April Fool's

Ahh, nothing says April Fool's like a cheesy radio stunt. Back when I ran WNUR in college (yeah, I know, another college radio story -- Mike, it's been almost ten years! Move on!), we freaked our listeners out on April Fool's by yanking our regular programming (you know, the usual college fare-- indie rock bands that you've never heard of) and pretended to flip the station's format to mainstream alternative.

We called ourselves "Q89.3" -- a dig at Chicago's big time commercial alternative station, Q101 -- and played nothing but Pearl Jam for an hour (another dig at Q101, which was so obsessed with the band it actually had adopted as its slogan "This Is Not For You," the name of a Pearl Jam song).

A friend and fellow DJ, Maura, pretended to be the hyperactive British DJ -- a staple of alternative stations back then -- while I played the clueless DJ who thought everything was ooh, soooo alternative while rattling off obvious trivia ("Did you know that Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of Nirvana?!").

Some listeners called in and freaked out, wondering what happpened. Others were wise to the parody and played along: "Hey, you know that Red Hot Chili Peppers song you just played? Could you play it again in about 40 minutes?"

It was a proud moment. Illinois Entertainer magazine called our prank the best of the year.

Back here in L.A., some of the most elaborate April Fool's hoaxes have been perpetrated by KROQ's Kevin & Bean. One year, the guys pretended to broadcast live from the opening of the "Mall of America West" -- giving vague directions to the site; hundreds of people still drove there, trying to find the fictional mall. Another year, the duo convincingly staged a fight between Kevin and Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke -- it wasn't until later the duo revealed that Yorke was played by an actor.

This year, the Kevin & Bean gag took advantage of the current anti-indecency battle being waged in Washington. The duo laid the groundwork yesterday, grousing during their show about an "important meeting" called, they said, to discuss station management's displeasure with their show's content. Today, Kevin & Bean were mysteriously absent from air, replaced by nighttime jock Stryker.

Also, all mention of Kevin & Bean have been completely scrubbed off the KROQ website. For a split second, even I was snookered this morning. I began to think about how I'd cover Kevin & Bean's suspension for Variety -- until I remembered. It's April 1.