Jed Gould, an influential Los Angeles disc jockey known as Jed the Fish, used off-kilter's sensibilities and deep musical knowledge to shed light on artists like Cure, Depeche Mode and Alternative Block Station KROQ-FM, who died in the 1980s and 1980s and 1990s, in the 1980s and 1990s.
The cause was an aggressive form of small cell lung cancer, said his best friend Rudy Koaner. Gould was by no means a cigarette smoker, he added, and before he was diagnosed last month, he thought his recent violent cough adaptation was linked to a wildfire in Los Angeles.
For decades, Gould served as a trusted music savant and drivetime friend Young Angelenos, especially Gen X. He also influenced future broadcast stars.
In a social media post after Gould's death, Jimmy Kimmel, who worked at the morning show at Crock early in his career, described him as “legend.” On his podcast, Adam Carolla, an old buddy about Kimmel's “The Man Show,” is called Adam Carolla, Gould, former host of Kroq's “Loveline.”
With his boyish energy, free music preferences and maniacal cuckles, Gould led the radio revolution at Pasadena-based Maverick Crok since the late 1970s.
When FM Rock Station was dominated by super-produced companies like Styx and foreigners, Kroq became a “Roq” style sensation.
“Jeddum Fishum” sometimes referred to himself, and his fellow Kroq Jocks brought a sense of disorder in the airwaves, cracking out snippets of audio at outdated moments along the way, with often high-ress consequences, like “Dragnet”'s Deadpan Jack Webb Lines.
Gould and his colleagues were “in the right place at the right time,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “We were leading the way, but we had no idea.”
Following the broadcast philosophy he called “a consistent contradiction,” Gould placed afternoon slots at the station. His tricks to his drawl's humor and musical surprises served as the tonic needed by a prisoner of war spectators creeping up along the curing highway for hours that felt like days.
“I imitated it for years before I learned the simplicity of being broadcast,” he wrote. “It turned out to be a strange position, but people seem to like the integrity behind it.”
That major post-lunch slot gave Mr. Gould a powerful platform to promote new acts and hot releases. “Jed continued from 2 to 6p, so soon after music conferences he often carries out a new musical honor introducing the world,” former Kroq program director Andy Shuon wrote in a tribute to LinkedIn.
In a social media post, Noodles, guitarist for Southern California punk pop band The Offspring, wrote that Jed The Fish was the first DJ to perform his 1994 breakout hit “Come Out and Play.”
As Noodle said, “in the best way,” Gould was all pleased against custom. In a recent video compliment by a former Kroq colleague, Schuon recalled listening to Jed the Fish for over an hour while driving to the office and realising that he never mentioned the station's call letter.
When Shuon pushed him with obvious surveillance, Gould replied: “Everyone knows if I'm at the station or not. Who else will hire me?”
Edwin Fish Gould III was born in Los Angeles on July 15, 1955 to Edwin Fish Gould Jr. and Joan (Hall) Gould, salesmen for valve and fitting companies. He grew up in the Orange County beach community before his family moved to Casa Grande, Ariz.
In high school, he hosted a local radio show for teenagers until he was fired after reading George Carlin's famous monologue “Seven Words You Never Say on TV.”
He graduated from high school in 1973 and enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism. After graduating from university, he worked a series of jobs for radio stations in the Los Angeles area before becoming Kroq in 1978. His application consisted of a rough punk style pink flyer featuring his photographs of him in a white leotard shaved off in a chair.
It wasn't long before he helped organize the mess in the studio. In the oral history of the station in 2001, he said that asking outsiders about the early history of Crok was like, “Tell me about Vietnam” or “Tell me about the French Revolution.” No one knows it all. ”
After all, there were a lot about Mr. Gould that his listeners didn't know about. At one point in the mid-1980s, he said in oral history that he left the Clock after being kicked out of the Betty Ford Center for stealing a car to buy medicine.
He returned, but once again he was pulled out of the air in March 1989 when he was arrested on suspicion of possessing heroin and drug paraphernalia. After more than two months at the detox center, he once again assumed his place with the microphone.
“In the old days, I would shoot a lot of dope, air it and do anything,” he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I developed a crazy style as a result of being higher, but now it comes from being me. I'm more clear and more focused.”
Mr. Gould worked at KROQ until 2012, then moved to two other local stations, KCSN-FM and KLOS-FM. In 2019 he took part in the “ROQ of the 80s” Sunday night show at KROQ's HD2 station.
He is survived by his half-brother Tony Chatterton.
Throughout his career, Gould worked hard to keep the spirit of music alive with his work behind the microphone. “When a DJ is playing music, when we expect you to dance, I think it's important for a DJ to dance,” he wrote in 2018 on a professional website.
“It's not that I'm a supple, dandy dancer,” he added. “No one should be able to incorporate golf swings into dance moves. I think anyone who works in music should move.”
