Straight From the Mouth

B: Kevin and I contribute as little as possible to the show. And the more talented the support team is, the better the program! Jimmy was our sports guy for five years but was even more valuable behind the scenes. He is an incredible idea guy, with his own warped spin on everything. I have no doubt that if he weren't such a hit on television (on Comedy Central's The Man Show), he would be a major syndicated radio personality right now. Ralph Garman has been with us for three years now and can not only do every voice from George W. Bush to Jennifer Lopez's ass but manages to put the comedy in each character too. It's one thing to be a mimic, quite another to be able to improvise "in character" no matter what we throw at him. Ralph also handles the daily showbiz reports on our show and is the authority on all sex things too. As the only single guy on the show he is there to remind the rest of us what goes on out there. Ralph also is the primary writer and performer on the annual Kevin & Bean Christmas CD for charity. Mark Davis? I am not familiar with the name.

Which one of you is Kevin & which one is Bean?

B: I am not sure. I heard that one of us lives on a farm and the other has twins, but I can't tell our voices apart.

K: That's a funny question because there are two things that are true about our show. One is that there are not two people in this world that are more different than Bean and myself. We are absolute opposites. That's why number two is funny. Two, is that nobody can tell us apart. The audience ALWAYS gets us mixed up. How bad a job are we doing with that?

Why has it taken you so long to get syndicated?

K: Basically our management doesn't want it. They tell other stations that they have to take our show "as-is." We will not change it one bit for them. I honestly can't imagine why that isn't working. It seems like such a good plan! Besides, with our signal in Los Angeles as weak as it is, we can't even be heard in all of our own city! Let's not get greedy. We're going to have to leave KROQ to get syndicated.

B: KROQ program director, Kevin Weatherly, is a strong believer that some of the success of the Kevin & Bean show is as a result of it being on KROQ. That is, we sell the station, the station's events and personalities and the

we could no longer integrate those elements into the show full time.

How has being on in Fresno changed your show?

B: Not one tiny bit. I forgot we were on there until I heard your question. It is an unusual situation because they have a guy who holds up a Mr. Microphone to a radio in L.A. And plays it over the phone to the station in Fresno. It is something like that. I'm not sure. We don't refer to it really and don't do anything differently in respect to call letters, phone numbers, contests, or whatever. You should ask the Fresno station about it because I would love to know what is going on up there.

K: Basically, more people can hear our show now. An extra couple of thousand people are tuning into our sex and drugs talk. So it's filling us with a sense of how important we really are.

Why is the Man always keeping you down?

K: We like to rhyme, we like our beats funky, We're spunky, we like our oatmeal lumpy, We're sick with this. And I don't think the management gets that.

B: The Man lets you go as far as your talent and ambition will take you. I have no real complaints about the Man. In fact if you see the Man, give him my best.

What are the certain lines that you do not cross?

B: I am very proud that we have never had an indecency complaint filed against the Kevin & Bean show although we do walk right up to the line. We almost put it in but stop just short. Okay, maybe just the tip. See what I mean? We have only been sued twice and the most recent was about five years ago so that seems pretty good. Both times we settled out of court (thanks Mel).

What celebrity do you regret interviewing?

K: I don't regret interviews just because they go poorly. The Cardigans sat there and stared at us. One of them actually fell asleep during the interview! But we get much more mileage out of that than we would of if it had gone well. We play that over and over again. We not only welcome the bad, we worship it. The worse it goes, the funnier it is later. Screech, from "Saved By The Bell," we actually threw out of the studio. That we played over and over again too. Probably the only one I regret was Sandra Bernhard. She sat down and Bean told her that I hated her. And then I just sat there with my face hanging out, looking at her. That was brutal.

How many guests do you have a day or a week?

K: Probably 3-8 per week. Ten if you count fat guests as two each.

B: We have as many guests as get lost in the building trying to find the Star 98.7 (KYSR) studios on the second floor. Optimally, I would love to have one celebrity-type guest each morning and maybe two in-the-newspaper or current events type people on. It varies wildly. Sometimes we have a Letterman-worthy guest line-up and sometimes you can hear the sagebrush blowing across the prairie. And even with all that sagebrush, we still can't get a guest that day.

How many songs do you play an hour? Would you change it if you could?

B: We play four per hour, five in the nine o'clock hour. I would like to play none. The two camps on that are either that the music breaks up our momentum and gives the audience an easy time to tune out or that the songs are strong and keep people listening through. Kevin Weatherly checked the second box on that one, so that's what we do.

K: We get pretty frustrated with playing music because it seems like just as we get started, we have to stop for music. So we usually just check off the songs as if we played them and then we drop them. We do that with the commercials too. You'd be amazed how much extra time you have each hour if you just check off the commercials and don't play them.

If not an Alternative station, what format would you do?

B: I would love to do talk radio. That is also the closest to what I am now so it's cool.

K: That's a tough question because we like KROQ so much. But if I had to pick one type of format, it would be playing love songs and taking dedications. It's really sweet when girls force the pathetic losers in their lives to call up and say something nice to them.

What are your plans after radio or will you be like Paul Harvey and be on the air until your vocal cords fall out?

B: Three words: California State Lottery. But now I hear you can't win if you don't play. That's bullshit, man.

How has the Internet changed your show over the past few years?

B: I can't even remember how we used to do research for guests, topics, and resources before the World Wide Web. We have it 100 times easier that the morning shows of twenty years ago. Plus the ability to get instant feedback from our listeners through e-mail is invaluable and provides some great content and ideas.

K: The Internet is an unbelievable tool for research. For example, when we're talking about the disappearance of Chandra Levy and the possible involvement of a congressman, I can e-mail Bean and show him what it would look like if my head were on Britney Spear's body. And that's the kind of thing that is just invaluable.

What segments or features is the Kevin & Bean show best known for?

K: Honk for Meat. Weapons for Brownies. Naked with Grandma and Candid Phone. No, wait; we stopped doing that 10 years ago...

B: We have fewer benchmarks than most shows. In fact, I can't think of anything really that is done on a daily, or even weekly basis outside of Ralph's showbiz, sex and movie features. We tire of every game or bit we do more than a few times. I know, familiarity is important in the morning but we were on the side of something different every day instead. I mentioned the charity CD for Christmas earlier. We also do two or three listener singles parties a year, all with completely different themes and locations and those are a pretty hot ticket.

Why is the Kevin & Bean audience the best audience in the world?

B: You jest, but let me offer this anecdote. When Kevin and I took over the morning show on KROQ on January 2, 1990 we opened the gates of hell in many listener's minds. KROQ had not tried a "proper" morning show prior to then, if you can call two first-time hosts that. The station had a very alternative image, long before that term existed for a format. Many in the audience hated that we talked so much and everyone thought we were brought in to compete with and copy KLOS's Mark & Brian show. They were just at the beginning of their meteoric rise to #1 and we were two 30ish white guys just like them. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were bombarded with hate mail and calls for almost two years. Fast-forward ten years though and Mark & Brian are off the radar for anyone under 40 and we have, just by virtue of staying on KROQ all this time, been accepted by young people as a good fit for the station. has done it. So we bring up the most bizarre thing we can possibly think of and the phones just light up. "O.K. we're looking for people who have stuck utensils in their pee-holes," and BOOM! There are a bunch of people who have done that to tell us their stories...

How do you prepare for an average show? Do you have a conference call? Do you map out every segment?

K: Hey, slow down Larry King... one question at a time. We have a daily sheet that has every break of the day on it, and we fill it out completely the day before. We used to have a conference call every day at 12:30 pm so that we had time to go the batting cages and take some hitting practice and do some shots before we got back to the grind. We'd quite often gamble on each other and then end up drunk in a pool of our own sick. So we canceled the conference call because it was getting in the way of our drinking.

B: Yes, we map out the whole show in a very general way. We are free to throw it all out if something comes up but it's nice to know when the song runs out at 8:10 that we have an idea to work with if we need it.

Lisa May is more than just a traffic reporter for your show. Talk about her for a minute.

K: I prefer not to time my response, but I will say that she is a very big part of our success. Without her point of view, which is almost always wrong, we would sound like nothing more than a boys club. She's really quite good. Wrong, but good.

B: We are the luckiest hosts in the world to have had her on the air with us for ten years. It seems like traffic service people usually move on after a short time. Every time that she takes a vacation we are reminded how great she is because we have never had a replacement sit in that made us happy. Obviously, getting a female perspective is important but she is also a very smart and funny woman and a great audience for, and contributing to, our nonsense.

Which would you rather have: marketing for your show or a raise?

B: And marketing is when you don't make your audience find you by chance? Hmm, that sounds interesting. Tell me more.

K: That question is completely bogus. It sounds like it came from our general manager. There are stations that pay their morning shows AND market them. It's pretty depressing to see television commercials and billboards for all of our competitors and know that our station is not behind us like that. I'm sorry. I need a cry break.