This year, WRDU flipped and so did Bob the Blade

It was the year's most grandly defiant gesture, like something out of an '80s drive-in movie or a cheesy rock video of the era. But we're talking Bob the Blade here. Bob the Blade believes in rock 'n' roll, that "Stairway to Heaven" is the greatest song of all time and "Baba O'Riley" comes next. And when the longtime WRDU disc jockey stood up to The Man, he stood up for true believers everywhere.

It happened Nov. 28, seven weeks after WRDU switched formats from rock to country. About 6:45 p.m., near the end of his seventh shift after returning to the airwaves, Bob "The Blade" Robinson announced to his new country audience that he was resigning. He put on The Who's "The Song is Over," walked down the hall to the elevator, went to his car and bolted.

To look at Robinson, a sandy-haired 47-year-old who resembles the late comedian Phil Hartman, you might not expect that kind of rebellion. But when he talks, furrowing his brow and leaning into his table at Sammy's Tap & Grill in Raleigh, you hear passion, an urgency that makes it sound as if he's on the air right this minute.

"Big companies took over in the mid-'90s, and they're all research-driven," he says, growing more and more agitated. "Research is just all wrong. All [expletive] wrong."

Robinson came of age before focus groups, when stations just played whatever sounded cool. An Air Force brat, he lived all over the world until he was 13 and his father retired in Fayetteville. WQDR, the Triangle's monolith of rock radio, was his home station.

After attending UNC-Wilmington and learning his craft at student station WLOZ, Robinson moved to Raleigh in 1983 and worked part time at WQDR. The next year, the station played "The Song Is Over" one day and switched to country.

Robinson was among the WQDR rockers who signed on to launch a new station for Voyager Communications. WRDU, 106.1 FM, hit the airwaves in 1984 with the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up." The station built its identity with Steve Reynolds and Kevin Silva in the morning, Kitty Kinnin's "jazz brunch" on Sunday and Robinson in various slots, eventually settling in as "The Blade" by night.

Minus a yearlong dalliance in California in the late '80s, Robinson stayed at WRDU through several corporate sales. He stuck it out when Clear Channel Communications, the current owner, flipped the format from mainstream to classic rock in 2000, a decision he hated. But this year's switch from crunch to twang was too much.

Robinson says he made his dramatic exit for Silva and Kinnin and program director Tom Guild, the old-school pool that had been drained to just him. He did it as the proper sendoff the old format never got and chose The Who song as a tribute to WQDR.

His former bosses weren't pleased with the way he left.

"I wish he'd handled it differently," says Dick Harlow, Clear Channel's regional vice president. "But he gave this radio station 20-some years of great service. We wish him the best at whatever he chooses to do."

That would be an afternoon gig at WSFL-FM, a classic rock station in Greenville-New Bern, owned by Florida-based Beasley Broadcast Group. He starts in January.

It's hard to think about leaving Raleigh.

"Man, I just miss RDU so bad, dude," he says softly, sadly. "So bad."