Richard Blade is a DJ best know for his work at KROQ in Los Angeles during the peak of the 80’s New Wave music movement.  I first heard him on the podcast Never Not Funny.  Richard was charming, brimming with stories about my favorite bands, and clearly shilling his autobiography “World In My Eyes”.  By the end of the episode I was committed to buying the book.

Born Richard Sheppard in coastal England, he took to swimming and music.  While studying to become a teacher he started doing DJ work at dances.  Eventually this led to a decision to travel around Europe DJ’ing at different night clubs.  [The traveling DJ was apparently a thing in those days].  His goal was always to get on the radio, but it was a hard scene to break into in Britain.  Eventually he decided to go for broke and moved to Los Angeles.  There he tried to get on with any of the big radio stations.  The people who would talk to him said he needed to move to a smaller market and work his way up.  Eventually Richard scrounged up some DJ gigs and was making a living.  But radio was always his goal so eventually he took a significant pay cut to move out to Bakersfield to get on the radio.  He built a following but also helped promote the station.  Eventually this led to a small LA station, then to the big leagues at KROQ.  Along the way he started promoting what became to be known as New Wave music, and started developing relationships with the early bands.  This led to a lot of interactions with them and good stories retold in the book.

During the podcast Richard talked a lot about my favorite band, Depeche Mode, to the point it became a joke.  So I was really looking forward to some DM stories in the book.  As a warning to other-minded individuals, you will have to wait until page 201 for that itch to be scratched.  So pace yourself.

Richard said that in the audio version of the book, he was able to get the actual musicians to speak their stories.  John Taylor for Duran Duran, Andrew Ridgeley for Wham, etc.  This intrigued me, but I am still a fan of physical books here in the waining decades of western civilization.  If you swing towards disposable - I mean digital - media, then you might enjoy this aspect of the audio book version.

I enjoyed reading “World in my Eyes”.  Since I wasn’t familiar with the man ahead of time, my interest was more in the music history aspect of the book, but it is an autobiography. You may also find yourself realizing you haven’t lived your life to its fullest.  Or maybe you will make a switch to pursue your dreams.