gave me the go ahead to play it occassionally on the air.

One of the first persons I sent a copy to was one of my competitors at rival station FM 102. Evening personality Mark Allen had told me he liked the song so I sent him a copy. To my shocking surprise, however, a few days later I was told by Rick Neal that Allen actually played it on FM 102 and "blew it up" as a joke. There were no hard feelings. I completely understood because KWOD and FM 102 were always slamming each other on the air at the time.

On July 24 the weekly request report for KWOD showed that "Waves On The West Coast" ranked number 3 for the week. The next day afternoon jock Dr. Dave Michaels had me come into the studio on his show to inform me he sent the record to his radio friends in Rochester, NY and the song scored 80% positive on the station's on-air music test with listeners. The next day the song was played on a station in Ithica, NY on a feature called "Battle of the Bands." My record actually beat "Heaven" by Warrant, which went on to become a top three pop record nationally. The following week "Waves" showed up on KWOD's most requested songs at number 6. I was still happy about its popularity, but I figured by that point it had peaked.

Then more exciting news came the following week. First Pam Jouan at Hitmakers called to tell me that the song was now being played on Sly 96 in San Luis Obispo, CA. Wow, I thought, it was actually being heard on the coast. It was always my dream to hear that song on the radio as I was driving on Pacific Coast Highway 1 with a beautiful view of the ocean. Then the next day the song showed up at number 5 in requests for the week on KWOD. The following week it jumped back up to number 3. It stayed in the top ten for two more weeks. Then on September 1 legendary alternative station WHFS in Washington DC gave the flipside "Psychedelic Waves" a spin. I was blown away that the East Coast would even consider spinning a record patronizing the West Coast. Then again, they were the only ones to play the instrumental version.

I was very amazed at the reaction even though the record had a raw unmastered sound, making it sonically a cut below most records on the air. Local recording engineer Martin Ashley (aka Wonder Rabbit) informed me that one inch tape was not the industry standard, it was two inch tape at the time. Nevertheless, no one seemed to complain. Everywhere I went in public I'd meet new listeners who commented on the song. One fan named Irene even gave me a T-shirt she had made up for me that said "Waves On The West Coast" on the back. Another local recording engineer, Sean Haddock, volunteered to remix the song to his liking. He said "it needs to be wetter with more reverb." I let him remix it and both versions ended up on the air.

The excitement made me realize I needed to make a follow-up. I had several songs in my repertoire that I had written since high school a decade earlier. But this time I wanted to approach a higher-end studio. Since David Houston worked with Jay King on the production of a number one song ("Lean On Me" by Club Nouveau) recorded at Moon Studios a few years earlier, I decided to go with him for the follow-up single "Survival." This time I teamed up with high school friend Naja Davis, who was a local singer enthusiastic about doing background vocals for the project. She later went on to become a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders in the mid-nineties.

"Survival" turned out to be a good recording and as soon as it was ready we threw it on the air on September 16. It got played for a few weeks and started developing a similar buzz with the audience. This time, however, the station General Manager was getting concerned that I was going overboard playing my records on the air, so we agreed not to play any of my music on KWOD anymore. I completely understood and it was sort of a wake-up call that I should not be using my radio position to establish my music career. It wasn't fair to other local musicians who got no airplay or even to major label artists when you think about it. Obviously, had I not worked for KWOD, it would have never even been played once on any station.

I'm sure Panama Jack, who bounced around various airshifts on the station, was concerned because he also had recording aspirations for his rap songs. Then again, he found a way to mix his raps in live on the air over drum beats. And I shouldn't forget that one of Panama Jack's good friends who he worked with on the air in Las Vegas was emerging as a pop star around that time. His name was Dino and he was signed to Island Records. Dino hit the national top ten in June 1989 with "I Like It" and then had some follow-up hits over the next few years. So it wasn't out of the question that a radio personality could cross over into the world of making hit records. It had also happened occasionally in the past, such as with Sly Stone in the sixties.

A few months after my brief adventure as a local artist new management came in and cleaned house. I was out of KWOD for about a year and a half but the same boss who fired me rehired me in 1991 and gave my radio career a new life. This time I was promoted to Program Director as the station had just shifted toward modern rock. One of the first things I did was establish a show for the local music scene called "The Sound of Sacramento." I wanted other local artists to feel what I felt when they heard their music on the radio. Only one other station in town offered a show for local talent but it was strictly for rock bands. By then KWOD had less-defined musical boundaries, which opened the door for a wide variety of music.

As the years went on, I learned more and more about the music industry and how it works. It became no wonder that even though "Waves On The West Coast" was a genuine local hit in Sacramento, there was no way it could have been a national hit for several reasons. One reason was the sonic quality of the unmastered recording. But the most important reason was that it didn't have the backing from the big boys, or that small network of people who actually decide what can become a hit. In other words, the money and the representation weren't there. I had no manager, label or money to promote it within the context of the real game that is played, which involves spending at least a quarter of a million dollars. It made me realize that no matter how good a song is or how much the audience likes it, there's still an iron curtain to cross if you really want to make music for the radio. I was a radio insider and label outsider at the same time.

I'm always thrilled when someone remembers the song and describes what it meant to them then or now. I realize it was more of a novelty but somehow it became a musical treasure to some people. The song resurfaced in the nineties when my band the Beat Villains incorporated it into our live shows and on a cassette release in 1992. Because I've run into people from time to time since then who remind me of the song, I decided to record new versions in 2004 and 2005. They may never get as much airplay as the original did, but it still feels like a fun and magical song that somehow creates an uplifting yet laid-back and stress-free atmosphere.

The new June 2005 recording of "Waves On The West Coast" can be listened to and downloaded for free. Here's the original 1989 version and the 2005 version.

© 2004 Alex Cosper. All Rights Reserved.