Insert Foot rejoices at the return of Live 105 to the Bay Area radio waves.

Dave is dead. Thank God.

Dave FM was a dick. Dave had no respect for my ears. Dave told bad jokes he didn’t know were bad, and that’s coming from a dad who still believes he made up dad jokes (I did).

Boring Dave didn’t last two whole years.

In case you’re in the Bay Area and haven’t heard, KITS-105.3 is no longer Dave random radio. In a rare corporate backslide, station owner Audacy shelved its coma-inducing format and brought back legendary Bay Area alternative station Live 105.

It’s reportedly bringing back many of the former employees, including former program director and on-air personality Aaron Axelsen; at least part time. Which is good news.

I admit to having a couple complaints about Live 105 back when I was occasionally a guest on the air and therefore thought my opinion mattered. The station was technically The New Alt-105 its last four years, for some reason.

But nothing close to my pain-inducing gripes with its successor.

Sometimes, because my 21-year-old daughter was in the car and I’d panic to find a radio station to trick her into believing I’m not older than Egypt, I would absent-mindedly hit my 105.3 preset.

And then, because I was on the freeway and didn’t want to kill us in a horrible exploding vehicle crash, would leave Dave on for a few minutes.

Dave was embarrassing. And not in a good/funny/ironic wearing-a-gorilla-suit-when-picking-your-16-year-old-from-school kind of way. It was the worst kind of embarrassment; the “you-really-listen-to-this?” kind of raw humiliation.

Not anymore.

Live 105 succeeded wildly when it was introduced in the 1980s because it truly was alternative rock. It played – and introduced people to – new wave, punk, dance, eletronica, techno, rock … much of which we weren’t hearing elsewhere.

I’d just turned 19 when Live 105 hit the airwaves in 1986, at a time when radio was WAY more important than it is now.

Radio and MTV were conduits to what someone was decided we should, and could, hear – outside of word-of-mouth or going to an independent record store and taking a chance on an artist because a record looked intriguing (someday we’ll go into the importance of spaceships on album covers during the 20th century).

Live 105 changed my taste (along with MTV and my brain doing the natural growing thing that happens around then). It was important to kids, especially during the 1980s, when the pop cultural norms were lacking a certain artistry, compared to other periods.

Now, since Live 105 returned last week, I’m hearing a lot of the same old not-so-new music as it played before. But at least it’s good old music, instead of a lot of boring old music. Let’s give them some space to work more new stuff back into the rotation.

Dave lied when saying, over and over, it was “totally random radio,” then gave us the same cavity-inducing ’80s Journey, Def Leppard and Madonna hits at the exact same time every weekday.

Random, my ass. I don’t dislike those three artists – and who doesn’t need to hear Bryan Adams “Summer of ‘69 at least seven times per day)? But we’ve heard more than enough of their hits.

The best thing about radio and MTV in the good old days (they only seemed that way) was that it felt random. It wasn’t, but unless we were rewinding and fast-forwarding cassette tapes and trying to get the needle on an LP, we didn’t necessarily know better.

Dave’s name wasn’t even original. No offense to my hundreds of thousands of friends and relatives named Dave. It’s a nice name; It’s even sort of my middle name (David). But it’s not an earth-changing, spontaneous, makes-you-want-get-out-and-light-your-drums-on-fire-live-life-to-the-fullest handle. It’s boring. Which was fitting.

Dave was safe. Which means Dave was not rock and roll.

Stay dead, Dave.

Live 105 has been given a second chance, at least to us ancients who still bother with radio. Let’s try living long enough to see what they do with it.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.