Tami Wong

DJ: Tami Wong
Station: KCR KCRLive.com, (or on digital cable, Cox 956 and Time Warner 957)
Shift: Saturday, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Heart isn't one of my top ten bands, even though I've listened to them forever. I remember in South Dakota growing up, being tiny and hearing "Barracuda." My aunt had the albums and broke them all up when she went Christian because it was "the devil's music." I would look at the Dreamboat Annie album, and I thought it looked so cool. I remember being at my dad's house in Colorado. They'd party and have the classic rock stations playing all their songs. I always thought [Ann Wilson's] voice was bitchin', and I was impressed. In the early '90s -- when they went through that "girl in the gold" video and MTV -- that was when I was in my early teens. Songs like "What About Love" [and] "Who Will You Run To?" [were] diluted versions of what they had been. But I was going through the awkward time at 12 or 13: "Where do I fit in in this world?" and "why don't boys like me?"

I read the liner notes and saw they were going through an awkward stage too. They weren't accustomed to having pressure put on them about their weight or putting their image above the music. That stage of their career paralleled my life as an early teenager. I put them down for a long time, got into Zeppelin, and took a turn for harder rock. I came back to them later, in my late teens, early 20s.

I started listening to Heart [again] when John Elway went to the Super Bowl [in 1986]. I was a Bronco fan forever, and the Colorado stations played "Magic Man." That's what they called Elway.

When I went through a divorce, the songs "Heartless" and "Even It Up" seemed relevant. I was getting angry again. During rough times, they gave me hope. You realize you're not alone. I just recently got remarried, and one of the songs I burned for the DJ to play at the wedding was Heart's "Love Alive."