It did for quite a stretch. After two years at KWBZ and a stint at another small station, KRZN, he hooked up with KHOW, which was then mainly a music station. In 1987, KIMN lured Boog away. Little did he know that the station was in dire financial trouble. In April 1988, after nine months on the job, Boog joined his fellow yakkers at a meeting with KIMN general manager Wayne Phillips. As he remembers it, "Phillips said, 'I'm sick and tired of all these rumors that KIMN is going country. Well, I'm here to tell you, it's true!'" The station returned as KYGO-AM (it's now the Fan), leaving no room for Boog.
After a spotty attempt to revive his mobile-DJ enterprise and brief stints at Jones Satellite Network, where he programmed oldies for a whopping $50 per week in 1990 and 1993, Boog fell off the radio-biz radar. He spent three years without a steady job, and if it hadn't been for the largesse of a friend, who let him stay in an extra bedroom, he might have ended up on the street.
Mark Manger
Da Boogieman stays upbeat.
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Finally, a colleague at Jones Satellite suggested that he consider working at RTD. After passing the driving test, he was handed a thirty-hour-per-week split shift at $8.40 an hour.
Over the course of his seven years behind the wheel, "I saw some really weird stuff," Boog says -- especially when he was assigned the notorious 15 route along Colfax. On a memorable Sunday night, "this small Mexican person and a tall American Indian, both drunk to the gills, got on, and before long, the big guy was on top of the little guy, giving him the beating of his life. I pulled over, opened the doors, grabbed the American Indian by the hair and said, 'Take your shit outside or I'll call a cop!' The big Indian got up, grabbed his buddy by the scruff of the neck, took him to the sidewalk and started beating on him some more. I shut the doors and drove off."
Of course, Boog was more than capable of creating his own mayhem. "I was driving the Broadway bus, and I picked up an old friend of mine, Bob Fedde, who's blind, with the cane and everything. After he got in, I put him in the driver's seat and said, 'Okay, Bob, it's a straight shot to Littleton Boulevard' -- and all the other passengers dove out of the bus!" After a booming guffaw, he adds, proudly, "I got written up for that one!"
Months later, Boog injured his back when he hit a massive pothole, ending his driving career. He subsequently became manager at Market Street Station, where he oversaw the pavement-level version of air-traffic control for 155 buses. After three years at a desk, he spied a bus placard advertising KLZ; although the station was owned by Crawford Broadcasting, which specialized in Christian radio, it had recently inaugurated a secular "legends" format. On a whim, Boog called the signal's overseer, Don Crawford Jr., who put him in charge of a weekend programming block. When ratings climbed, he was given more time on an underpowered sister station, KLVZ-AM/1220, and after its audience grew, too, he moved back to KLZ as a full-timer.
Unfortunately, Boog never quite fit in at Crawford. "I'm not really a religious person," he says. "I'm more spiritual, so I wasn't really a big fan of their philosophy. They'd want everyone to pray before meetings, and if you'd ask, 'How are you?' they'd go, 'I'm blessed.'" After one outburst of profanities, a preacher helming a gospel show in an adjacent studio said, "I'd appreciate it if you would keep your blaspheming down. I can't hear to talk to my flock." Boog thinks his bosses were looking for an excuse to get rid of him, and 9/11 provided it. "After the Trade Centers blew up, Don went, 'Boog, I don't want you on the air. Your show is too up, too fun,'" he says. "Two weeks after that, I was gone."
Unlike his previous dismissal, this one worked to his advantage. Within a month, Steve Keeney, who was then KOOL's general manager, asked him to fill in for the ailing Jay Mack. When Mack died in early 2002, Boog for the first time found himself on staff at an FM station. Keeney was disappeared in late 2003 because of flagging ratings, but his replacement, Keith Abrams, stuck with Boog and is glad he did. "This is an environment where we encourage our guys to do personality as opposed to just reading liners," he says. "That allows people like Boog to let their personality shine through. When the mike is off, he doesn't become a different guy. It's genuine Boogie, 24-7."
Granted, Boog doesn't have the freedom to choose his own songs, as he did back in the day, and he must check requests to make sure they're on the approved list of tunes that rated well in listener surveys. This policy shrinks playlists and limits the number of tunes by even classic artists, but Abrams says doing so is necessary in today's radio universe. "It's really not a sadistic plan to force-feed people the same records over and over," he says. "It's a function of this being a mass-appeal business. These are the songs the majority of people tell us they want to hear."
