Classical Mavericks Slip in Irreverence in KUSC’s Lineup

When the management of KUSC-FM (91.5) last year ended the nonprofit station’s experiment of mixing world music, jazz, avant-garde styles and other tangential sounds into the traditional classical repertoire, one program apparently was overlooked.

While the general programming now is centered on the familiar Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms et al, on Saturday night’s “Gone Global,” you’re much more likely to hear Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, Piazzolla, Gorecki or Revueltas.

In between the selections, though, you’re likely to hear a lot of laughter.

“I find a lot of concert music is treated too solemnly,” says Enrique Gonzalez-Medina, whose distinctive cackle is a trademark of the show he co-hosts with Titus Levi on Saturdays from 11 p.m.-2 a.m. “Sometimes it feels [in classical radio] that you don’t have a program host but a funeral director.”

It’s fitting, then, that the two generally avoid the standard roster of dead European males who make up the core of the classical repertoire. That, however, would appear to put them at odds with KUSC’s listenership, at least to judge by a recent poll asking listeners to name their favorite composers. The votes went overwhelmingly to the most familiar names.

That doesn’t change the “Gone Global” approach at all.

“Stravinsky said, ‘People don’t know what they like, they like what they know,’ ” says Levi. “They’ve gone back to what people know. But we’re in a funny spot. We’re on so late that the management doesn’t really keep close tabs on us. But if you don’t keep exploring and stick with the familiar, you begin to get lazy and lose the passion of it. And when you lose the passion of music, you cut it off at the knees.”

Passion is not in doubt surrounding the “Global” hosts. It’s clearly what keeps them squeezing this duty into their very busy schedules.

Tijuana-born Gonzalez-Medina, 43, is a composer who has had several works performed by, among others, the Los Angeles Mass Choir. He also teaches at music conservatories in Tijuana and Pasadena and at the Plaza de la Raza cultural center, as well as working in Pasadena’s Old Town Music store--in addition to his radio role.

Los Angeles native Levi, 34, recently completed his doctorate in economics at USC with a focus on the arts, and is now teaching.

Each had hosted separate shows on the station before. Gonzalez-Medina’s “Latin American Concert” was a unique, bilingual exploration of composers primarily from Central and South America. Levi’s world music-oriented “Songs of the Earth” sought to make the connections between non-Western classical music (Indian ragas, Indonesian gamelan music) and the European-based forms.

When they joined forces last year as part of the station’s programming shifts, the mesh was very natural.

“Enrique is a composer who’s interested in new music, and I’m just a guy who is curious,” says Levi.

And the mix makes for involving and illuminating listening for those seeking to explore outside the standards; it’s also fun.

“A lot of people who are not familiar with classical music assume it’s all serious,” says Gonzalez-Medina. “I hate that, and having that incorrect perspective really hurts music a lot.”

FM Flashback: In the “What Decade Is This?” file, KLOS-FM (95.5) is tapping back to the glory years of L.A. FM rock. With Joe Benson--himself a longtime L.A. rock radio personality--defecting to classic-rock KCBS-FM (Arrow 93.1), KLOS is using his vacated 6-9 p.m. slot to “try out” Jim Ladd, Raechel Donohue, Steve Downes, Gino Michelini and Frazier Smith.

Most had been part of the team at the lamented KMET-FM (94.7)--arguably the quintessential L.A. rock station of the ‘70s--before it became the Wave in 1987. And all but Donohue were also at one time or another on KLOS when it and KMET were bitter rivals.

Ladd’s stint last week showed that he has not lost anything since he was last on the airwaves at KLSX-FM (97.1) before it dumped classic rock for talk two years ago. He still presents himself as a rebel fighting the media “machinery”--though his musical tastes (Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, the Eagles ad nauseum) brand him ever more the relic. Regardless, his refusal to follow dictated playlists and the fact that he actually does have opinions and a distinctive persona make his return notable.

Frankly, KLOS management would do wise to hire the whole gang of dinosaurs, drop any remaining pretense of being a current music station and grab all it can of the increasingly overlooked 25-50 male audience. Of course, they may want to tune out if Ladd reads excerpts from his 1991 book “Radio Waves,” a very thinly veiled account of his air exploits in which he renames KMET as the spirited Radio KAOS and KLOS as the hated, plastic KASH.

Of his own mid-’70s trek from KLOS to KMET, Ladd wrote: “The move from 95.5 FM to 94.7 FM was merely a flick of the wrist or the push of a button on the dial. Creatively, however, it was like the difference between East and West Berlin in 1975. My time in the radio gulag was over.”

Top Dog: The No. 1 disc jockey in the last 40 years of Los Angeles radio? It’s Gary Owens, according to the votes of the more than 2,000 people who sent in ballots that were included in Don Barrett’s book “Los Angeles Radio People.”

The Top 10 (which also includes, in order, the recently deceased Real Don Steele, Robert W. Morgan, Bill Ballance, B. Mitchell Reed, Rick Dees, Dick Whittington, Charlie Tuna, Emperor Bob Hudson and Dave Hull) is the centerpiece of a new volume of the book, which expands its profiles of radio personalities to include news, talk, sports and other figures in addition to deejays.

Owens, who recently took the regular 3 to 7 p.m. slot at KGIL-AM (1260) in the station’s new show-tunes format, is, of course, thrilled.

“The last couple of years have been kind to me,” says the L.A. radio veteran, whose rich voice found national fame as the announcer on NBC-TV’s “Laugh-In” in the late ‘60s.

Sizing up the winners, Barrett notes that Dees is the only person who entered the L.A. airwaves after 1980.

* NO ‘ZONE’

Disney abruptly pulls the plug on KTZN-AM format. Page 51.