KFOG's M. Dung Has His Shift Together

HALFTIME at the Bay Area Music Awards - the Bammies - and "M. Dung," the KFOG DJ, is in the remote studios backstage, on the air with Huey Lewis, when blues legend John Lee Hooker and country star Buck Owens show up. "I don't know if these guys know," Lewis says, glancing at Hooker and Owens, "but M. is the hottest DJ in San Francisco." Lewis turns to Dung and adds: "I'm a huge fan, I have to confess. I love your stuff. I'm not bull- - - - - - - -. I dig it."

What Lewis digs is "The Sunday Night Idiot Show," a four-hour display of unbridled passion for rock and roll. Dung, 31, spins, screams and sputters his way through a pile of pop, rock and r & b sides, from the Clovers ("Lovey Dovey") to the Royal Guardsmen ("Snoopy vs. the Red Baron"). "Dung Boy" plays requests for fellow "idiots" who know the passwords: "O-Day!" "Yow!" "B-DAH!" "Fun time tonight!" And never farewell, but "A-WAY!" In a time when DJs are largely faceless, saying and playing what management dictates, Dung stands out. KFOG program director Pat Evans says that market research shows Dung to be "the rock-radio star personality" in the Bay. "In "unaided research,' when people are asked about favorite personalities, very few names come to mind," she said. "Dung is the most popular." In addition, she said, latest audience ratings show Dung trailing only KGO on Sunday nights among listeners 18 and over. Among just male listeners, idiocy rules.

Now, Dung is being put to a major test. KFOG, failing to boost ratings when it hired comedian Marty Cohen as morning DJ, has tapped Dung for that pivotal time slot. Besides an extensive billboard campaign, KFOG is hyping Dung by sending him (with sports director Mike Shumann and news commentator Scoop Nisker) to London, where they'll broadcast this week from Sticky Fingers, a nightclub owned by Stones bassist Bill Wyman. DUNG has been in London before, in 1986, during his first time out as KFOG's morning DJ. That 1984-87 stint ended when Dung, as he puts it, "burned out."

Over lunch, Dung looked and sounded much like the uncertain young man who came here from Grand Rapids, Mich., in early 1983 to work at KFOG. The station had just switched from easy listening to rock, and Dung, who'd worked with the new program director in Michigan, was a production engineer.

Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans - a step up from his usual rock T -shirt - he is a mix of innocence and ingenuousness, freely telling his salary (under six figures and well below the median for established morning DJs) and recalling his awe of John Fogerty when they met in 1984. It was his ineptitude on the air as a college DJ, said Dung, that gave birth to his various nonsensical sayings. "I always screwed up," he recalled, "so to cover my slips, I made noises, 'cause you can't swear o n radio. And it became my style - because I was so bad." He issued a short, ironic laugh. Dung - his real first name is Mike, and he declines to reveal his last name - was born and raised in Detroit and attended Grand Valley State College in Grand Rapids, where he studied theater until a roommate, a DJ at the campus station, took him to the studios. "That was it," said Dung, a lifelong rock and radio fan. He was an immediate outcast, playing rock and roll on a jazz station.

He was shunted off to all-night and early morning weekend shifts, and it was that treatment that inspired his radio name. "Just to bug" the student general manager, he said, "I was looking for a name that was offensive, but that I could say on the air." He found "dung" in the dictionary and adopted it. By the following year, the general manager was gone and Dung was program director. "T hat's the nice thing about college radio," he said. "The a- - - - - -s graduated and went away."

When the station lost its overnight DJ, Dung added that shift to his workload, which by that time included an evening shift on a commercial station. After a few weeks, "I got sick of it and decided to get crazed and have some fun. That's how my show was born." In college, he said, he was much wilder than he is today. "I yelled a lot more; I was more abrasive. People would call me up and I'd call them stupid and stuff. They'd request a song and I'd laugh at them." He attracted "mostly bikers, derelicts and misfits." At one point, Dung worked at a community station that monitored him closely. Fed up, Dung quit after throwing up on the air.

Arriving at KFOG in 1983, Dung got the Sunday night slot, where he did much the same show he does today. Within a year, he was given the morning show. He was 26 and he wasn't ready. KFOG, having chosen Dung for his high energy, toned him down, stripping him even of his name on weekdays. Dung became "M." "They were afraid 'Dung' would offend the Bank of America, the big guys," said Dung. "It was a schizoid thing. T hey didn't know what they wanted, and how the hell was I to know?" Still, he did well. "I seem to be able to talk to people as opposed to talking at them," he said. "I think people pick up on that."

Pat Evans, who at the time was program director for KOME in San Jose, remembers Dung being aped by her own DJs, by people at nightclubs, and even by a telephone operator. "I asked for a number, and after he gave it to me, he said, "Oh-day; a-WAY!' "

But Dung didn't enjoy being a living cartoon. Already shy socially, Dung found himself scaring women away or attracting them on the basis of his celebrity. It wasn't that he was an object, he said. "I was a person, but the wrong person. Nobody wanted to know who I was; they just wanted me to say these Dung things to them. So I would stay home."

At work, Dung felt pressured by KFOG's ups and downs in the radio wars. As the morning DJ, he said, "Everything's riding on you. T he whole scenario is so stressful. I just wasn't prepared to deal with it, so I got into things I shouldn't have gotten into." He mentioned "a bit of a drug problem," but quickly added, "It had to end, so it ended." He asked to get off the morning show in late 1987 and moved to evenings. Last year, he switched to afternoons. Even away from the morning spotlight, he was the station's most popular DJ, representing KFOG at such events as the fund-raising "Louie Louie" parade. Dung's personal life settled considerably when he married Jamie Perrignon, a cocktail waitress, last July (to the strains, on the church organ, of "Louie Louie"). When Evans, after arriving at KFOG, asked him to return to mornings, Dung was ready. "Now that I'm not being freaked out or paranoid, I come home to my wife; we hang out; go for walks on the beach with our dog. It's nice."

AS for work - which now includes the job of music director at KFOG - "I have a lot more confidence . . . Before, I was this "rising star' or whatever. Now, people know who I am." And management isn't trying to tame him. "Pat Evans has said, "We want you to be Dung; go for it.' " (Dung continues to host the "Idiot" show Sundays 6 to 10 p.m. However, the last two hours are taped, to allow him to be relatively sane for his 6-10 a.m. shift Mondays.) Dung knows that KFOG has a formidable rival in KRQR, whose morning DJ, Lobster, leads him in the ratings. "Yeah, he does," Dung said, seemingly gaining confidence by the minute. "For now."