“It’s a cold, rainy Monday in Burbank, the kind of day Tami Heide loves. Crazy, right? She’s crazy in a good way, the type of person you can hang out with and have fun, you know?
She gets paid to go to KROQ every day and sit around playing songs from her favorite bands like Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and Garbage for three hours. Whoa, dream job! “Part of the reason for being a deejay is that it beats a real job. I love what I do, and get paid for it. I get to be a teenager forever.”
She looks like she’s probably just a teensy bit past her teenage years, but she still has teen whims, like picking a different favorite band and a different favorite color every week! On this day, she’s wearing a red turtleneck, but her favorite color is green. Go figure.
Tami took us to KROQ’s “jock room,” where the deejays eat and hang out. Throughout the office, wacky pictures of the disc jockeys are plastered on the wall, as well as posters from movies like “Kids” and “The Crying Game,” and bands such as Live and Nirvana, and old KROQ stickers. It was cool.
Turn on the coolness meter
Tami gets paid to be cool. She makes it sound easy, but there is pressure at the “world-famous” KROQ to be funny, hip and well-informed. “I drive to work and think about what I’m going to say. Then when I get to work, I forget about everything that I was going to say. For some reason, this place [the station] is a brain sucker.”
And when she’s working, the phones ring constantly. “Did I win? Can I get a shirt?”
“People are pretty much hammering at the phone. We have six lines that ring constantly, especially when we’re giving out tickets,” said Tami.
In addition to her regular weekday shift, she also does a daily recording of the latest music news, and does for the voiceovers for MTV’s “Singled Out” (for those of you who have cable.)
She also interviews musicians who come into the studio, such as the wacky Seattle and Presidents of the United States of America.
“”They were really funny, and it was really easy. [We were] just goofing around. It didn’t feel like it was an interview,” Tami recalled. “Most of the people that I’ve interviewed, I knew before they became famous, so it’s like ‘shooting the s—t,” Tami said.
However, Tami does admit that when she had the opportunity to meet one of her favorite bands, Sonic Youth, last year, she found it harder to be casual. However, she has found that trying not to be impressed by the artist helps her keep things in prospective.
“Part of the job is approaching it as a research program. I try to be informed, and take a journalistic approach,” Tami said.
She loved the Smashing Pumpkins breakfast
When asked what her highlight of KROQ was, Tami replied, “It was definitely the Smashing Pumpkins Breakfast with Kevin & Bean. Billy Corgan (the lead singer) was really honest and funny. It was the kind of special thing you hope radio would be. It reminded me of why I chose to do radio. It brought tears to my eyes.”
But, not all interviews turn out as professional or as fun as she would like. One of her worst interviews came from Scott Weiland, the lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots, who arrived at the studio too drunk to be able to complete a sentence.
“He’s been on since [to present KROQ with the band’s new single “Big Bang Baby”], but completely sober so it all worked out,” Tami said.
So far, so good
Things have always seemed to “work out” for Tami. After high school, Tami attended Emerson College in Boston, where she studied Speech Communications, in the hopes of getting her dream job.
“I always wanted to be a go-go dancer or a game show hostess… there were no female game show hosts,” Tami explained.
While at Emerson, Tami worked at the college’s radio station, as well as the radio station for MIT. Eventually, she became an intern for the morning show at Boston’s local alternative station (coincidentally, one of KROQ’s sister stations), where she eventually became a disc jockey.
“I’m a big believer in the intern program,” said Tami. “”It gave me a taste of commercial radio. It gave me hands-on experience.”
While working in Boston, Tami began to visit Los Angeles frequently, looking into KROQ in the process. She expressed her interest in moving out to California with her superiors in Boston, who offered to give her a job at KOME, an alternative station in San Jose. She declined, holding out for a job in Los Angeles, and eventually transferred to KROQ in July of 1991.
Though she was first assigned to the evening shift, Tami was later pushed up to the midday shift, where she now reigns. The guys (Kevin and Bean and Jed the Fish) still have the juicy rush-hour time slots, which have a lot more listeners.
Not just a “”female deejay””
Tami said she gets tired of being known as a “token female” on KROQ, as if the only reason she’s there is because she’s a woman. In fact, she almost declined this interview because she wants to be known as a deejay, not a “female deejay.” (We talked her into it, though.)
Although she believes that women have made a lot of progress in radio, she said it’s still somewhat of a boys’ club. “Women are not in the upper level. They still have a ways to go in the power jobs.””
Facts on Tami
About mistakes: “I kill myself every time I make a mistake, but the beauty of radio is that you keep moving forward like a shark.”
Fave meal: “Traditional turkey dinner.”
Fave holiday: “Damn, I love them all.”
Cool stuff at KROQ: “Every April 1st, we turn into a different radio station.
What does Tami say to people who think she has an attitude? “They’re not on the same wavelength. No offense meant. They’re just not used to my sarcasm.””