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KRXO's New Classics

Author: Andrew W. Griffin
Issue: 2008 August

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While it’s a tough pill for some to swallow, Roberts’ attitude of acceptance is beginning to catch on with his listeners, since KRXO plays a lot of music that bills itself as “classic rock.”

But back to 1988.

That year, Roberts says, featured some of the decade’s best albums. He shares that his top five desert island discs from 1988 include the following: the debut album from super group The Traveling Wilburys; the aforementioned Appetite for Destruction; Van Halen’s OU812; Steve Winwood’s Roll With It; and Scenes From the Southside by Bruce Hornsby & The Range. Looking back on the charts from that year in his KRXO office, Roberts also notes some hits from Robert Plant’s Now and Zen album.

“Man, I’d listen to Now and Zen today. What a great album,” he confides. He then notes that Van Halen was actually pretty good with replacement singer Sammy Hagar.

“For what Van Halen was doing at the time, it was pretty good,” he says. “I like ‘Van Hagar’.” He further notes that while David Lee Roth preferred to clown around and tick off Eddie Van Halen at the drop of a hat, Hagar had the chops and performing capabilities that defined that era of the band.

Roberts also reminisces about the good movies out that year, including Rain Man, partially filmed in Central Oklahoma, and the baseball classic Bull Durham.

Over the course of the conversation with Roberts, his emphasis eventually goes back to the music—classic rock music that this connoisseur has embraced most of his life; music from Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones and beyond.

And as Roberts reflects, he notes that 1988, with its heat, music, movies, politics and sports, was a year that won’t be forgotten anytime soon. “That was such a great year,” Roberts said. “It really was.”

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