By Karen Glauber

In the mid-’80s, there was no bigger TV show than Dallas. Every magazine ran a cover story with the question for the ages, “Who Shot J.R?” After the eighth season, Patrick Duffy, who played J.R.’s younger brother Bobby, opted to leave the show for greener pastures (a template for David Caruso a few years later). Both the show and Patrick Duffy’s career suffered, but his character had been killed in a car crash, and resurrections were not an easy sell in prime time. Cue to the final scene in the season finale: His wife Pam wakes up and hears the shower running. She opens the shower door and VOILÁ, there’s her husband, smiling. Turns out, the entire season was a dream. This time, the proverbial shower door opened and there is Kevin Weatherly back at the helm at KROQ, as though the past two years have been a pandemic fever dream.

On Tuesday, I was the recipient of the greatest call there is—the call from Kevin and Miles, letting me know I had gotten an add on The 1975’s “Part of the Band.” It occurred to me this week that I’ve been doing Alternative-radio promotion for 40 years (!!!), starting as an intern at I.R.S. Records and then as a college rep at A&M. It’s the highest of highs and lowest of lows. This was an especially good week, with #1 Most Added on The 1975’s first outing on their own label, but there are plenty of weeks where Ted Volk and I are inconsolable, and I end the day in a fetal position, wondering if it’s too late to go to law school. Ted calls it a “vision quest,” whether it’s The 1975, The Lumineers, Girlfriends—whose “High Again” continues to perform like a smash for Andy Hawk at KKDO—or the priorities of our peers, which we support, however we are needed. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I couldn’t be happier that Kate Bush is about to have a Top 5 song at Alternative radio. The first time I heard “Running Up That Hill” was on an import that I bought from Pier Platters in Hoboken the week it was released. Of course, WLIR was playing it, as well as WHTG. For me, Kate’s performance on SNL in 1978 was the first time I’d heard of her, and I’ve been a huge fan since The Kick Inside. During one of my rare weekends with my father in the late ’70s, he tossed my copy of Lionheart into the incinerator in his building because I’d been playing “Wow” on repeat for an hour. Being a Kate fan during that era was also not for the faint of heart.

There are some truly Alternative songs that will NEVER burn, no matter how popular they become; classics, if you will: “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers, “Electric Feel” by MGMT, “First” by Cold War Kids, “Feel It Still” by Portugal the Man—and now Kate Bush, the artist who influenced so many others, is owning the world. I’m confused by those who have decided to play the Meg Myers cover of “Running Up That Hill,” instead of the original, but you do you.

A new Weezer song, “Records,” will be out on Monday (7/18). It will go to #1. AJR (now on Mercury) will soon release their genius new song, “I Won’t.” Yes, Ted and I are still involved with AJR (he as the unofficial fourth member). In fact, I just held my kid’s bar mitzvah (photo above) before the band’s show in Irvine—we did the ceremony onstage before doors, Jack played “Dear Winter” and then the kids played dodge ball with the band. L’chaim!

Nick Petropoulos is moments away from another #1 Måneskin hit with “Supermodel.” The band is playing a special show for SiriusXM in a few weeks, and I suggested that Nick recreate the famous Nirvana show at Roseland when Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and the other “supes” were in attendance.

Awesome new music from The Killers will be out on 8/5 (my birthday), and Michael Starr has set an impact date for the genius Two Door Cinema Club single “Wonderful Life” on 8/ 9, by which time Phoenix’s “Alpha Zulu” will be entrenched in the Top 10.

FAVORITE SONG: Spoon’s “My Babe.”