Hang the DJ: Black & White, Birmingham’s City Paper:
Men at Work and Duran Duran were just starting to put a harmless face on edgier pop. Meanwhile, Coyote—fresh from California—was quietly staking out airtime on 95 Rock with a playlist worthy of any Los Angeles DJ steeped in the hippest scenes. But in 1982, not everybody was ready for Romeo Void, an unknown band called The Cure, or even a post-punk oldies act like Joy Division. “There were death threats,” Coyote recalls. “I was called a fag many times. Some of the locals considered my playing Soft Cell to be promoting the gay lifestyle.”
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This is why it took until 2001-02 for me to discover most of New Wave. Anything I did know – which was mostly late-80s stuff like Gene Loves Jezebel, Love and Rockets, later Cure and Smiths – was all because of the Coyote.