AM Radio | The Radio Kitchen

Archive for the 'AM Radio' Category

New Orleans Road Trip 1988 pt 1 (Ohio)

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

Sadly, I was in love with radio for a long time before I realized that it might be a good idea to keep some of it for myself. It’s mind boggling for me to think of all the radio stations, radio shows, air personalities and programming formats that have passed on since I’ve been listening. While I don’t regret all that much of my life, I do wish I could have been a little more prescient and stored more radio on magnetic tape in the last few decades. Memory is good, but it’s not accurate and you can only share impressions.

When I was a kid I actually did record from the radio. But like the file sharing teens today, I was simply doing what came naturally– “capturing” music directly from the radio with my tape recorder to avoid paying for it at the store. It was before they made that kind of thing illegal. But all I wanted was the songs. I couldn’t care less at the time about the DJ banter, the commercials, the news– all the stuff that in retrospect makes an aircheck interesting in historical context.

My perspective changed in late 1983 when I went on 4000 mile road trip circumventing the Midwest. I brought a boombox along, and when we found time to put our mix tapes aside, we listened to the radio and now and then I dropped in a few blank cassettes to record some souvenirs. I’m not exactly sure what made me think to make those recordings during that trip (which I still have and plan to feature a bit of here one day), but I enjoyed them enough after the fact that I began a habit of creating and collecting “airchecks” that continues to this day.

In the spring of 1988 I happened to go another extended automotive trek, this time driving a rusty Buick station wagon from the Detroit area (where I lived at the time) to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival. And I brought cassettes and another boombox. And this post begins a series of posts here on the Radio Kitchen blog, featuring some of the more compelling and entertaining portions of radio I snagged on that excursion– a cross section of American radio in the late 1980′s.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I never understood why car cassette decks can’t simply record from the radio. Looking online, I guess Pioneer did make such a thing a few decades ago but if you think about it just about every other tape player made always came with recording potential. And car radios are often great for

DXing. Anyway, I’ve never seen one. But on this particular trip, I tried to make my desire a reality by recording some radio on the road with the boombox (while my friend was driving). If you’ve ever tried to do this, you know it’s not all that easy. Especially recording AM radio, where you really have to hold the radio up to window level to get a reasonable signal.

After I got the tapes home I did something I’d never done before (or never did again). I combed through hours of raw (and rather random) source tapes and winnowed it down to a one-tape 90 minute compilation (with cassette to cassette-pause button editing). Unfortunately, most of the original tapes are long gone. This is a little different from other posts here, in that this aircheck scrapbook years ago for my own entertainment, with no logs or notes. While I believe that most (if not all) of these edits are in chronological order, the actual recording on the road was intermittent. I tended to turn on the recorder when we neared larger cities. That is, unless I was driving (when I didn’t record). While the cities and stations included in this homemade artifact is hit or miss as we crossed the country, the variety of radio I included from New Orleans on this tape is somewhat extensive and full of local flavor. But then again, most things New Orleans are full of local flavor.

I’m including these installments as "bandscans," even though almost none of it is technically a real time scan of the any particular band. They are however, compelling samplings of a time and of places that make for some compelling listening twenty years later. Also, for the first time I’ll be including some FM broadcasting in on this site. If you’ve read much here, you may know that my taste (and curiosity) in contemporary broadcasting is focused on AM and shortwave these days. But that wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t until the 1990′s that I lost my stomach for almost all FM radio.

So, here’s the first installment in this radio journey. We drove straight through, and I believe we left for New Orleans Wednesday April 27, 1988. But it might have been Thursday. I’m not sure, but either way it took around twenty-one hours or so to complete the trip. This first segment begins somewhere in early afternoon (northern) Ohio heading south on 1-75, and there’s quite a bit of material from the Dayton market through to Cincinnati. I’m going to post this in digestible chunks, and then when I get to the end of the whole 90 minute affair, I’ll provide a listen/download link for the entire archive as well. Here’s the first installment:

1988 Trip to New Orleans (part 1) – 1-75 in Ohio 9:34

(download)

A cuddly country pop snippet of unknown origin gives way to a frenetic commercial for household goods on sale. Based in West Virginia, Hecks’ Department Stores had spread to nearby Ohio and Kentucky since 1963. But the “Almost Giving It Away Place" had already filed for bankruptcy by 1987 and within the next couple years they called it a day and sold assets off to another couple retail chains that wouldn’t last much long either. A whole lot of regional discount outlets have disappeared since that time (smell the Wal-Mart?), and I miss hearing this kind of sales exhilaration for items like toilet paper and bleach.

A couple of quirky bits later (including some jesus optimism), you hear a punchy keyboard intro for “The Mike Sento Show” on Dayton’s 1290 WHIO (what great classic call letters!). It’s not just a talk show, it’s a “midday forum” I wish the tape gave us a little sample of Mike himself. Apparently, Mr. Sento doesn’t have regular talk gig right now, but he’s still around. Not so long ago he filled in for the dull-witted Mike Gallagher on his national program. (Not a good sign…)

And then there’s the "Van Man.” Bobby Layman. Apparently, Bobby was selling vans with a bit of a personal style. He measures “your needs” and “fits you to a van.” (Something snug with side-mirrors, perhaps?) But however Layman was fitting all those vans back then, he must have been doing something right. He now has his own Chevy dealership at the same address as the Columbus, Ohio "Van Man" headquarters advertised here. Catchy commercial.

Then there’s perhaps the greatest living legend in radio today— Paul Harvey, the one-man “Reader’s Digest” of radio. While not a mind blowing moment, this little capture is in classic Harvey style– clipped and slightly alien, in a warm and corny way. And he’s still at it! But he sounds reassuredly young in 1988 (When he was only 69). This particular program, his daily “News and Commentary” has been a radio staple since 1951. Enjoy it while it lasts. "Mr. Slow-Motion" Fred Thompson has been known to fill-in when Harvey takes time off.

Remember Fawn Hall? The Iran/Contra Hearings… Oliver North’s secretary… Shredding critical documents… and the her infamous testimony: "Sometimes you have to go above the law." She was still shining ripely in the middle of her fifteen minutes of fame in early ’88, and Harvey announces she starting to cash in it by co-hosting a syndicated talk show next month (which we can assume didn’t exactly set the world on fire). Since then, Hall actually had to kick a nasty crack cocaine habit in the 1990′s. Which is kinda ironic, considering her old boss Mr. North funded the Contras with cocaine cash.

“Race fans! Put this in your mind! The sheer spectacle of wheel standing super-charged funny cars with their front wheels up in the air and then showering sparks of titanium all the way down the quarter mile drag strip at a hundred and sixty miles per hour!”

Now, that sounds like entertainment. It’s the vintage boom and bluster of a classic drag strip radio spot for Kil-Kare Speedway in Xenia, Ohio. Do raceways still advertise like this? I hope so. When I was a kid CKLW and WKNR thundered with ads for the Detroit Dragway– boisterous announcers glorifying the exploits of drivers like Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen and promoting all the earth rumbling rapture to be found at the corner of “Sibley at Dix.” While the old Detroit Dragway is history, Kil-Kare Speedway which will soon celebrate 50 roaring years of fun in Southern Ohio. Bravo.

The racing spot is followed by some juvenile banter on an unidentified high school radio station (A likely suspect might be WKET, which isn’t far from 1-75). Too bad you can’t hear both sides of this little squabble, as one of the kids hogs the microphone. “Oh, save the whales Keith. Save the whales…”

Waterbeds. Remember waterbeds? From the seventies on, it seemed like every mile of suburban highway sprawl was decorated by two or three waterbed outlets stocked with all your splashy mattress needs. Local radio and late night TV were littered with waterbed store advertising as well. Things have changed. (When was the last time you’ve seen a waterbed?)

We miss the beginning of this commercial for “Henry’s Waterbeds,” but there seems to be a sports theme at play. The announcer hawks his wares in a loud and gruff testosterone fashion over the sounds of a simulated cheering throng. Which falls right in line with the general appeal of waterbed stores– to specifically lure men in to browse and buy household goods and furniture, thanks to the fact that the main attractions on the sales floor offered the promise of carnal hydraulics in the bedroom.

Rock and roll on the AM dial is almost as hard to come by as a highway waterbed outlet these days (or a drag strip for that matter). However, in the late 80′s the oldies format was still a big contender on the AM dial. But not for long. By this time the playlists for these stations had gotten so tight and so predictable that format burnout has assured the passing of many of these stations. Just like this snippet from that afternoon of Cincinnati’s 55 WKRC, a segueway from the Turtles’ “Happy Together” to “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks. How long can anyone continue to listen to those same three-hundred songs?

And like many former oldies stations, WKRC is now a run of the mill talk station carrying syndicated rightist dreck like Limbaugh, Hannity and kindred scum. And the dilemma is not unfamiliar. And just how long can anyone continue to listen to Republican party talking points from the same handful of windbags every day? Kinda of like a never ending chorus of “Hey Jude.” In radio, cynical programming and overt predictability will eventually breed listener contempt.

Next WLW, the Ohio Valley powerhouse. And at first sample, this bit of afternoon WLW sounds like boring and typical talk radio. It’s mid-day host Mike McConnell winding up an interview with "David" on the phone. He’s written an “insider’s guide” which contains valuable tips and secrets that can make anybody wealthy. It’s the wrap-up of the segment.

“Rich or old, young or poor, even if you have very little money and you have no credit or bad credit, don’t let that stop you.”

There’s a time check here, it’s almost 1:30 in the afternoon. I switch to another station. An AM signal with a stiff whine. It’s one of those soap opera update features (do stations still do this). It’s a somewhat inspired synopsis of the ongoing saga of the “Young and the Restless.”

Then back to WLW, coming out of the commercial break. Listen to all the promotional crap that happens before McConnell resumes the show. This is back when WLW was a Jacor station, and I’d posit that you hear the “Jacor effect” as soon as McConnell ditches the get-rich-quick author. Lame guests like David are some of the worst talk radio filler out there, but nowadays goofballs like this author would (thankfully) have to buy ad time or get into the infomercial business to sell his schemes to listeners. But before talk radio got wise and came up with other ideas, people selling bad books were common filler on the air. And here McConnell is a harbinger of the more savvy talk radio to come, smelling BS from his guest and turning his suspicion into what probably became a spirited call-in segment (which I wish we could hear…).

“Have you ever gotten a book through a situation such as this, through which you made money? Or that improved you in any way, shape or form? If so, I’d like to hear about it…”

While Jacor has since merged and dissolved into Clear Channel Communications, in their heyday they made a lot of headway in a number of radio markets with their inventive, subversive and occasionally vicious programming and promotion. While I wasn’t much of a fan of some of Jacor’s music radio projects, Jacor really did know how to manage and tweak a talk radio station into something profitable and compelling. At heart, Jacor was really a loyal cadre of competitive and provocative radio geeks who were major players in the radio business back in the 1980′s and 90′s. As far as talk radio, Jacor naturally attracted sharp and witty (and often abrasive) talk radio hosts who understood the nuances of exploiting the format for all of its emotional and entertainment potential. By the 1980′s, Jacor realized that being nice, or being “respectful,” was really only important to their oldest listeners. And people who understood the business of radio (like Jacor) knew that talk radio was more than ready to shed its one time role (and continuing image) as a safe haven for old folks.

And although Jacor is no longer, the flavor of the upstart company is still a part of what makes WLW great, ever since Jacor radio maestro Randy Michaels turned it into a hot talk station in the early 80′s. And there’s been remarkably little turnover in air staff in the last two decades. In fact, Mike McConnell still holds down the same mid-day slot he’s had on WLW since the early 80′s. Which is very rare in the fast changing and incredibly cutthroat business of radio.

“Z-93 Where the hits always hit first. I’m Cat Summers with one of the hottest ladies around right now, just coming off her Academy Award for Best Actress. The new one from Cher, written and produced by Bon Jovi. It’s called “We All Sleep Alone” on Z-93.”

Well, that was a near perfect mic break from “Cat Summers” (My GOD, the greatest fake name in top 40 radio history?…) on Z-93 (in Eaton, Ohio). It’s really a perfect mic break– warm, succinct and pure smooth all the way to the post (where Cher starts to sing). It hits the pop culture buttons and says nothing. And the positioning statement– "Where the hits always hit first," is catchy enough. But by 1988 there was no bravery in corporate music radio, and you can be sure no song would make a playlist in a market like Dayton if it hadn’t been officially approved by consultants, sanctioned by some kind of payola, and blessed by some call-out research. Of course, the illusion remained for some that the DJ on the air had some say the music they would play.

Z-93 is the late lamented WGTZ transmitting from Eaton, Ohio a couple dozen miles west of I-75. Z-93 was born when they canned the beautiful music format on WGTZ in 1983, and it served as the major CHR (contemporary hit radio, or top 40) station for a large swath of southeastern Ohio, including Dayton and Springfield for over two decades. While this kind of radio ain’t my cup of tea, for years this station was local spot on the dial where kids and young adults went for the hits and the happy camaraderie of shiny jocks like Cat Summers. In November of 2007 the owners (Main Line Broadcasting) went out and fired all the DJ’s and flipped the station to the new "variety hits" format, otherwise known as the "Jack." Some people in Ohio are still pissed off…

This leaves us at the crossing of the Ohio River that April afternoon in 1988, and as night falls we’ll sample some southern R&B radio along I-40 and then I-55. As I mentioned, the coverage from the road in either direction will be spotty, but once we get to New Orleans there’s plenty of broadcasting to hear from the Crescent City, back when it was all still there.

Posted in AM Radio, Bandscans, Crazy Religion, FM Band, Music Radio, Radio, talk radio | 4 Comments »

The Hip Spot On Your Dial

Monday, December 10th, 2007

I’m old enough to remember when they first pulled the oldies radio concept out of the box and plugged it into the wall. And it literally was a gadget. A machine. I was a kid in suburban Detroit in the early 1970′s when I found one of very first all "oldies" stations to go on the air. The station (which started on FM, then simulcast on AM and eventually became an AM radio station), and then became known as “Honey Radio.” There were no DJ’s, just jingles and commercials and lots of dated top 40.

Automatic or not, the programming of Honey Radio was immediately intriguing to me and some of my friends at the time. As the album rock format was wandering deeper into crap like Uriah Heep and Kansas, I’d impatiently fumble with the dial looking for something (anything) different and kept perching the needle on this new station that played only old rock and roll. Half of it I’d never heard before.

It’s hard to imagine now, when most oldies stations play such a tight and boring playlist, but the original oldies format was born in the "American Graffiti" (and then "Happy Days") era, when old rock and roll was immediately more evocative and uplifting than the arena rock epic thud and guitar solos that were clogging up the album rock format.

From what I recall of early Honey Radio format, the music spanned from 1955 until 1967 or ’68. I started soaking it up– Rockabilly, r&b, doo-wop, even dopey pop. I loved it all (okay, except Neil Sedaka…). And it filled in a missing chapter in top 40 history for me– between my mom’s record collection and the music I had been hearing on the radio since diapers. Listening to the station turned me on to a whole world of recording artists I barely knew before (and ones you probably won’t hear much on oldies radio nowadays), like Huey “Piano” Smith, Ral Donner or the Impressions. And not just the big canonical hits, but other choice tracks that charted too. All that from a robot radio station.

A little later (after I’d stopped obsessively listening), Honey Radio added real DJ’s and in the final tally had a good run as Detroit’s premiere oldies station until shutting down in the early 90′s. The demise of Honey came as the format’s followers were surging into middle-age, and the new thinking in advertising advocated virtually abandoning that once valued demographic. This shift in advertising strategy drove more and more oldies outlets to desperately expand their playlists into the hits of the1980′s, and drop almost all the 50′s and early 60′s music that fueled the original format.

There are some good, even interesting, oldies stations that are still out there (WLNG, for example). And a few brave ones have popped up and bucked the era-shift gentrification of the oldies format, and specialized in the early rock era with music libraries much larger than the mind-numbing 300 tested superhits that make up the format in most markets. However, these days radio stations exist in a cutthroat environment, where anything but sucking in big piles of money every day isn’t just unacceptable. It’s fatal. The profit margin possible with creatively (or lovingly) programmed oldies radio is almost never enough to keep these stations alive for very long. It’s not that true-blue oldies stations don’t attract a loyal audience, it just isn’t big enough or young enough to have a chance in the dog-eat-dog world of contemporary radio advertising. That is, unless you happened to have purchased a radio station for a really reasonable price, and making a fat profit isn’t necessarily your goal. Then you have choices. Then you have WHVW.

A true media miracle, WHVW in Hyde Park/Poughkeepsie, New York, is the ultimate oldies station for the culturally inspired fan of American roots music. While there’s a number of hosted regular programs, the majority of the WHVW’s air time is occupied by a music automation system, otherwise known as “Murray the Machine.”

Programmer/owner “Pirate Joe” Ferraro has radically expanded the oldies format with Murray. But instead of following the present-day model of stretching the format forward in time and taking on dodgy material, Joe has lopped off the late 60′s music and everything that followed. No psychedelia, no bubble gum, and thankfully no Jim Croce. While he’s held on to the doo-wop and rockabilly of the classic 1955 to 1964 era (adding a helping of folk music that was popular at the time), the rest of library goes further back in time. But unlike the hit parade highway you might here on senior citizen radio, Ferraro opts for the rural routes of r&b, blues, old jazz, and classic country. All and all, it’s the rockin’ 20th century– an “oldies” overview based on favorites of record collectors and the kind of music that kept people putting nickels in jukeboxes for decades. While I haven’t done a scientific study of all the ingredients of Pirate Joe’s automated format, but I can tell you one thing– it’s compelling, and unlike any radio station I’ve ever heard. And it makes a lot of sense.

For the last decade or so, I’ve had family in Poughkeepsie, which places me within the transmission range of WHVW a few times a year. I’ve stacked up a number of airchecks of WHVW over the years– mostly captures of Murray on the job. But what a well nursed and well-fed automation system Ferraro has set up. No matter how many tapes I’ve gathered of his automation over the years, it always sounds fresh.

WHVW – Murray the Machine 11-23-07 61:35

(download)

While the Pirate Joe’s music machine does a heck of a job, there’s a skeleton crew of real live on-air personalities who keep WHVW human as well, and fun to listen to. Like Pirate Joe (who up until recently hosted an all 78 RPM afternoon drive program himself), the DJ’s musical appetites are mostly variations on Joe’s musical themes– record collector/characters who live and breathe old juke joint hits and rarities. Curt Roberts, the morning drive guy goes for more of an eclectic golden oldies approach, adding some soul and garage sounds to the mix. And what a voice. And the personalities of Roberts and Ferraro set the tone for the on-air persona of WHVW– wry and dry and isn’t the music great. It’s straight-forward– rarely exuberant and rarely boring. And I like it.

WHVW – Curt Roberts 11-22-07 29:55

(download)

I don’t get up in WHVW territory enough to know the schedule well, and their website (which looks like it was put together with mid-90′s know-how) usually seems a bit out of date. But you can see what the official schedule was late last year here (the link to this page has mysteriously fallen off the home page). And while it’s not much a web site, there is some history of the station and a few pictures. And sadly, they do not stream their air signal there (or anywhere). But if you want to get an idea of some of WHVW’s glowing fan mail, Joe has posted a bit of it on this page.

One show that’s been a Sunday mainstay for well over a decade now is Darwin Lee Hill’s “Real Hillbilly Jamboree.” It’s a three hour hand-crafted hootenanny, featuring hits & obscurities from all the classic country music sub-genres, as well as some more recent material from neo-traditionalists and aging legends. That said and all technical descriptions aside, Darwin’s show is consistently warm and informative radio, including occasional interviews with country legends. And the music is always heartening. Kinda makes you wanna buy a second home in Poughkeepsie.

WHVW – Darwin Lee 11-25-07 62:08

(download)

I wish I could say that WHVW could be the harbinger of a new creative era of AM music programming. But I’m a realist, and there’s little reason to think that the glory of this little radio station is much more than fortunate happenstance. As his nickname implies, Ferraro is a former radio pirate, someone with synergistic mastery of musicology and old radio technology, who happened to get a good deal ($350,000) on a lowly class D AM station. While there’s still bargains like that around, they’re more likely in desolate North Dakota or rural Mississippi. WHVW is located in an actual city (albeit a small one), surrounded by the fringe suburbia of New York City. It’s a convergence that brings a big chunk of musical Americana to the radio dial in a place where people really live and play, or at least drive through on their way to Albany.

And the station doesn’t operate in a vacuum, WHVW really serves the community. They have locally oriented talk shows and local news, something you don’t hear very often these days on stations with far larger budgets and bigger transmitters. And requests from listeners carry a lot more weight when the DJ actually programs their own show. For folks who live in the mid-Hudson Valley who love great (and occasionally obscure) old music, WHVW must be a godsend.

For those who might have dreams of snatching up a cheap radio station and running it on a shoestring, Ferraro’s WHVW offers an intriguing model. Two people on staff (including the owner) handling the weekly drive-time slots and then a roster of weekly volunteer hosts doing shows for the love of it (and perhaps the advertising they can generate), with the rest of the broadcast day filled with the offerings of a tasteful and compelling automated music mix. This way a small radio station can maintain a local connection and eschew the predictable dependency on pre-packaged music formats and syndicated talk shows. And I think that WHVW disproves the bias of a number of non-conformist radio types I’ve known who equate radio automation with a lack of imagination or laziness. It all depends on who’s programming the machine.

Now in the age of mp3 players, I suppose you could spend a couple of years loading up on thousands of old shakin’ and stompin’ classics and kinds create your own WHVW in your pocket. But it would still be an imitation of Pirate Joe’s musical vision. Which is on the air right now by the way. Filling the sky of Dutchess Country with radio waves carrying the likes of Coleman Hawkins, T-Bone Walker or Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, proving that automated radio can be a non-conformist’s best friend. And that it’s not impossible for a radio station to be a better music machine than a money machine.

EXTRA BONUS – A follow up to this post can be found here, including more audio archives of WHVW.

Posted in AM Radio, Music Radio | 4 Comments »

Trucking Radio, As It Used To Was

Friday, November 16th, 2007

Once you get the bug to DX the AM band, out of your expanded choice of stations you typically find yourself a regular listener to some far-flung station after the sun sets. When I was a kid in southeastern Michigan, I got hooked on WCFL in Chicago, specifically listening to Bob Dearborn night after night. He had this late-night feature “Long Gold" where he’d play the full album version of a song that would normally abbreviated on top 40 radio (or perhaps not played at all). Seems silly now, but hearing the full version of the Animal’s “House of the Rising Sun,” or “Sky Pilot” seemed pretty heavy back then. (Remember when “heavy” was a good thing?)

Anyway, my longest DX love affair with a far-off radio station came a few years later. While still in Michigan, I came across the “Road Gang” on WWL in New Orleans one night in the mid 70′s. And for the next twenty years or so, WWL was always a signal I’d seek out when I could get my nocturnal fingers on a tuning knob.

Booming up the Mississippi basin, WWL comes in like a local many nights in the Great Lakes region, around a thousand miles to the north of the transmitter. In my listening experience, WWL at 870kHz has been the most dependable long-distance DX on the AM band. Although the reception isn’t nearly as reliable or clear here in the northeast.

Certainly, the original appeal of picking up the Road Gang back then was just how exotic it was to a Midwestern kid in the suburbs. The host back then was a guy named Charlie Douglas, and the music was old shit-kickin’ country music. Better yet, I discovered a whole country sub-genre– trucker music. Songs like “Girl on the Billboard” and “A Kiss and the Keys,” are still favorites here at the house.

Then there were national weather reports, given by state and interstate highway. And commercials for every aspect of the trucker lifestyle. There was a time travel appeal as well. The whole approach to radio was from an era before I was born. Each time check was tagged as “King Edward Cigar Time.”

Actually, The Road Gang kind of started a radio format– the all-night trucking show. Today there’s a number of them, and none nearly as good. Douglas hosted the program for 13 years, until moving into some big national gig in Nashville. And weekend host of the Road Gang, Dave Nemo, moved into Charlie’s weeknight spot. And despite the rambling chatter that got me this far into the post, I’ve finally gotten around to the subject at hand– The man who moved into Nemo’s weekend slot on the Road Gang: John Parker.

Now considered radio legends, Charlie Douglas and Mr. Nemo were fun to listen to at the helm of the Road Gang– homespun showmen for the working class. But for a bundle of reasons John Parker was absolutely my favorite host on the show. With a big rugged baritone and a grab-bag of cornball slang and 18-wheel idioms, Parker was a humble charismatic voice in the night. A true radio companion for truckers, night owls and country music lovers.

So, let’s get to the meat of the matter. Here’s a full ninety minutes or so of Parker on WWL (in two parts) from January of 1988. As I said, WWL in New Orleans has a heck of a signal into the Great Lakes Region. Hear for yourself. Radio waves traveling roughly 920 miles arrive amazingly intact upon arrival. One thing you get used to when spend much time listening to distant AM stations, is "fading." You find that even loud and clear signals sometimes slip away into near nothingness (or reveal other faint stations on the same frequency). But the gaps are usually brief, and like so many things with AM & SW listening, often unpredictable. But the fading in this reception is pretty forgiving, and and doesn’t happen all that often. I think I made this recording because the signal was just so damn strong that night.

(download)

This aircheck is unscoped, meaning nothing was edited out, including the news and commercials. As you can hear from the “Interscan” weather reports, it was a cold snow flurry kind of night across America. And John himself was nursing a cold, but it hardly dampened his spirits. It’s Dave Nemo’s voice you hear on the truck stop commercials. I remember when I first set foot in the Slidell Union 76 trucks stop after hearing those ads from afar for so many years, I felt like I was on hollowed ground or something.

(download)

Yes, all the the trucker trappings of the show were a lot of fun, both for the real working class authenticity, as well as the corny mythos of American Trucker. But it was all the the great music that kept me coming back to the Road Gang over the years. This one program is responsible for making me a lifelong country music fan. The music format of the Road Gang was deep into the history of C&W– pin-balling all night from honky-tonk to old-timey to western swing, bluegrass, Nashville, Outlaw… The whole 40 acres. Each night a unique rich patch of tunes.

Then late each Saturday night, Parker held court for two hours on the AM dial with one of the finest music programs I’ve ever heard on the AM dial– "Country Music The Way It Used To Was." No slouch in music history, Parker was assisted by a musicologist or two in putting the show together. And each week he conducted a freewheeling country and western seminar, featuring hits and rarities from the first 40 years of country recordings. What a great program this was. So often, a deep musicology driven radio show like is presented by some excitable geek host, or a dispassionate or unprofessional one. And they’re like shiny museum exhibits on FM. With Parker you get history, music and great radio, and his program is on the historic AM band, where the music was first heard.

So let me offer you a couple of 47 minute chunks of "Country Music The Way It Used To Was." This first aircheck comes over a year after the first two in this post. And in that time I had actually moved from Michigan to New Orleans. So instead of having to put a special radio in a special place at a special time to pick up WWL, it was now a loud and clear local. So these two episodes of "Country Music The Way It Used To Was" are crystal clear AM broadcasts. However these airchecks are slightly edited. When I made these recordings I edited out most of the commercials, as well as the weather and news.

The first selection comes from February 26, 1989. (You may note that Parker makes note of their new satellite connection/syndication with KRVN in Lexington, Nebraska. It was a way of opening up the west to the Road Gang (foreshadowing the show’s eventual national syndication). Nice eclectic mix in this hour– some tasty Texas Playboys, wacky Lew Chlldre and a bit of very early Johnny Cash (Little Woolly Booger?).

(download)

The next offering is from "Country Music The Way It Used To Was" broadcast August 13, 1989. Some solid from Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas, who were also passengers on the fatal plane crash that snuffed out Patsy Cline’s life as well. But what always gets my attention when I hear this archive are the songs by Hank William’s wife, Audrey. Wow. I never knew she was talented that way.

(download)

In ended up in Florida for the first half of the 1990′s, and despite the fact that WWL’s transmitter is a few hundred miles closer to Tampa, the signal doesn’t have nearly the oomph it does beaming toward the north of New Orleans. I rarely picked it up while I was there. When I moved to New York City in ’97 I totally lost track of the Road Gang until I got home internet a year or two later. Then when looking online I discovered the program itself had relocated to Nashville. And although it was still syndicated on WWL, Parker had fallen off the schedule

In the summer of 1999, I sent a few emails to some folks at WWL trying to find out what happened to Parker and whether he was still on the air somehow. When I finally did get a response, it wasn’t good news. “John Parker still works for us,” the woman wrote. “He’s the overnight board operator… on from 11pm to 5am.” Board operator? One of my favorite radio voices was reduced to pushing buttons and adjusting levels? Don’t get me wrong, I think radio engineering is a noble profession. But it was distressing to hear that a great radio talent was reduced to technical duties.

The email from WWL gave me the number to reach Parker at the controls and assured that if I called in the middle of the night “John might be inclined to pick up.” As much as John Parker was an inspiration, I wasn’t inclined to reach out as a fan on the phone. I mean, what would I say?: “I thought you were really great on the radio. What happened?”

One thing I did learn from my time in New Orleans is how hard it is to leave the Crescent City. Especially if it’s always been your home. If you’ve never been there you might not understand, but suffice to say New Orleans has a sustaining quailty for those who love its humid maternal grace. (Which made the Katrina fiasco all the more tragic.) So it’s only a guess, but tend to think Parker didn’t follow the show to Nashville because he wasn’t willing to run away from home.

Then again, the music-heavy trucking radio format on continent-covering AM stations (as created by Charlie Douglas and others in the 1970′s) is long gone anyway. Beside’s the Road Gang on WWL, there were also semi-national overnight shows out of 50,000 watt AM giants WLW in Cincinatti and WBAP in Fort Worth. Now trucking radio on AM is like most of what you hear on the dial– syndicated talk radio, only instead of discussing politics or sports, its trucker talk. Which can be kinda fun, but it’s not like hearing rare Bill Monroe tracks at three in the morning.

But the funny thing about that triumvirate of trucking radio shows that used to rule the night, is that like some rock supergroup the big named hosts from each program joined forces a few years ago to invest their decades of radio into an truckin’ all the time national satelittle station. The "Truckin’ Bozo" from WLW and the "Midnight Cowboy" from WBAP have teamed up with Dave Nemo to host their own programs on the "Open Road" channel on XM Radio. Since I’ve never been near an XM radio, I’ve never heard "Open Road." And while I realize that time marches on, I still have an aversion to paying a fee to listen to radio.

A year or two ago I ran across a fellow traveler in the radio business, and in the course of our introductory conversation we discovered we had both worked in New Orleans, which somehow led to the topic of John Parker. I found out this man I just met had been a fellow board-op with John. Apparently, Parker never let on that he used to be one of the hosts of the Road Gang for many years. As I write this I don’t recall all the details of our conversation, what stuck with me is that although this guy really liked John Parker, in real life he wasn’t exactly the easy-going gentleman I heard on the radio. He noted that Parker could be moody and odd. Even an introvert. Or maybe he was just pissed off that since he couldn’t or wouldn’t move to Nashville with the Road Gang that he was reduced to babysitting knobs instead of talking to half of America? And the most significant fact gleaned from that conversation was that John Parker had actually stopped living not that long ago.

So, my little anecdote of radio glory ends on a sad note. Both John Parker and thoughtful overnight music programs like his on U.S. clear channel AM stations are really part of history now (OK, there’s still WSM…) DXing medium wave just isn’t as much fun. And personally, I guess I blew my chance to pick up the phone and thank him for all those nights of great music and radio fellowship.

So, if you never heard Parker on the Road Gang years ago, I humbly implore you to have a listen. And get a taste of what it was like to have Honest John Parker bumpin’ around in the dark, makin’ all that noise.

Posted in AM Radio, Music Radio, Radio | 36 Comments »

The Strange Radio World Of Alan Colmes

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

There’s something about the dark of night that changes talk radio. Once the schoolmarms and businessmen have turned to the tube or hit the hay, the freaks are free to play.

While the audience is markedly smaller, the listeners and callers are typically more relaxed and open after the sun sets. Their guard is down. And let’s be honest, more people are intoxicated at the end of their day. For a playful and creative talk host, the evening audience is full of entertainment opportunity. But that doesn’t mean talk radio at night is necessarily good. Nighttime talk radio can also be a backwater where second-rate hosts hold their own, where has-been hosts are put out to graze, and where some weirdo talkers thrive.

There’s one talk host I’ve been listening to lately that practically fits every genre of nighttime talk radio I’ve just described– Alan Colmes. Better known as Sean Hannity’s half-hearted liberal foil over at Fox News TV, Colmes has actually had quite a talk radio career around New York City and nationally. But as far as being on the air in New York, Colmes has had an intermittent presence here, jumping from station to station with gaps in between. Colmes is best known in New York talk radio history for putting two stations to bed– doing the very last farewell program on both WNBC (in 1988) and WEVD (in 2001).

Since WEVD went dark, Colmes eventually reappeared here (in his latest radio incarnation as a Fox News Radio national talk host) on WWRL and then disappeared again when the station became the Air America flagship. Then in the overhaul of both the Air America network schedule and the WWRL line-up, Colmes reestablished his presence in the nation's biggest radio market once again. (And in eclipsing the Jon Elliot show that Air America runs on the network during that time, Colmes saves the city from a giant nightly yawning spell.) So, for the first time I've found myself actually paying attention to The Alan Colmes Show. And much to my surprise, I almost like it. Or at least I keep listening.

Back when hosts I liked much more (Lionel and Mike Malloy) had that after 10pm slot, I didn’t pay much attention to Colmes or his program. I don’t remember many radio fireworks in my brief interludes with his show over the years, and maybe it’s been revamped, but the Alan Colmes show I’m hearing lately is often a fast paced circus of a talk show with unexpected bursts of strangeness. And the source of the weirdness isn't so much Colmes himself, but the people who take the time to call in to his show.

It’s Colmes’ unique position in the broadening left/right schism in political media that generates a bizarre caller base for the show. Although he's carried on some "progressive talk" stations like WWRL, his program also can be found on the schedule of a number of stations that carry the run-of-the-mill right-wing talkers as well. So Colmes automatically gets more pro-Bush hate calls than any official Air America program, much like Lionel's show did when he was on at night on WOR’s network. But unlike Lionel, who’s prankster spirit and lawyer skills would make for some compelling cat and mouse conversation when right-wingers would get on his case (and Lionel was never the mouse), Colmes simply argues calmly and logically with the morons until they either give up or the call ends in some twisted (or childish) draw.

And more than any talk show I’ve heard since Bob Lassiter, Colmes attracts a lot of raw hate from the phone lines. A lot of it comes from his roll as the liberal punching bag on “Hannity and Colmes” every night. As the radio show follows his TV program, Hannity fans and other psychopaths who get all worked up watching Alan espouse non-Republican ideas on Fox News can pick up the phone and let him have it when his show comes on an hour later. In fact, his show has been structured to infuse the raw energy from all that animosity out there right into the show from the first few seconds it comes on the air.

He calls it “First Word.” With a burst of generic rock guitar, Colmes welcomes you to the show and starts punching up callers that have been waiting for him to get on the air. It moves pretty fast. If the call doesn't quickly offer some friction or entertainment value Colmes quickly moves to the next one in line. It’s a weird way to start a show, and more often than not the adrenalin is really flowing by the time he hits his first commercial break. And what’s kind of amazing, if not a little strange, is how unflappable Alan Colmes can be in the face of overt hostility. Sure, he’ll argue point for point and even raise his voice a bit, but he never seems to get truly angered or shaken. A bit scolding or indignant sometimes. Yes, he’s much tougher on callers than he ever his with Sean Hannity on TV, but never resorts to epithets and he rarely goes for the jugular.

Here’s a couple of hostile calls from October 18th. (And I apologize for the bleed-over from Radio Disney that you hear beneath these calls. It's the way most of the radios in my house receive WWRL.) This first fella sounds like he’s at least four or five beers into his evening. It’s Dan in Chicago. Sometimes, ignorance can go so deep that it becomes profound.

(download)
What’s really sad to me about this call is its heartbreaking authenticity. I’d so much rather think that sloth-like thinking and mindless animosity like this was really just a put-on or a prank. But no. It’s a real person. A real American. And the next one’s worse.

Jimmy in North Carolina is more direct. The call is a threat. Nothing more. It’s one of the most unfriendly calls I’ve ever heard on talk radio. It’s funny how some wacky right wingers wish or hope “the terrorists” will dutifully attack their people and groups they don’t happen to like. Here Jimmy openly wishes “the terrorists” would attack the “Emmy” or “Grammy” ceremonies, to kill a large number of those “liberal socialist Hollywood” types, who are bringing this nation to its knees.

(download)

It’s just sad by the end. While Colmes knows how to attract and unfold bizarre telephone scenarios, he rarely finishes them off with an appreciable payoff. Instead of destroying lame callers, or poetically dumping them at the right moment, Colmes can keep arguing when there's no point, or get into a conversational slap fight that goes nowhere. He rarely goes in for the kill. And there never seems to be a punch line.

Here’s a more cryptic (but not substantially more intelligent) hate call to Alan. It’s James from upstate New York on November 7th. Like Jimmy, James also expresses his personal preferences as far as what misdeeds “the terrorists” should put on their agenda. “I regret that George Bush has been 100% successfully in saving the lives of people like you,” he tells Colmes. Such curious patriotism. Colmes actually kind of comes out on top at the end of this call.

(download)

Here’s a harebrained caller from Massachusetts– “Tonto.” He kicks off the interchange declaring his simultaneous respect and dislike for Colmes. And he doesn’t care for his “character” on TV either. Apparently he thinks Colmes is a bit player in some drama, like Fred Thompson or something.

Tonto is a classic type of caller you hear on talk radio these days. Everything that’s in his head that passes for a worldview has been spoon-fed into his head by right wing talk radio and Fox News. When a guy like this calls up Rush or Sean, every thing goes pretty smoothly. But even the minor rebuttal you get from an easy going moderate host like Colmes shuts down every argument or theory the guy can come up with. All he's really able to do is get worked up and bandy cliches. But he has no follow-up. His political thoughts are like false fronts of buildings on a movie set or something.

(download)

The other side of Colmes legacy– as the liberal TV pundit cable conservatives love to hate, is that he’s also the most prominent (or only) left-leaning talking head some folks come across in their media diet. So, not only does Colmes phone lines attract ripe republican hate, but he also draws in lost progressives and disconnected Democrats looking for common ground, or just a shoulder to cry on.

Listen to poor Ken in Indianapolis. He’s kind of just woken up to how across-the-board wicked the Bush administration really is, and he desperately wants to do SOMETHING to make a difference. On the other hand, he’s so paranoid he thinks that just by making the call to Colmes show may have tipped off the some evil Bush goons to come cart him away in dark of the night. (And it probably doesn't help that he lives in Indianapolis…)

No, Ken hasn’t thought through all his desperation and anxiety. He's all over the map during this call. But his fears are actually based on grim present realities– not bizarre schizophrenic fantasies. In other times and under other circumstances, I'd consider Ken's plight to be rather laughable. Or at least pathetic. But here and now, I find someone climbing on a soapbox and hopelessly rambling this way to be profoundly sad. And the sadness isn’t just for him, but for all the people like him, and Americans in general.

(download)

And what’s weird to me about this call isn’t the martyrdom on display, or the or despair you hear in Ken’s voice. It’s Colmes approach to the call. Instead of agreeing with, or challenging, Ken’s paranoia, Alan plays psychotherapist with the guy, asking him to fully express his feelings instead of addressing the issues at hand.

In the end, I can’t decide if Colmes is actually missing some brain matter or is just a profoundly forgiving guy. He’s the polar opposite of a talk radio hothead like Mike Malloy. Somehow his outrage over the sad state of current events never turns personal, and he never seems to get angry. It’s a temperament that has served him well on Fox News. But the other night when I heard him chatting cordially on the radio with Lynne Cheney, I just had to turn it off (shudder). Somewhere along the line my outrage does become personal, and I confess that I don’t really understand what makes a guy like Alan Colmes tick.

While Colmes is sharp, articulate, and even-handed to a fault, he’s certainly not my favorite talk host out there. But one of the reasons I listen to political talk radio (left, right or center) is to hear the callers. And sometimes it’s not the point the caller wants to make, or even the interaction with the host, it’s the spirit of the calls themselves, and what it reveals about the American Zeitgeist. And from the flavor of common thought I hear coming out of the Alan Colmes show is often disturbing.

No, it’s not scientific to come to any conclusions about our culture by sorting through moments in talk radio, but I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone paying attention that we live in a country filled with ignorant and angry and desperate people. And more than any time I remember, people of almost any political persuasion harbor a desire to commit some act, or join some cause, to make a some change in the world. And for better or worse, some of the really intense and despairing folks out in the heartland choose calling Alan Colmes as their way to challenge the madness of our times. Why? I'm not sure. But it makes for some radio that is often as tragic as it is compelling.

Posted in AM Radio, Flying Monkeys, NYC Radio, Progressive Talk, Propaganda, Radio, talk radio | 3 Comments »

Super Cheap, and Almost Super

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

As an urban dweller living in close quarters, I do have one luxury– my own room, or office of sorts. Maybe if you’re lucky you have one too. It’s where I write, think, browse the web and fool with audio. And being a somewhat modern guy, I do most of these things with computers. In fact there’s a few computers here, a monitor, and a bunch of external devices, power supplies and a battery charger or two. It all makes for a very noisy environment. But it’s not the kind of noise that wakes the neighbors. No, it’s the scourge of AM and shortwave listening, RF noise, that fills my room. And as someone who regularly partakes of the amplitude modulation, listening to the radio where I spend much of my time is chronically problematic.

This is why I don’t do much DXing around the house. Too frustrating. A few times I have set up a couple of radios on the other end of the apartment, but here in the big city there’s already quite a bit of RF to contend with anyway. For example, my neighbor four or five buildings down the street has some loud high pulsing noise I can hear at a certain AM frequency from my bathroom, and it’s much louder when I drive by his house. Wonder what he’s doing over there?

Anyway, I’m happy to report I’ve found a solution of sorts– a GE Superadio III. Actually it’s recently been re-branded as an RCA Superadio, but it’s bascially the same affordable workhorse that’s been around for a few decades. No shortwave, just AM and FM. While I hear the FM works pretty darn good, the Superadio really shines as an AM receiver. I have to admit that I haven’t had this radio long enough to cart it out to a good RF quiet spot (which usually means getting out of town) and actually DX with it, I can tell you that more than any other AM I own, it really stands up bravely to the RF barrage. It’s quickly become my radio of choice while I work and write here at the house.

Typical AM DX mainstays around here like AM 740 and CBC’s 860 frequency in Toronto, and WBT in Charlotte can indeed be heard here at night with the Superadio only a few feet from three computers, albeit with a thin layer of noise on top. Which is actually pretty impressive. But what it does really well for me, is bring in many local stations with clarity in the midst of a lot of RF pollution.

And it sounds good too. Has a large six inch speaker and a tweeter for the highs. It’s quite loud if you want to crank it. On the downside, it’s a bit big and not so portable. It’s made in China these days, and the "feel" of the workmanship and the response of the controls tells you that this is not a luxury item. Some people might be put off by the analog tuning, which I have little problem with on medium wave (it’s a bigger issue with shortwave tuning). Speaking of that, perhaps the most annoying issue is the AM dial calibration is WAY off. And unlike the RF-2200‘s beautiful analog tuning setup, the frequencies are increasingly closer together as you go up the dial. On mine, twenty or so AM frequencies occupy the first half of the dial, and the other ninety-some occupy the second half. Somebody’s posted a rather technical and difficult fix for this here, and I see that if you buy the radio from C. Crane they’ll fix this up for you for an extra ten bucks (on top of fifty for the radio, and the shipping).

From what I’ve read online, what accounts for the Superadio’s good behavior in a heightened RF environment also accounts for the sloppy tuning scale situation. Unlike the Superadio I and II, the third version uses something called varactor tuning diodes instead of the usual variable capacitor tuning. In retrospect, what seems to have happened was that during the process of upgrading the performance of the Superadio in the early nineties, they didn’t complete the job of perfecting the interface.

However, if you know the AM dial well and have patient tuning fingers you can work around the dial issues. What makes this radio worth having is that it’s a time-tested performer. It also sounds good. And it’s inexpensive. I found one brand new on ebay for just over thirty bucks, and only ten dollars shipping. Hell, that’s what? Two or three large pizzas? Otherwise you can find the Superadio for forty of fifty dollars in many places online, and in some stores as well I’ve never seen it in a store, but I read that some carry them. Other than J&R in downtown Manhattan I never see DX worthy radios in stores these days. (For fun, go in a Radio Shack and TRY to find the radios.)

I already knew this was a decent radio to have around, and when found it selling at such a bargain price I impulsively bought one for myself. I actually already had a Radio Shack copycat version of the Superadio, which isn’t bad either. But the real thing outshines it. If you look online, there’s quite a mythology/community surrounding the various versions of the Superadio. All three are good radios, and can be found easily on ebay. And if you’re looking for something more classic and handsome, the great granddaddy of the Superadio series, the GE P780 (from the early 1960′s) shows up on ebay now and then. From what I hear, it’s a helluva of a performer. (I’d love to snag one someday.) For a little radio history, you can pick up a little here from one of the key developers of the P780, Conrad Jutson.

Looking forward to taking this black plastic box into the hinterlands (along with my external loop AM antenna) and hearing how it performs in the wild. Speaking of that, while I don’t have any audio from the Superadio to offer here yet, I do have a video. It’s nothing I made. I just came across it on YouTube in the middle of a web search. It’s a quick daytime DX scan of the AM band (from Pennsylvania perhaps) with a Superadio II. While none of the reception is logged or identified, he does pick up nearly seventy stations in one sweep of the band.

While I’m not sure I’ve ever come across an audio archive a radio bandscan on the web (other than ones I’ve posted), not long ago I discovered that there’s actually quite a number of videos of bandscans posted on YouTube. Search under “bandscan” or “dxing” and you’ll find quite a few. However, no videos I’ve seen make a point of identifying much of the reception they come across, but it’s interesting and a little enlightening to hear (and see) what other radios in other places can access out of the ether.

And for me it’s reassuring to know other people do such things, and admit it online. That’s part of why I started this blog, to know that there’s other people who sit alone (typically at night) turning knobs and listening intently, and have a good time.

Posted in AM Radio, Bandscans, Radio | 6 Comments »

When Listening Was Still Easy

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

If you get in the habit of digging into the AM band at night, you’re bound to become familiar with some of the big regional 50,000 watt “clear channel” stations in your part of the world. Growing up in Michigan, stations like WCFL in Chicago, WLW in Cincinnati, and WGAR in Cleveland usually came in like locals at night. The east coast from Boston down to the Carolina’s offered all sorts of signals. Often WWL in New Orleans and WSB in Atlanta came in strong as well.

In the late 1980′s I had gotten into the habit of listening to KMOX in St. Louis on Saturday nights, and despite the fact that I happened to move across the country from Michigan to Louisiana, and then on to Alabama within that handful of years, I never lost the ability to tune it in. And what originally hooked my to KMOX on the weekends was an excellent big band program hosted by a old fellah named Charlie (Menese?). Although it was a great show (I’ll post one some time), and probably a long standing feature of KMOX programming I wasn’t able to find any reference to it on the web. However, what I really grew to love was the show that immediately followed– “Music and Musings” with Tony Oren. (I found one online reference to Tony’s show here.)

Oren’s program, which like the big band show is long gone by now, was the last of a breed of programming I sorely miss, grown-up easy listening. By that I don’t mean the seconal super syrup of “beautiful music,” or the yawny yearning of a “quiet storm.” No, I mean the low-key jazz flavored pop of “middle of the road” radio, specifically the sound of that format by night.

Okay, there’s the nostagia factor I won’t totally deny. If you grew up in the 1960′s, this is probably the kind of radio your parents listened to. And as I’ve written previously, there was a wonderful overnight program on WJR in Detroit, “Night Flight 760,” that played an array of smart easy listening that is embedded in my childhood memories as some of the best radio comfort food I’ve ever heard. And Music and Musings with Tony Oren was the last time I’ve heard anything like it. And I happened to record a show or two back in 1990 when I was living in Mobile, one of which I can now offer you here.

KMOX – Music and Musings with Tony Oren 10-27-90 pt 1

(download)

Yes, it’s true you can still find a few radio stations offering this kind of content. Over the last few years, I’ve known a number of like-minded friends who seek out stations who carry on with pre-rock pop music, calling them “old man stations.” It’s the only radio format left for seniors, and it’s certainly endangered. You’ll can still find a few local stations carrying on this kind of programming in senior hotspots in places like Florida and Arizona. And there the “Music of Your Life” syndicated/satellite thing (which I hear quite often on small town stations when I’m on the road), which is listenable but with no surprises. And AM 740 in Toronto’s mix of oldies and pre-oldies probably makes a lot of old fart DXers across North America feel at home, but I think the kind of radio you hear on this aircheck is probably extinct. These days, stations that cater to the oldest demographic groups inevitably mix in Elvis, the Beatles and the Carpenters. It’s not the same. “Music and Musings” offers something different. Something gone. And there’s nothing rock and roll about it.

Musically, in this aircheck you get some appropriate moody performances from typical stars of this format like Peggy Lee, Buddy Greco and Nat King Cole, and some rich high-fructose instrumentals from Andre Kostelanetz, 101 Strings and the Melachrino Strings. Even Pia Zadora doesn’t take away the beauty of it all. But to be fair, it’s not just the music, but the musings.

To me, a guy like Tony Oren is the penultimate announcer. Just warm enough. Even a little dry. And able to conversationally segue together every element of the broadcast with simple panache and confidence. His pacing is remarkable. It’s not easy to sound so relaxed coming across as sleepy, preposterous, or just boring. I wish I heard more announcers like this today. A total professional. I guess you could call it style. To my ears, so many NPR types strive for this kind of presence and fail.

KMOX – Music and Musings with Tony Oren 10-27-90 pt 2

(download)

But it’s not NPR, it’s just musings. A little anecdote about ol’ Dan Rostenkowski and a big lobbyist funded luxury junket in the tropics here, and some this day in history stuff there. But this aircheck is unedited, and in the second half you get the a CBS newscast. It documents the point in history where Pappy Bush broke his moronic “Read my lips!” campaign promise and signed on to a tax increase and forever pissed off some of his Republican buddies (and may have cost him the 1992 election).

However, I’m not posting this for the news or the commercials, but as an artifact of long gone breezy broadcasting. And as a personal remembrance of all those Saturday nights years ago when I tuned KMOX in on the clock radio and shut out the light.

A follow up to this post (including another aircheck of Tony Oren) can be found here.

Posted in AM Radio, Music Radio, Radio | 20 Comments »

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation – Part 31

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

Here’s another foray into the AM band, as explored in the middle of the night. This recording begins just before 1AM local time, and was captured in the Catskill mountains of New York on Sunday October 1st (or the 2nd officially). Usually I start a scan recording at the low end of a band and work my way up, but this time I’m going the other way. Usually when starting at 530kHz and moving up the AM band, I never quite reach the end of the band, so this sample of broadcasting starts at the ass end of AM, and then I roll backwards through the dial.

I don’t spend that much time DXing though the higher end of the AM band. There’s less powerful stations, and especially here in the city there are far more ethnic talk outlets up that way. But unlike the previous post where I offered a taste of these frequencies, this reception was snatched from the sky out in the country away from the RF noise and the bullying strong local signals of the megalopolis. In fact, there are really no local AM stations in the central Catskills where we stayed that weekend. By day, the AM dial was basically silent all the way across the damn thing. Of course, once the sun went down there was some kind of noise or better at every 10kHz stop. Not a bad location to DX medium wave. And this was recorded with my Tecsun BCL-2000, a very sensitive, but buggy analog radio, which should have been on its best behavior on AM without powerful local signals stirring up annoying images across the dial.

Again, this starts from the right and the dial moves slowly to the left, stopping at every place a radio station that might be something, and then listening. The first station I found was in rural Michigan. Here’s the audio…

Catskills Late Night Medium Wave Scan 10-02-06 A – 1590 to 1410 21:23

(download)

1590 – WTVB Coldwater, MI

A good way to start, with a solid (if faint) station ID from a distant low power station. It’s a one kilowatt oldies station in south central Michigan broadcasting in a directional pattern (to the northwest!). Station identification comes right before the top of the hour. It’s just about 1 AM EDT.

1580 – CKDO Oshawa, ON

An oldies station broadcasting from the other side of Lake Ontario. Starts out with some syrupy 1970′s EZ pop song (sounds like Hall & Oates meets Smokey?) that I’ve never heard before. Maybe it’s some of that “Canadian content” the government forces their music stations to integrate into their playlists. Then “Green Onions,” still one of the greatest insurgent instrumentals around. Sounds great with static too.

1570 – (a hopeless mess)

Lots of talking.

1560 – WQEW New York, NY

Back home in Brooklyn, this waste of a booming clear channel AM signal (carrying the moronic Radio Disney) that lays waste to most of this end of the AM dial. Here’s it’s just an annoyance I can just pass by. Some urban greasy vocoder number on the subject of loneliness.

1550 – CBE Windsor, ON

It’s the news on CBC One. A BBC story on Brazilian politics, and a report of a horrific airline crash there as well. And a tropical storm watch for Newfoundland!

As I’ve complained before, it’s a damn shame that CBC sold their English Language clear channel station in Toronto (at 740kHz) a while back. As much as I appreciate what CHWO does there now, it would be great to have a full service CBC English language station covering the northeastern US on the AM band by night. While everyone is all abuzz over satellite radio, digital radio, streaming radio, and all these new audio broadcast technologies, they seem to have forgotten that AM radio is still so much more efficient, and almost everybody has a receiver that’s ready to go. It just seems like with all this continuing interest in talk and news on AM that it ought to make some national media outlets like NPR, CBC and BBC reconsider snatching up some clear channel AM frequencies in North America, where they would get far broader coverage per transmitter than on FM, and more oomph than any new audio delivery system currently offers. And jeez, they could start with WQEW at 1560 in Queens. Although they squander fifty-thousand watts on mindless kiddie crap, the transmitter is actually owned by the prestigious New York Times.

And another good example of what the Times could do with WQEW, would be the in-depth news and issue radio station the Washington Post offers at 1500 AM in the DC area. But obviously the New York Times doesn’t respect or understand the power of AM radio, and especially the broadcasting potential they’re sitting on (and the NYC market!), and they lease all those kilowatts out to Mickey and Goofy. Just like the way NYC radio powerhouses sellout primetime hours to infomercials on the weekend, it’s really stupid and short-sighted.

After the news, it’s CBC Overnight, a rebroadcast of a Radio Netherlands feature. Of course, there’s not a chance I could pick up this station in New York City because WQEW’s RADIO DISNEY eats up anything near it on the dial, but I can pick it up OK in New Jersey.

1540 – KXEL Waterloo, IA

Weather and a Jim Bohannon promo from Iowa. It’s a 50 kilowatt clear channel signal broadcasting from over nine hundred miles away.

By now I’m noticing a trend in this DX session– Windsor, Coldwater, and Waterloo are almost all in a line straight west from the Catskills. I don’t know enough about propagation to tell you why, but I’ve seen this before when listening to distant AM and shortwave. If I’m picking up some faraway signals from a certain part of the continent or globe I often end up coming across other distant broadcasts from that same direction. It must be some radio "wind" out there.

1530 – WCKY Cincinnati, OH

It’s the culty and crusty Christian geezer, Brother Stair (or Brother Scare as he’s known by people who’ve actually seen the guy). I wrote briefly about this dark Rumpelstiltskin-like codger before (here). The old fart seems to always be carrying on over several shortwave frequencies at any given time. However, this Clear Channel owned Cincinnati 50kW station sells him a few late hours every night. Not only that, but after Brother Stair, an even more disturbed character comes on WCKY, Roy Masters. Masters is so creepy, he makes cult leader Stair actually sound kind of avuncular, and almost normal.

1520 – WWKB Buffalo, NY

It’s "The Joey Reynolds Show," originating from WOR in New York. It’s the number two overnight radio show in America, after Coast to Coast AM. So as an overnight radio listener, I run across Reynolds show quite often. And, I confess I’ve tried to like it.

Reynolds is a consummate broadcaster, originally a Top 40 DJ who had gigs in a number of big radio markets in the 60′s through the 90′s. Supposedly, Reynolds was a key figure in the early “shock jock” scene, although hearing his late night yuk-it-up show you’d never know it (on his page at WOR’s site they call him the “Mr. Nice Guy of Night Radio”). When Reynolds gets on a good rant, he can be quite entertaining. And if he has a good guest, Joey has a personal and quirky interview style that often works quite well. However, most of the time the show is just a messy free-for-all where Reynolds holds court with TOO many co-hosts, or panelists, all talking over each other and carrying on in a less than compelling fashion. And a good example is what you hear in this clip. I believe it’s a repeat of Joey’s weekly “Jewish Hour” (look at the crew here) where there’s usually plenty of kvetching and kooky conversation as they pass the pastrami, but not much more.

And perhaps more significantly, in this piece of his program you hear Joe and the gang discuss what it’s like to be Joey Reynolds, a quasi-celebrity– almost famous, almost great, and almost invariably infatuated with yourself– and mildly insulted that more people don’t feel the same way.

Reynolds show isn’t bad, it’s just not great very often, and every now and then it’s just plain sloppy. I hear a need for some discipline, some tighter formatting and better co-hosts.

Although Reynolds is mostly apolitical (although he does oppose the Iraq war), here he’s on WWKB, one of those Clear Channel “progressive talk” stations ("Buffalo’s Left Channel”). And significantly this particular station features absolutely NO Air America programming. I often listen to WWKB from midnight to one AM when the final hour of Lionel’s show is cut off on WOR (by an extra local hour of Joey Reynolds). And for listener’s in the New York City area who haven’t heard the Ed Schultz show (the biggest liberal talk show in the country now), with the sun is setting so early now you can often catch the last couple hours of most nights on any decent radio (from 5 to 7 PM). However, the local host they rebroadcast from 7 to 10, Leslie Marshall, is a bit shrill and has a rather exuberant gym teacher approach to talk radio which really isn’t my cup of tea.

1510 – WWZN – Boston, MA?

It’s the most likely suspect. It’s sports, that’s for sure. Superbowl hysteria, etc.

1500 – WLQV Detroit, MI & WTWP Washington, DC?

Another broadcast from the direct west. A Detroit religious station. At first there a spot advising listeners to avoid all those awful secular snowman and reindeer holiday cards, and order up a bunch of official Jesus Christ type Christmas cards. Let your friends know just how holy you really are! The show itself is “Walk in the Word,” where there’s a discussion of some super-Christian boy scout type organization and a day in a car pool. Sorry I didn’t catch the whole thing. In the background there’s a Geico commercial, probably WTWP which normally comes in fairly well in the city.

1490 – (a big throbby mess)

This is one of the infamous graveyard frequencies (along with 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, and 1450kHz, where all the stations are VERY local, and are only allowed tiny transmitters. Unless one of these babies is fairly close to you, or you get lucky, this is what you usually hear at one of these stops on the dial– LOTS of far off stations, all at once.

1480 – (Joey Reynolds again)

Don’t know what this might be. In looking for a Joey Reynolds affiliate at this frequency I did find WABB in Mobile, AL, but that seems a bit unlikely. Then oddly, the bumper music on Joey Reynolds (going into a Tanya Roberts Vegas ad) is the Four Tops, and then turning the radio brings in another Four Tops song, which might be an oldies station in Canton, OH (WHBC).

1470 – (Coast to Coast AM)

It’s Coast to Coast, with Art Bell. Which can be found on dozens of stations any night of the week, almost anywhere in America. However, looking through the CTC affiliate list I found a few possibilities for this frequency– three in the Midwest and one in Georgia. Hard to say.

1460 – (mess)

Music, and somewhere in there, Art Bell again. In fact, I think Art Bell can be heard somewhere in the next two indecipherable heaps of reception as well.

1450 – (mess)

If you like cacophony, you got it here. You can hear why I say this end of the band can be a real morass.

1440 – (mess)

More pulsing noise and voices. One talk show rides on top with of the confusion, but never breaks out into anything very readable.

1430 - CKYC Toronto, ON?

Another jumble to be sure, but it sounds like Chinese is spoken throughout, and this ethnic Toronto station seems like a likely suspect. Reception is poor.

1420 – (another stinky mess, with one station dominating)

Lots of advertising, invitations to go online, etc. A very hazy collection of low power AM stations in competition here too. If I was more patient I could have stuck around figured out where the dominant station (featuring a set of ads) was probably coming from.

1410 – KQV Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh news station rebroadcasting old radio shows in a late night segment called “When Radio Was.” Here you get a segue from “The Adventures of Sam Spade” to “The Shadow.”

Well, that’s as good a place to stop as any. As I look at my log here, there’s really not any decent reception until I get up into the 1300-1200kHz range. But you get the idea, lots of local stations and less important outlets in larger markets. The few big clear channel AM’s in this part of North America are mostly in the 1500′s. If I continue on with this scan in another post, it will start further up where you can actually hear what’s being said without eight other stations pulsing in the background.

I must admit that I would still love to hear some AM scans from across the country. I’m really only familiar with the AM radio scene east of the Rocky Mountains, and I’d sure like to hear (and post) some recordings of medium wave scans from way out west, and from other places as well. I kinda set out what I was looking for in general, if any readers would be so kind to record their adventures in amplitude modulation and send them my way. I’m still interested in other ears, other radios and other parts of the world, if you’d like to chip in you can email me here.

And as always, thanks for listening.

(This post originally appeared in Beware of the Blog.)

Posted in AM Radio, Crazy Religion, dxing, talk radio | No Comments »

Progressive Talk vs. Fast Food, Gasoline and Box Stores

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

Very soon, the Air America radio network will either be sold or "so long." The word on the street is that if somebody doesn’t come forward and bail out the network by December the bankruptcy proceedings will move into Chapter 7. Liquidation. The end. And if that does happen, it will be sad to see a brave media experiment crash and burn so quickly, but it won’t be tragedy. However, if after the votes are counted the opposition party long championed by Air America doesn’t take at least the House, if not the Senate, THAT would be tragic. If some folks from the other side of the aisle can’t put some reigns on all these ongoing runaway disasters the Republicans have brought on, then we got trouble. Big trouble.

And please, if you disagree with me politically on this, just leave me alone. To say I’m tired of getting embroiled in such online debates would be an understatement. This is a post about radio, not the start of an argument I’m willing to engage in, or will host.

As before, I’m admittedly repeating a few unsubstantiated rumors as I have in earlier Air America commentaries. And what I’ve heard is that Air America does indeed have some solid leads on finding a buyer, and the brain trust is making plans for 2007. Then again, I’m not going to underestimate Air America’s potential for making mistakes (or worse). There’s very little time, and the possibility that Air America Radio may soon be a memory is still very real.

However, if it they do survive the year I”m happy to pass along that one of the supposed decisions that should soon follow the anticipated sale of the network is the departure of Al Franken from Air America. While I’d hate to dismiss all of Franken’s activism, authorship, and (for lack of a better word) comedy over the years, it’s increasingly obvious by the day that Franken is out of his element, and chronically tedious on the radio (beyond brief and tightly formatted guest appearances). Whether you liked Franken’s show or not, you ought to be glad to see it go as well. Not only is his yawn inducing program a high profile disaster, but the huge drain on the now bankrupt corporation is intolerable. It makes no sense. Thom Hartmann would make a fine replacement.

Speaking of has been TV celebrities hosting AAR programming, Jerry Springer’s demotion from the regular lineup into syndication was almost enough to make a few of us think that Air America’s management might be on the right track again. But perhaps the TV ringmaster has been getting his revenge by lending his program out to a couple of Air America’s disgruntled former hosts. While Springer was "Dancing With The Stars" (or something else) he turned his show over to Mike Malloy a couple of days, and to Marc Maron (with his partner Jim Earls) twice as well. You can download archives of Maron and Earls filling in for Jerry Springer here if you have a BitTorrent client installed. Or you can hear a clip here. And now Malloy is actually back on the air nightly with a new network. And if a deal can be worked out, The Marc Maron Show may join the lineup too.

Two of Air America founders, Anita and Sheldon Drobny, have partnered with Arizona entrepreneur Dr. Mike Newcomb to form “Nova M,” a new liberal talk radio syndication startup. After offering a failed bid to purchase Air America, the trio decided to go into business for themselves. And for now, Malloy provides the star power. You can stream his live from nine to midnight from the Nova M site. You can podcast his program (for free) from Nova M as well, and as always The White Rose Society offers full shows as well. (However, the Nova M downloads and podcasts have the commercials removed.) No news yet on whether Maron will actually join up as well. So far, their programming is only reaching a handful of lesser market stations, but taking on one or two rejected Air America programs with built-in grassroots support isn’t a bad start. And several west coast stations in larger markets have already signed on to adding Malloy’s show to their roster in short order.

It seems to me that in the scheme of things it would make sense for Air America to scale back their operations (within a realistic budget) and become more of a provider of sydicated progressive programming, along with companies like Nova M and P1, instead of attempting to provide a round the clock network. In general, real competition helps engender better programming.

Of course, the neocon nutbags and their online goons are rubbing their calloused knuckles together over the possibility that Air America may go down in a ball of flames. And if that does happen, you can be sure that clowns like O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin will spin around in circles, spittle flying, howling that liberal talk radio is dead! (And perhaps that it should be made illegal.) Just like Kerry’s botched Bush joke was superficially covered as some monumental exposure of Democratic Party disdain for America troops, the supposed demise of progressive talk will certainly reverberate within the rightist media machine if Air America bites the dust. And not surprisingly, it will be picked up by what’s left of the mainstream media as well, and well meaning talking heads will repeat it as if it were a foregone conclusion. And that’s why progressive talk will live on, and why it was created in the first place.

As far as Air America’s fate, it’s important to remember this. When the network was assembled in early in 2004, there were no "progressive talk" radio stations. And if AAR does go under, progressive talk is NOT going to go away. Although Air America didn’t exactly invent the left-wing talk show format (one might say i.e. America did that), they were the first to introduce shamelessly liberal commercial talk stations into major cities. Probably the primary reason AAR made the risky decision to create a seventeen (and ultimately eighteen) hour clock of weekday syndicated programming out of the box was that there was this overwhelming opinion that liberal talk shows couldn’t work and wouldn’t fit on all the established talk stations then in operation. Talk radio that dared to oppose the Republican Party in any real way just didn’t fit on mainstream talk radio by 2004. According one of Air America’s founders (and he’s still there!), Jon Sinton: "Just as you wouldn’t tune in to a country station to hear jazz, so you wouldn’t turn to a conservative talk station to get a liberal show." Air America was slowly adding affiliates through the spring of 2004, coaxing stations into airing all, or most, of their programming, and then to the surprise of many, radio giant Clear Channel decided to help out, even if just for business reasons.

Shortly after Air America went on the air, Clear Channel revamped a losing oldies outlet in Portand, Oregon by incorporating and up and coming new lefty host Ed Schultz with AAR programming, and it was almost an instant success. With that victory, the station’s positioning statement- "progressive talk" became a format beyond the name of any network or host. While Air America programming has generally been a part of all these Clear Channel liberal talk outlets, each is programmed individually, with other local and (left-leaning) syndicated hosts mixed with other content. So in reality, although there are a number of stations which do carry exclusively just Air America (and perhaps local) programming, that’s the minority. The loss of Air America would hardly mean losing the foundation of the format itself. Although I don’t see it ever becoming more popular than conservative talk radio, progressive talk isn’t going away. At least not until things get a little more… normal.

Not long ago, blogger Michael J. West wrote a post entitled: “Rush Limbaugh And Company, Air America Radio, And The Folly Of All Of Them.” In his piece, West quoted the late talk host Bob Lassiter giving his opinion of the talk radio format: "This is not a battle between the forces of good and evil," Lassiter had said. "It’s entertainment. Period." And in the piece West puts forth the idea that conservative and liberal talk radio merely preach to their respective faithful, and that they have no real political influence. And in a Lassiter inspired closing West intones: "Let the babies have their bottles."

The problem with West’s dialectic isn’t the logic itself, but that he only discovered Lasstier and his inherent talk radio wisdom on the other side of a paradigm shift that has changed all the rules. The clip he quoted was from something I recorded and used in the Lassiter profile I wrote a decade ago. And back in 1996, that provocative evaluation of talk radio made sense, or at least explained the self-serving zeitgiest within right wing talk radio that made it immediately distasteful at the time. But, in the scheme of things 1996 seems like a thousand years ago. And it would be folly to ignore or deny what has happened to AM talk radio since then.

I’ve always felt there was something fishy about the rampant breakout of conservative talk radio that’s gone down since Lassiter uttered those words. And now an ugly “exhibit a” has emerged that increases my suspicion. Although it was barely covered in the major media, a talk show listener made an in-house ABC radio memo public last week, and it included a list of over eighty heavy-hitter radio sponsors who have an ongoing request that “NONE of their commercials air within Air America programming.” On the list– Microsoft, GE, Sony, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Exxon Mobil, the US Navy… and so many more. Jeez. No wonder I hear half a dozen Geico ads per hour on Air America. (Download the memo here.)

Just like how Tom Delay and his friends gerrymandered Texas to assure Republican dominance of the state’s representatives in the U.S. Congress, these huge corporations have gerrymandered talk radio itself to assure their money flows specifically to the Republican talk show hosts who support their corporate/political interests. And need I remind you that ABC initially launched Limbaugh’s national program, and since have spawned rightist smearmerchants like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin into syndication as well.

And speaking of 1996, at that time ABC stations like WABC had notably non-conservative hosts like Lionel and Lynn Samuels on the air. And Mike Malloy had just started his successful four year run on their Chicago affiliate, WLS. Over the years, almost all the on-air voices of dissent against the Bush administration have disappeared from the official ABC affiliates as well. (However, as the memo says ABC syndicated programming appears on many other stations, including those that broadcast AAR content.)

By 2004, talk radio had not only become incredibly political, but feverishly right wing across the board. And worse than that, every talk station in the country had become a defacto public relations outlet for the Republican party. And if the US was really really overwhelming Republican, maybe that might be… okay. But however you feel, be real. That’s never been true, and never will be. Who would want that? It’s bad enough they play "The Twist" and "Runaround Sue" everyday on oldies stations, but do you want Bush talking points to become the sole topic of conversation on commercial syndicated talk radio? I mean, even if you agree with that crap you must have limits. The fact that the right wing media commandeered the commercial talk format created a grassroots demand for a counterpart– a corresponding “pole” to balance an extremely polarized media landscape. Something never really needed or desired before, progressive talk radio, is an artificial construct setup to resist and oppose the near monopoly of syndicated Republican spew across the AM dial.

Today we find ourselves immersed in a talk radio cold war. Unless you’re doing a specialty show on pets, nutrition or investment, it’s almost impossible for a talk program to ignore what’s been going on in Iraq and within our government itself. In the previous environment, liberal, moderate and conservative political sentiments arose occasionally in commercial talk radio, as well as on NPR. Just like in real life. And left-wing thought always had a home on many community and college stations (and of course the Pacifica network). Conservative talk, which was already on the rise, became ever more powerful over the course of the Clinton Impeachment and the 2000 Election disaster. But once the 2001 terrorist attacks launched millions of Americans into a fear-based jingoistic frenzy, the talk radio industry purged nearly every host who might question the Bush regime, or any of the questionable actions they have initiated since that lethal day.

And NPR? In the ensuing years National Public Radio has been busy pleasing the empowered right wing critics in the government who are trying to eliminate federal funding from anything they deem as “liberal media.” NPR is now so balanced that their programming seems to counter every bit of common sense with a right wing commentary giving the Republican counter-spin. While there are exceptions, more than ever NPR has evolved into of a "lifestyle" network focusing on apolitical cultural fluff. And the community and alternative stations do their reporting as bravely or ineptly as one might hope, but their reach is so small in the scheme of things. And sure, the internet and podcasting makes it easier to find alternative news sources, but the "turning on the faucet" aspect of local traditional radio still overwhelmingly trumps new media by the numbers. And if the original talk radio faucet was bought and paid for by the Republican party, radio types opposing the Bush talking points had only one choice– build a new progressive talk radio faucet.

Frankly, I’m not convinced that progressive talk radio can influence the electorate, or sway national opinion. In general, political radio is as Lassiter claimed– "support group radio." And while it seemed like a pointless idea in the middle of Clinton’s two terms, in this scary new America there’s a lot of listeners in need of some support. And when you realize the AM dial is bursting with lies and smears and narratives skewed beyond belief, there is comfort in knowing that there are “entertainers” on the same band who are actually telling the truth, and making fun of the villains and propagandists. It’s kind of sad, but we really do need progressive talk now. Not because it’s the best radio concept ever imagined, but it’s the reality we’re left with– communing with broadcasters who are willing to counter the Republican media loudspeaker, and hosts who can figure out how to make us laugh when there’s not much funny to go around.

Optomistically, perhaps progressive talk radio will actually win over a few heartland listener’s from the clutches of the Republican spin machine. But that’s not why it’s so important. Outside of a few interesting non-commercial radio stations, music radio is dying. Dead, perhaps. For many of us the only radio format that consistently offers personality and humanity is talk radio. And if in these incredibly political times one side has been practically eliminated from the debate, we need to support the underdog, even if you don’t agree. And for those of us angered and frustrated from being shut out of the dialogue, it’s heartening to gather around these new progressive radio troughs and have our meetings and exchange information. In the rampant madness of our times, it’s so important for us to try to hold on to our sanity.Let’s face it. Two plus two must continue to equal four, no matter what. And when so many talk hosts are shouting "five,"with great emotion and rightousness it helps to hear from more thoughtful voices and be reminded that the equation still yields "four," no matter what they say, and to celebrate the glory and importance of that small fact.

Whether you like it or not, progressive radio is here to stay. Get used to it. Whether Air America continues is really beside the point. However, if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld (and a number of others) find themselves on trial for war crimes one day, and our government embarks on a path of trying to heal all the grief and hatred it has engendered all over the world. And if some of these high roller war profiteers are actually rounded up and tried… And if all those talk radio entertainers who cheered our nation into a needless bloody war of aggression are publicly shamed, then maybe once again the idea of "support group radio" for dissenters will be just as absurd as it seemed a decade ago. And then perhaps talk radio can once again be as mischievous and truly experimental (or even pointless) as it was in the days of Bob Lassiter. Maybe.

Meanwhile, all we’re left with now is satire and bad news. In fact, I suspect more bad news is on the way. Get ready. Hey progressive talk hosts? Bring the funny. And bring the facts.

(This post originally appeared in Beware of the Blog.)

Posted in AM Radio, Broadcast Band, NYC Radio, Progressive Talk, talk radio | No Comments »

Bye Bob

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

I was in the middle of working on another radio piece for this blog when I took a break to eat and trolled a few blogs for some dinner reading. I guess I was feeling a bit braver than usual and ended up at a blog I’ve been avoiding lately because the content there has gotten increasingly painful to read. That’s when I found out that Bob Lassiter has signed off.

No, he’s not dead. Not yet. But the running theme of Lassiter’s blog has always been about the rapid approach of the end of his life and the thoughts and reflections inherent in being aware during the process. In his last blog entry (May 21), Lassiter says: “I am faced with both a certainty that cannot be denied, and an uncertainty that consumes me. I choose to make the remainder of the journey in privacy…”

In a way, Lassiter’s blog has been a long goodbye letter to his fans, and that’s never been more true than this last post. You can read it here.

In this profound period for Lassiter, it’s as difficult for me to write about him as it ever was. Lassiter is a such a paradoxical character. He’s a brilliant high school drop-out, an introvert who loves attention, and a man who debated great spiritual and intellectual issues with callers just to entertain and attract listeners. On any given show you might hear a raging provocateur, an obsessed geek, or just a sentimental fool.

As I’ve said before, Lassiter was one of the greats of talk radio. A host like no other who sought and created adversary listeners, demanded intellectual honesty over belief, and was often audibly bored or uncomfortable when embraced over the phone by fans or folks who agreed with him. There was nobody like Lassiter in talk radio before, and there won’t be another anytime soon.

As Lassiter’s blog comes to a close, the other popular site for Bob’s fans is going strong and getting better all time. "Bob Lassiter Airchecks" started small a while back when a fan put up a simple site with a few recordings he’d purchased from a collector. I happily sent him a bunch of the Lassiter material I had, and more people have been doing the same thing. While it’s hardly complete, this site now offers a compelling overview of most of Lassiter’s career, and quite a variety of his antics and monologues. No eye candy there, just plenty of Lassiter radio you can download for free (thanks George!). Have at it. And there’s more… VIDEO.

Yes, you can now WATCH Bob Lassiter. There’s two extended clips there. One is from 1988– a wacky local Tampa public access show– "Hot Seat

(download)

Hot Seat was a Florida public access TV show hosted by Carroll Sudler (Who now has a loopy left-wing talk radio show out in California as “Harrison”) And doesn’t Lassiter look remarkably healthy and confident in this clip? And he actually seems to be having fun.

However, what’s really amazing is an episode of CNN’s "Crossfire" featuring Lasster AND Rush Limbaugh.

It was 1990, and Limbaugh had only been national for a couple of years and Lassiter was doing afternoon drive at WLS in Chicago. At this time they were roughly equals in their field. Of course, it’s the same obnoxious TV slapfight Crossfire always was, and nothing is really discussed or decided. However, Lassiter actually looks more comfortable than Limbaugh on camera (and for all the talk of Bob’s weight back then, he is CONSIDERABLY thinner than Rush), and he gets his licks in nicely over the course of the bickering. If you’re a Lassiter fan, you’re going to want to downloadboth of these clips and take a look. You’ll see him in his prime and at the peak of his career.

The irony I get from the Crossfire clip is how flustered and defensive Limbaugh gets about being labeled a "radical." He retorts that he’s merely “an entertainer” who doesn’t want to “change people’s minds or to cause people trouble.” El Rushbo says he just wants to “fun on the radio.” It’s too bad Lassiter didn’t say it. Because in that case it actually would have been close to the truth.

(download)

But I gotta tell you, one aircheck that’s recently been added to this site is one I’ve been wanting to hear for a long time. It’s Lassiter’s final radio show, from December 1, 1999. And fans will be happy to know that the Mad Dog went down in style that day, raging and ranting with his dark sense of humor intact. The target of his anger? The very station he was on– WFLA. You don’t hear this kind of thing very often in commercial radio.

WFLA management (and Clear Channel) had apparently decided not to renew his contract, and were avoiding Bob in the hallway and not taking his calls. So, breaking a big talk radio taboo he took his beef with the station on the air. It’s “nothing to lose” radio and Lassiter is in fine form.

By this time, Lassiter knew he was a lame duck. He’d lost gigs before and was well aware that radio was a cutthroat business. However, what really irked him was the silent treatment he was getting. I mean, who WOULD want to fire Lassiter face to face? And no one did. He says on his blog that he got a short call the next day simply telling him he didn’t need to come in to work anymore.

On this last show, Lassiter mentions several times another show he did a few years before where he discussed the heartless and gutless realities of the radio business. It was quite a program. For three hours Lassiter didn’t take calls. He just recounted his radio career in dramatic detail, highlighting the lack of mercy in the business. I featured some of it when I did a two part profile on Lassiter for WFMU’s “Aircheck” in 2003, but you can hear the last two-thirds of that show at Bob Lassiter Airchecks. It’s called Radio For One.”

In fact, you can go to the Bob Lassiter Airchecks site and listen to his last show at WPLP, then Radio For One, and finish up with the WFLA finale you’ll hear the definitive history of Lassiter’s radio career from the man himself.

And now, it’s equally difficult to end this post and say something meaningful about Lassiter’s declining health, or that he’s ending his relationship with his fans and followers. So I won’t. Except to say I wish him well (as much as that means). And thank you Bob, for the time you spent with me a decade ago, as uncomfortable as it was for the both of us.

So, for a few hours or days (or until Lassiter turns the comments off on this latest post) you can still say something to Lassiter if you wish. Or you might just want to read some of the comments there. He’s requested “no questions.” Seems fair. And also, don’t pray for Bob. He wouldn’t like that either.

Be good.

(This post originally appeared in Beware of the Blog.)

Posted in AM Radio, Bob Lassiter, Radio, talk radio | No Comments »

The Last of Lassiter

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

The Mad Dog has been silenced. After six years of rapidly declining health, talk radio giant Bob Lassiter passed away Friday morning October 13, 2006. His died in his bed, unconscious and without pain. And while Lassiter didn’t choose to suffer as he did over the last few years, he did manage to die as he had wished (considering the circumstances). And an integral part of that process was discussing his impending death with his fans, or anybody who cared to read about it. For over a year he blogged his slow demise.

Lassiter had turned 61 just days ago. Although the official cause was kidney failure brought on by diabetes, Lassiter was also a heavy smoker, a junk food enthusiast, and somebody who carried around a lot of bottled up frustration and anger. All life-shortening habits. Up until the end, Lassiter did what he wanted to do the way he wanted to do it. Sometimes being headstrong can be fatal.

Younger than most of the 1960′s rock stars still working the oldies circuit, Lassiter died of old age. If there is some mercy in all of this, it’s that Bob’s radio career was marked by an impatience and disdain for old feeble callers, and he became elderly rather quickly and in private. And thanks to the blog he kept right up until the end, it was plain to see that he never lost his edge.

It seems a bit pointless to recap all I’ve written about Lassiter while he was alive (you can read those here, here, and here). In his own strange way, he was a talk radio giant who continues to have a huge effect on those who recall his program, as well as those who continue to hear his work via the growing archive available on the web. And when Lassiter’s blog occasionally opened for comments from readers (as it has now at its closing) the onslaught of listener accounts of changed lives and his influence were astounding. Having such power always seemed to baffle Lassiter, who once said: "It makes no difference if I change anyone’s mind, or influence anyone to do something. It’s not the point of my show."

Lassiter delighted in making listeners look at issues and ideas from a different angle, to break open clichés and tired narratives to re-examine the contents. For me personally, I know that after listening to Lassiter’s show for a while I’ve never heard (or thought about) talk radio the same way.

Through almost pure happenstance (basically by being in the right places at the right time) I found myself in the strange position of becoming a torchbearer of Lassiter’s legacy over the last few years. However, that torch has since been passed into the hands of others who have provided online places where people can hear, discuss and learn about "The Bob Lassiter Show." While it only aired in three radio markets over the course of roughly twelve years, Lassiter’s program was one of the most powerful in the history of talk radio. And although he never reached the national syndication status many felt he deserved, Lassiter in all his show biz complexity is now international and forever. Aspiring talk hosts would be wise to study his work.

Before I ever heard Bob Lassiter on the radio, I had heard of him. Almost by accident (it’s a long story…) I ended up moving to Tampa in early 1991. While it took me a while to adjust to Florida life, I was immediately impressed with the local talk station, WFLA. I’d never heard anything like it. The presentation was cocky and irreverent (Lionel was doing afternoon drive at the time) and more importantly, it was unpredictable. And except for the warm and breezy morning show (and the daily syndicated Limbaugh garbage) WFLA’s hosts would insult and spew and hang up on stupid callers and talk about things I never heard discussed on the radio before. Little did I know that I was witnessing the heyday of Florida entertainment talk radio. But at that time, Bob Lassiter had already come and gone.

I used to occasionally chat with one of my neighbors over the fence behind my subtropical apartment, and often he’d hear me out on my little patio listening to WFLA. He would always talk about how WFLA wasn’t the same since this Lassiter guy had left town. He’d recount Lassiter’s antics in great detail and talk about how popular he was. I imagined Lassiter as some dark prince of talk radio, a strange force of nature I had sadly missed out on. It was still a few years away from the time when you could discover a distant (or dead) talk host through the web.

Then a year and a half later, Lassiter reappeared on the Tampa radio scene. This time at a new talk station, WSUN. It was billed as “Entertaining Talk Radio For the 90′s,” and they set out to out-attitude the fearless Jacor talk leader in the market (and Lassiter’s former employer), WFLA. (For some reason, I was mailed a promotional cassette promoting WSUN at the time, and you can download a copy of from the Bob Lassiter Airchecks website.)

It’s hard to imagine today, but WSUN was not only apolitical in its approach to talk radio. It was also rabidly un-topical. Topics they said, were “poison.” The format jumped into the Tampa market with a bunch of high-end radio talent (specifically Neil Rogers) by shipping in most of the programming from Cox Broadcasting sister station WIOD in Miami. Lassiter was cooling his heels in Iowa after his tumultuous gig at WLS in Chicago when Rogers lobbied for Cox bring him back to do morning drive at WSUN, followed by the WIOD line-up.

While I’m not a morning guy, I went as far as setting up a timer and tape deck to occasionally listen to this show. Although Lassiter was impressive and funny, it wasn’t the wild radio ass extravaganza I’d been led to expect. In retrospect, at a station where shows weren’t supposed to be topical Lassiter’s trademark incendiary monologues and convoluted set-ups were rarely heard. Most of the time Bob was left to try to do what Neil does so well– to riff and bitch and cause trouble for hours on end.

When Lassiter moved to afternoons at WSUN, now following Rogers show, I listened to both of them all the time. And when Lassiter and his mentor began their famous on-air feud, their back to back programs took a nasty turn. Neil incessantly provoked Lassiter into a frothing rabid dog every afternoon, and Lassiter responded in kind, countering Rogers point for point and it got meaner every day. And just as getting stuck at station where a loose shock-talk approach prevailed put Lassiter at a disadvantage, the on-air slap fight between talk monsters was just something Rogers was much better at as well. While Rogers seemed to enjoy getting Lassiter’s goat more every day, Lassiter seethed and sniped and became moody and dark as he found himself becoming the public enemy of his radio mentor. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard Lassiter lose a fight. For those of us who witnessed the carnage it was nice to hear them made amends last year when Bob made his last radio appearance on Roger’s show.

And then after WSUN disbanded, Lassiter was under a contractual non-compete clause and couldn’t work in Tampa area radio for a number of months. But as soon as he became available, WFLA started sniffing around and brought Lassiter back into the fold one more time. And thus began his last hurrah.

Suddenly, I was hearing the Bob Lassiter I’d only heard my neighbor talk about. Lassiter was truly the Mad Dog once again. For me, Lassiter’s new nightly show on WFLA was immediately addictive in a way I can only compare to how people get locked into television programs. It was like a soap opera you couldn’t miss, or the way a geek might crave a Star Trek or Twilight Zone fix. I found myself spending my daylight hours recalling Lassiter’s antics from the night before with my friends, and then coming home in prickly anticipation over what kind of crazy shit Lassiter might do that night. It was a constant parade of unpredictable drama and wit and thought, and countless strange radio conversations.

I was doing a lot of freelance journalism at the time, and I got a green light from one of my editors to put together a cover story feature on the Mad Dog. Suddenly something I just enjoyed for entertainment became an intellectual pursuit, and so much more (and less).

Now instead of just listening, I began recording every Lassiter show to study for the article. Of course, I had no idea at the time that airchecks of Lassiter would be something I would collect or cherish years later. As the tapes piled up, I would edit significant monologues and calls from these tapes into complications for source material for the profile. Then, after weeks of listening and recording and interviewing many of Lassiter’s past associates and co-workers, I assembled a tall stack of questions and was ready to actually talk to the man himself. When I asked for the interview, I assumed it would take place at the radio station. Instead, Lassiter invited me into his house. Several days later I spent four hours in an air conditioned suburban kitchen drinking hot weak coffee and interrogating Bob Lassiter. And boy did he hate it.

In the course of working on the article, I probably met with Lassiter three or four times (including sitting in with him during his show) and he was always civil and basically pleasant. But he was never friendly. Not even close. In fact, after the interview Lassiter went on his show and made fun of me and complained about having to put up with the inquisition. To add insult to injury, he misrepresented my questions and generally made me look foolish. I hadn’t expected that.

In general, writing the piece became an unpleasant experience. The more I delved into Bob’s reality the worse I felt. I was having Lassiter nightmares, dreaming he was taking me to task for my foolish musings or that I never was able to actually finish the damn profile. In the end I found myself trying to adequately balance what was good and bad and true about Lassiter without writing a puff piece, or mentioning how creepy it felt being in the same room with him. There was so much to say about Lassiter, but it was difficult to have it all make sense.

But finally after much rewriting and editing it all came together. In the article, Lassiter claimed he tried conduct a two-tier program. "I do a show for half the audience that understands what I’m doing, and the other half that don’t can amuse the other half" he said. The piece I ultimately wrote was two-tier as well. I hoped that those who loved or hated Lassiter’s show (and there were many in both categories in the Tampa area) would find many reasons to justify the feelings they already had about the man, and that others could get a grip on his interesting inconsistences. My father, who couldn’t stand Lassiter thought the feature helped him understand why Lassiter was such an asshole. On the other hand, Lassiter himself really liked the article. (If you’re interested, you can read the text here.) And contrary to his earlier insults, Lassiter was quite appreciative and personally thanked me for writing it (and for getting all his quotes right). I was glad it was all over, and was a little thankful that I wouldn’t have to deal with Lassiter again, except as a listener.

To be fair, Lassiter wasn’t any more or less warmhearted with me than he was with most people. On his show (and later on his blog) he’d always been quite open about being a misanthrope. “I don’t like people,” Lassiter told me during that interview. “I don’t like people around me.” And while I never intended to be his friend, I was a bit taken aback by how awkward it was just talking with him. I’ve never experienced anyone quite like him in person– soft-spoken, cordial, and cold. Then again, it didn’t feel personal. I don’t think he disliked me in particular. But he did want to make it profoundly clear that he wasn’t going to be my pal.

By the time I left Tampa in 1997, Lassiter’s show lacked the buzz and crackle it had just a year before. After not being able to ply his provocative trademark radio style for a number of years, Lassiter burst out of the box at WFLA with guns blazing. But this time around was different than the times he did the same thing at WPLP, WFLA the first time around, and at WLS. Lassiter was wiser this time. When I interviewed him he told me: "You have to constantly change, yet without giving the perception of having changed, or you eventually burn out your audience." He knew his hostile radio style could create a big splash in a media market (and occasionally create some really unique radio), but maintaining that abrasive vibe for an extended period would likely darken the show into a negative mess for all concerned.

I think his new game plan that time around was to cycle his approach. All his previous gigs hadn’t lasted much longer than two years, and this time around in the home park where he had perfected his style he planned to have a long successful run. I asked him if at the beginning of this WFLA stint if he’d ever shift into the warm and fuzzy persona he often offered up at WSUN. “I will eventually be able to,” he said. “But I can’t right now."

Then a few months later Bob took on a female co-host as he did at WSUN. At SUN it was Sharon Taylor (who is mentioned in the last post on his blog, and currently is part of the morning team at WFLA), but on WFLA he was joined by his wife Mary (who masqueraded as “Lou”) and often his producer “Flounder.” While it wasn’t bad, and Bob at times was still the irascible “Mad Dog” when cornered, it wasn’t the carefully constructed outrageous drama with a constant stream of entertainingly angry callers. It was an attempt to be conversational and to have fun without resorting to being a prick so often. Bob’s obsession with computers and day trading became a major feature of his show as well. In retrospect, I think that the less than ballistic Lassiter was still a more compelling and individual talk host than over ninety percent of what passes for talk radio nowadays. But it wasn’t the same wild ride that made Lassiter the legend who burns bright in listener’s memories.

Once I moved to New York, I occasionally checked out Lassiter’s show over the web. I don’t recall anything special. I had heard second hand from Florida friends Lassiter’s three year run at WFLA ended in late 1999, and that in the end he did something you rarely hear. He went on the air and trashed the station. The Bob Lassiter Airchecks site has an archive of his final show, and it’s classic smoldering Lassiter. As his contract was running out, WFLA management was putting off negotiating a new one with him. Even the staff was avoiding him in the building. But after his audience was made aware of the situation and his anger at the station, Lassiter was asked to stay home. And that’s where he spent the rest of his life.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Bob Lassiter had been on the WFMU radar for a long time. I was working a table at their record fair when I discovered the first volume of the station’s “Radio Archival Oddities” cassette featuring a “Tampa talk host” who was none other than the magnificent Lassiter. When the Aircheck program debuted in 2002 I began contributing clips I had compiled when I wrote the article, and people beyond Tampa and Chicago began to discover there was more to Lassiter than those calls from Rocky the Rock-n-Roll Klansman and the guy in the Airstream trailer (who in reality were actually the same person).

Meanwhile, the state of talk radio (especially in New York) was increasingly right wing and depressing. It seemed like a prime time for Lassiter to appear in some market and stir up trouble again. As I regularly searched the internet for news of (and references to) Bob Lassiter, two things became obvious. The first was that Lassiter had indeed disappeared from the talk radio scene. Occasional postings on message boards and Usenet only revealed people who were doing the same thing I was, wondering what ever happened that Lassiter character?

The other thing I realized was that the few clips of Lassiter that were floating around hardly gave a full picture of his complicated and convoluted radio persona. Many people who discovered Lassiter through WFMU were blown away by his provocative talk style, but it also gave many superficial snapshots of his work. In the age of Bush, Lassiter sounded to many like a cunning and angry liberal who bravely battled rednecks, fundamentalist kooks and conservative morons. While he indeed contended with all sorts of folks on the battlefield of his program, Lassiter was never really left wing. He was a libertarian leaning contrarian with a mean streak. And he was so much more (and sometimes so much more frustrating) than what newcomers might glean from a few heart-pounding bits.

So in 2003 I set upon the task of providing a more complete overview of The Bob Lassiter Show by assembling a retrospective which turned out to be a two-part special on WFMU’s Aircheck program. (Which you can hear and/or download here.) I had recently swapped copies of some of my Lassiter archives with an aircheck tape collector for some 80′s Lassiter material he had. And after carefully combing through it all I had enough stuff to assemble a feasible documentary of Lassiter’s career, which aired over two weeks in late July of 2003.

Although, I considered contacting Lassiter to give him a heads-up on what I was doing, but I was frankly apprehensive about reaching out to him again. And while working on the shows I began to get a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t be happy about it. I chickened out.

I was wrong. In less than a week after the first installment aired, Lassiter had found the archive, listened to it, and sent me an appreciative email. “I had forgotten most of the calls, and even some of the "monologue" snippets,” Lassiter said. “Things sure were different back then. It’s hard to believe that I actually got paid to do some of that stuff. It was a lot of fun – though I didn’t always realize it at the time!” In that email I also found out for the first time that Lassiter had serious health problems stemming from diabetes.

Well, that was a relief. Lassiter was happy and I got plenty of positive response from listeners as well. And thanks to the internet, all the Lassiter featured on aircheck continued to find old Lassiter fans and create new ones. Instead of the politically driven smear merchants who clutter talk radio today, Lassiter offered edgy entertainment that was both intellectual and absurd. And at his best he created gripping theater of the mind.

A few weeks later an old Lassiter fan from Tampa heard the Lassiter Aircheck specials and sent me an email. It has inspired him to digitize hundreds of old tapes of Lassiter and other Tampa talk hosts he rescued from his garage. I swapped some of my material with him, and he went on to create some nice CD’s collecting some of the highlights of the golden age of Tampa talk radio. I hope one day that all the material he’s gathered together finds a home online. Speaking of that, a few months later a guy named George in Texas who used to listen to Lassiter on WLS in Chicago found these shows as well, and sent me a nice email thanking me. “Man, I just shit my pants,” he said. And then George set out to spread the joy.

After purchasing some of the aircheck tapes of Lassiter available on the web, George put up a bare bones website featuring MP3′s of these tapes, and asked fans to contribute more. That was the beginning of the wonderful “Bob Lassiter Airchecks” site, which continues to grow with more new additions all the time. Now anyone who wants to truly explore (or remember) the full breadth of Bob Lassiter’s radio magic and mischief can access a huge online resource that could keep them busy for months. And I should add that it’s free as well. More than anyone, George has assured that Lassiter’s radio legacy will live on for many years to come, warts and all. That’s what I call public service. A busy Yahoo Lassiter fan group has sprung up as well, which often served as a place for his followers to converse when they were shut out of speaking on his personal blog.

Sometime in 2004 the first “blog lassiter” began. Lassiter shut it down after he began to get too many people wanting to associate with Lassiter via the comments section. The second (or maybe third?) version of his blog went online last summer, and it remains today. While comments were normally closed (except on the rare posts where Lassiter would allow them), the last post has been opened for comments from readers and fans. And as you might guess, they’re piling up quickly at this writing.

What became obvious to anyone coming across Lassiter’s blog was that it was going to be a chronicle of the end of his life. It was the document of a grouchy old man going through a slow and painful death. But it served a more important purpose in the long run. It kept the long love affair between Lassiter and his listeners alive until the very end. To be sure, it was often a dysfunctional relationship, but he cherished the attention and his fans clung to having some connection to a voice that had meant so much to them.

I’ve come to believe that Lassiter was as shy as he was egocentric and angry. He functioned best when he was in charge of the things, especially when lording over a talk show. Or by conducting a personal blog which allowed only a minimum of reader comments. Which brings me around to Lassiter’s last words.

While we all have no idea of the what Bob actually said or did in those moments before he lost consciousness or took his last breath, what we are left with is the personal public diary he left for his wife Mary to post after his passing. And his very last entry is telling. Until the end, Lassiter obsessively monitored his blog readership and web presence. And after seeing a post in the Yahoo group regarding how his last employer, WFLA, was putting together his obituary. “Overall, I’m amused that the bastards who threw me out in the gutter, now want to honor me with a fancy obit,” Lassiter spewed. “I’m sure that it will be a warm and fuzzy thing, praising me to the hilt – why must the world be so phony?”

There you go. While not knowing those would be his last words in public, that final accusation exemplified what made Lassiter good and bad and a little strange. Radio is a cutthroat business and many of those who work in the trenches on the business end find themselves in ugly roles and end up doing disingenuous things. And there is a phoniness there deserving of some bile and bluster. On his show, Lassiter was always a master of revealing the hypocrisy of many institutions, including his insights into the dark side of the radio business. However, if you read between the lines on this one you also get a sense of how difficult it could be to know (or care about) Lassiter the person, not the voice on the radio or the writer of a blog.

I know a few of Lassiter’s “many friends” at WFLA who Lassiter denounced for not calling or visiting him over the years since he parted ways with the station. While I don’t know the details of why his contract wasn’t renewed or the business angle of the decision. I do know that there was a huge respect for Lassiter at WFLA, which I’m sure didn’t end when he left the building. Lassiter had his greatest success there, with two stints marked by now historic moments of cutting edge talk radio. More than at any other station, they let him do his thing, to the hilt. They promoted him. They were proud of him. The acrimonious split with WFLA aside, you can be sure that the concern many there felt for Lassiter in his last days was hardly phony.

In real life, Bob Lassiter was a formidable character. Difficult to read. Difficult to approach. As a former co-worker, Lionel, said the other night when offering a brief eulogy during his show was that Lassiter wasn’t "somebody you’d wanna hug." He could be as pungent in real life as he was during those acerbic moments of radio genius. There was always the sense that he might unload at you at any time. It was a strange feeling, being in the presence of a man you respected and admired and having the distinct feeling that he not only didn’t care, but thought less of you because of it.

Lionel’s Lassiter Eulogy 10-16-06 02:38

(download)

I don’t want to delve into psychobabble regarding what made Bob tick. By the time he started his talk radio career he was already around forty years old, a fully formed man with all his powers and faults well-defined. And like many in show businesses, he employed his flaws into his act. The bitterness and anger you might hear during his show was real. And so was the honesty and the intellect, and on those rare occasions– the warmth.

So, the truth is I never really knew much more of Lassiter than what I heard on the radio, and what he told me. Although he could be painfully confessional on his radio program, it seems that during the last third of his life Lassiter was a cipher to most of the people who actually knew him. But what we’re all left with at his passing, is the power of life itself that he invested into his radio program. What he had such a difficult time expressing in person, came out in blustery torrents over the radio. He had a rare intellect powered by raw untethered emotions. And nothing was sacred… except his wife, him mom, a few friends and Christmas.

There will never be another Bob Lassiter. And as long as I’ve been aware of him, I’ve never heard anyone (including myself) fully define or explain his radio program, or his power as a media personality. Anybody with any interest in the guy should go through the archives at the Lassiter aircheck site and give a listen. Bob would like that.

There was only one last question I wanted Lassiter to answer. I did ask it once in an email, but he never responded to the question. Lassiter was such a storyteller and often built his show around extended monologues. And I’ve long wondered if he was influenced by the great radio raconteur, Jean Shepherd. Lassiter grew up in New Jersey and could have easily heard Shepherd’s show. And he even used to pull out a kazoo bust into a hot number when he was in the mood, just as Shepherd would. And I was actually considering emailing Bob one more time, just last weekend, to ask this one more time. I didn’t know he was already gone.

If there would ever be a school for talk show hosts (and sometimes I think there oughtta be one) it should have a specific class (or seminar) on the work of Jean Shepherd and Bob Lassiter. Not to inspire imitators or clones, but to make future talk hosts realize the potential of talk radio. Sure it’s a swell forum for spreading propaganda or keeping people company, but it can and should be so much more. On the radio, both Lassiter and Shepherd explored the rudimentary mysteries of being alive, and threw aside conventions and assumptions to explore what things really might mean. They created something very rare– adventurous radio. That’s why people collect and trade their old shows. That’s why their work is as compelling now (or even more so) than it was when they were on the air.

In closing, I want to say that my intention here is to neither sully Lassiter’s legend or to inflate my small role in an important man’s life. I guess I wanted to pass along some of the ways I was personally bitten by the Mad Dog. I suppose I would have liked to have been his friend, but it was an honor to have been able to occasionally shepherd his legacy. And yes, Bob Lassiter was a strange and difficult man. But he was always honest about that. In fact, the one thread that runs through all of Lassiter’s work was a raw honesty that made his work intrinsically human and valid and ultimately appealing. And let’s be honest. It was almost always fun to hear foolish callers make fools of themselves.

"My worst fear would be that no one wants to listen to me," Lassiter told me that afternoon at his kitchen table. Don’t worry Bob, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

(This post originally appeared in Beware of the Blog.)

Posted in AM Radio, Bob Lassiter, Broadcast Band, Progressive Talk, talk radio | No Comments »

The Radio Kitchen

Archive for the 'AM Radio' Category

New Orleans Road Trip 1988 pt 1 (Ohio)

The Hip Spot On Your Dial

Trucking Radio, As It Used To Was

The Strange Radio World Of Alan Colmes

Super Cheap, and Almost Super

When Listening Was Still Easy

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation – Part 31

Progressive Talk vs. Fast Food, Gasoline and Box Stores

Bye Bob

The Last of Lassiter

The Front Pages

Pages

The Tip Jar

Blogroll

Links

Categories

Archives

I Take Pictures….

Recent Comments

Archive for the 'AM Radio' Category

The Front Pages

Pages

The Tip Jar

Blogroll

Links

Categories

Archives

Tags

I Take Pictures….

Recent Comments