Tawn Mastrey (August 20, 1954 – October 2, 2007) was an American disc jockey, music video producer, one of rock radio's top media personalities.
[citation needed] Mastrey had hosted radio shows in California for KQLZ Pirate Radio in Los Angeles, KNAC in Long Beach, KLSX in Los Angeles, KMEL in San Francisco, and KSJO in San Jose, before appearing on KUFO in Portland, Oregon, in the late 1990s, and at KXXR in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
At KNAC, Mastrey was known as the 'Leather Nun," a nickname she was accorded by a San Francisco-area radio station program director, who thought she resembled a character from a German comic book with that name.
Mastrey was also the mid-day DJ on Hair Nation (part of the Sirius radio lineup) and although she dropped her nickname, "The Leather Nun", she maintained the same on-air persona she always had throughout her career.
Impact on hard rock, punk, new wave and heavy metal music Among the first to add new artists such as AC/DC, Cheap Trick, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Devo, The Police, Joan Jett, and countless other now legendary bands to the playlist while working as Music Director at KSJO, which shared the San Francisco Bay Area market's highest-rated album-oriented rock station status with San Jose's KOME during the late 1970s, Tawn had a profound impact on the fate of hard rock, punk, new wave and later heavy metal music at KNAC, where the subsequent Los Angeles metal band scene gave birth to artists like Ratt, Mötley Crüe, Gun's N'Roses et al. As a fairly open-minded music director and DJ at KSJO, Tawn was a deciding voice in which new artists would be played and added to the KSJO catalogue and decidedly liberal playlist which only required DJs to play "star" artists after commercial breaks.
While continuing to feature hard rock and heavy metal during the height of the Disco era, Tawn Mastrey's KSJO also championed punk and new wave artists like The Ramones, The Clash, The Police and Devo giving them rare, vital airplay while showcasing them with on-air studio appearances prior to their eventual popularity on newly formed alternative rock stations in the early 1980s.