Category: Radio
Radio, Radio
Somebody says that today is National Radio Day. So be it.
In 1978, after my DJ shift at the radio station, where my net pay was $100/week ($450 today), I’d be in the production studio working on writing and recording commercials. I’d return to my $25/week rented basement room and listen to an amazing new album.
Correction: I checked, and I was taking home $97/week.
WABC Loyalist Gives Nod to KHJ
Airchecks from Los Angeles station KHJ provide the music bed (to use a radio term) for Once Upon a Time… in HOLLYWOOD.
On February 9, 1969, while Rick Dalton was filming the Lancer pilot, and his buddy Cliff Booth was surveying the decaying remains of Spohn Movie Ranch, KHJ was preparing to air The History of Rock & Roll on February 21. Created by KHJ program director Bill Drake, the documentary was the subject of a lecture given by Matthew Barton of the Library of Congress.
Forgive me for re-telling a story. Besides being relevant here, it’s one of my favorite stories.
I was doing DJ duty on August 16, 1977, when news hit the AP teletype that Elvis had died. On 10-inch reels of tape the station had a copy of the syndicated 1969 edition of Drake’s The History of Rock & Roll.* I’d hang around the station on my own time to listen to the series in the production studio.
As soon as I saw that first terse news bulletin about Elvis, I pulled out the LP set Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits Vol. 1. Slip-cueing “Heartbreak Hotel” on one of the Russco/Micro-Trak turntables, I announced the tragic news over the air. As the song played I ran out of the studio, grabbed the History of Rock & Roll tape about Elvis, ran back to the studio, and mounted it on the old Magnecord deck.
As updates came across the AP wire, for the next hour I broke format and threw together an ad hoc Elvis tribute. While songs and commercials played, I frantically searched the tape for good sound bites, with surprising success. Breaking format is usually a BIG no-no in radio, but to my surprise the program director liked my Elvis tribute. Starting at 16 minutes into the video, you can hear some of what I used.
It all worked out perfectly, thanks to — ahem! — my very skillful engineering, and that tape. My long overdue thanks go to Boss Radio KHJ! At that same time Drake was in the middle of updating the documentary. He immediately began working on a dedicated Elvis tribute tape.
* Narration of the syndicated edition of the HRR was by Humble Harve Miller. Who had, to say the least, a checkered history in radio.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-me-humble-harve-miller-dead-20190606-story.html
Top 40 Blog Post Flashback!
Yesterday, I talked about me and Denro, years away from meeting, listening to “Evil Woman” by Crow on WRKO in January, 1970. Here’s a Dale Dorman aircheck with exactly what we heard, as it happened.
Important Boss Radio 66 Notice
Boss Radio 66 is apparently off of Google Blogger/Blogspot.
https://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/
I’m trying to find out what’s going on.
Until then, you will find individual station programs on MIXCLOUD.
Update: It’s back. Whew!
WABC, PTT, and Me
Twenty years ago, while stopped at a red light in my little ’89 Honda Civic, behind a couple of other cars, this happened. I was a little late for work that day.
An elderly Russian guy came flying down the Mass Pike exit ramp behind me. I saw him in the rearview mirror, heading towards me fast. I knew he was going to crash and braced for impact. The collision pushed the Civic into the car ahead of me with so much force that it, in turn, hit the car in front of it.
The old guy was taken to a hospital where, as I was told later, he accused me of causing the accident. The Massachusetts State Police didn’t agree. I escaped with a mild concussion, and a badly sprained right ankle.
So began my Posterior Tibial Tendon troubles. I had forced the brake pedal down with so much strength the brake lines blew out upon impact. But a couple of other things also blew out. A blood vessel in my calf split open, and I didn’t know until later that some of the fibers in my PTT had been torn. The damage progressed once I returned to my running schedule.
I was almost home from a 25-mile training run for the Lowell Marathon when suddenly, mid-stride, my right foot literally just stopped working! I could feel something sticking out that shouldn’t have been. My PTT had slipped out of position. After popping it back into place I was able to hobble home the last half-mile.
That white area in the MRI seen along the PTT is tendinosis. There’s a bulge there to this day. With a lot careful attention to that area, along with motion control running shoes and orthotics, the tendon has held all these years. I dread the day if and (probably) when it finally breaks. The PTT in my left ankle is perfectly fine.
What does any of this have to do with WABC? As I have said many times, I was very fortunate to have grown up listening to WABC during its Musicradio ascendency. Its influence on me was so great that it led to my relatively brief but memorable stint working in AM radio. (Technology paid much better, believe me.) The man who transformed 77 WABC into the Musicradio powerhouse was program director Rick Sklar.
https://musicradio77.com/Sklar.html
Rick was a marathon runner in his spare time and in June of 1992 he entered the hospital for minor foot surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left ankle. He never returned home. An unfortunate anesthesia complication took his life on June 22, 1992. He was 62 years old.
Whether the torn tendon was Sklar’s PTT, or his Achilles, that was a terribly lousy thing to happen to him. I continue to be careful with my PTT, in the hope that I can keep running without needing foot surgery.