Randy Raley has a new home — and weekly show — at KKFI

Technically, Randy Raley is a classic-rock DJ, even if he’s not entirely sure what makes a rock song classic. But why ponder the semantics? Whatever people want to call his brand-new radio show on KKFI 90.1 is fine with him. The point of The Time Machine is to deliver a good time from 6 to 8 a.m. every Thursday.

The show, which kicked off March 19, is a return to the booth for a broadcast veteran. Raley started in radio in 1971, when he was the midday announcer at Quad Cities station WXLP. He did time at KYYS in Kansas City and at a couple of stations in St. Louis before ending up at the helm of KCFX’s morning show here. He left that classic-rock gig to take a sales job in 2004.

Why is Raley back on the air? I called him to ask.

The Pitch: What sets Time Machine apart from the classic-rock programming we’re used to on commercial radio?

Raley: I’m not limiting myself to playing what’s strictly considered classic rock. The songs I did last week, for example, were all from 1967. The charts then had Frank Sinatra and all this Motown stuff. I played music from Marvin Gaye and the Supremes and Sinatra. I played songs that were popular in the spring of 1967, plus clips from some old TV commercials and some old TV-show theme songs. It’s sort of a tour de force of things that were happening back at that particular time.

This week will be the spring of 1978. I’m not sticking to one particular genre or time period. I’m just moving it around and playing the songs that were popular on the radio at that particular time of year. Whatever was on the chart at that time, in the year I choose, that’s what the show is about.

The definition of “classic” just keeps growing as the years go by. How has your job changed over the years?

Yeah, it’s funny. The new songs that I was playing on the air, back from 1979 to 1985, are now classic rock. I was kind of one of those guys who got caught between, like, “What is rock and what is classic rock,” and I guess you would call my time at KCFX classic rock because that’s kind of what they do. But at the same time, I was kind of one of those guys that was like, “Wait a minute, I played all those songs when they were new!” It’s kind of strange.

To give you an idea of how that works, the songs that I listened to when I was a kid, they were called “oldies” for the longest time, and now those songs aren’t even being played on the radio at all, none of them. The thing about the show that I do is that 90 percent of the music that I play, you won’t hear it on the other radio stations in town because they’ve got the set playlist they have. Like, 1967 wasn’t just the Beatles and the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, you know? There was a lot of stuff going on, and that’s what I try to keep in mind. I try to increase the boundaries a little bit.

The circle-of-life thing — the old is now the new — must seem redundant to you.

The thing about it is, people talk about the music being so much better way back when or whatever, but honestly, we had our share of crap, too. Radio does what radio does for a reason. They have piles of research and consultants. But I can tell you that I never want to hear “Sweet Home Alabama” or “Dream On” by Aerosmith ever again, and that’s what this show is about. Led Zeppelin — my God, you hear the same 10 songs being played, but hell, they had 10 albums. My generation didn’t stop at one song on the album. We listened to the whole thing. There’s a lot of good stuff that’s played on Top 40 radio, but we want to do something different. There are a lot of great songs that people heard and then they forgot about, and when I play those and people remember them, it’s like an “oh, wow” factor.

You’ve got kind of an impressive radio résumé. What attracted you to KKFI and community radio?

Here’s the thing: I’ve been doing the job for 32 years. For 32 years, I always had to follow somebody else’s playlist. And that’s fine, that’s someone’s job, and you had a pretty wicked playlist, but really, you couldn’t mess with it much. Now I get to go in and do it for fun. That’s the agreement with Barry [Lee, station manager] that I have. If it’s fun, I’ll be there every morning at 5. That’s the agreement, and Barry’s been very supportive of it. It’s really fun. I’m not getting paid anything to do it, and that’s OK. It’s just a fun opportunity to go in and do what I do.

I went to college to learn how to be a DJ, and I had a great run at it. I was on the radio for 32 years without much of a hitch either way, but then the really cool radio jobs started to go away. I really haven’t done a regular show in a long time. So when they said, “Hey, man, just come in and play what you want,” I thought, Well, why not? It’s a pretty great slot — a lot of people listening between 6 and 8 in the morning — and if I can keep that and still do something on local radio, I’m happy.