January 14, 2021 - Matt "Money" Smith

The Late Night Happy Hour with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky

Few people in LA radio have had a career as long or as diverse as Matt "Money" Smith, starting with his days at KROQ and now at AM 570. He's been a Lakers pre- and postgame voice, the voice of the Chargers and more.

He joins the Happy Hour for what became a great discussion of the evolution of radio, whether around sports or music.

We start with old tales of fun feuds with Joel Meyers, former Lakers broadcaster, now with the New Orleans Pelicans, and that morphs into a discussion of guys like Chris "Mad Dog" Russo and old school sports radio locals like Lee Hamilton. When did radio go from the omniscient oracle sports voice to a show like "Petros and Money," where guys have the freedom to just kinda do what they want? Where sports isn't necessarily the focus? Why did it move in that direction?

(For anyone out there who loves Lakers great/broadcaster Mychal Thompson, you'll appreciate some of these stories as well...)

From there, it's a long discussion about music, and radio's influence over what became popular in the 90s and early 2000's. It was the last era of radio truly driving tastes in rock. What was it like to be in the center of it, working at KROQ? What made that station such an influencer of music culture during that time? When did radio stations lose that ability to influence?

It leads to an interesting segue - What's the difference between music that's cool, and music that's popular?

Finally... Prince. Who was both.