Category: Radio
WBZ’s Steve LeVeille announces retirement
Well, I sure don’t like this very much. In a surprise announcement on Facebook, one of my favorite radio guys, Steve LeVeille, who has the overnight shift on WBZ in Boston, is retiring at the end of the week.
Assuming this is entirely Steve’s decision, it comes only weeks after his friend Carl Beane, the Voice of Fenway Park, died of a heart attack while driving. Here’s a clip with Steve talking about Carl.
[audio:http://nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d1/d0/dI/dA/dR/10IAR_3.MP3|titles=Steve LeVeille on Carl Beane]The Beeb loses Claire Bolderson
I first heard Claire Bolderson in the mid-90’s, when WBUR in Boston (which gets $60/year from me) added the BBC World Service to its broadcast schedule. I also heard the World Service on shortwave radio, then later the BBC became available over the Internet. Through the years I’ve been listening to Bolderson’s distinctive voice and her intelligent reporting and observations. Yesterday, I caught Claire on the World Service saying goodbye. WBUR’s Robin Young talked with Claire about her departure from the Beeb.
[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2012/03/hereandnow_0320_claire-bolderson-bbc.mp3|titles=Claire Bolderson on ‘Here & Now’]Don’t Click That Mouse, Hand Me the Keyboard
A Mr. D.F. Rogers of Massachusetts writes:
Check out the pricing on this very essential and cool mp3 item. I think there is still a logic problem with digital/mp3 pricing… 😉
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Crush-That-Dwarf-Pliers/dp/B00138KN6O/
You can buy each side of “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers” for only 99 cents each — since each side technically has only one “track” — but if you want the whole album (both tracks!), well then it is $9.99!
The same goes for “All Hail Marx and Lennon” (How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All) — it’s cheaper to buy the cuts than the whole album, though only by a buck or so. BUT you can get “Nick Danger” — all 28:00 mins of it — for just 99 cents! I think I’ll do it!!! Just $2.97 for three sides of mp3 side-splitting fun, and you didn’t even know that an mp3 had sides!
I think Firesign Theater would appreciate the absurdity of this, although they are getting very little monetary gain from it.
Denro has since reported that he has indeed taken advantage of this big boggin — two tracks for two dollars, instead of the same two tracks as one album for ten dollars, and the Nick Danger track, too. I already have both albums on CD, but come to think of it I haven’t seen Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers in a long time. I’ll invest two dollars worth of time looking for it before buying the MP3, which should make the CD magically appear.
Emitt’s Merry-Go-Round
On my Logitech Media Server network I’m listening to Barnes Newberry’s online radio show, My Back Pages. Barnes played a couple of songs by Emitt Rhodes, who’s one of those musicians that seemed to have all of the ingredients needed to be a big name, and yet superstardom eluded him. Rhodes did some excellent stuff, and I remember alternative FM station WBCN in Boston playing his solo album, with the song Fresh As a Daisy.
Emitt was only seventeen when his band The Merry-Go-Round had a minor hit with She’s a Very Lovely Woman, and it holds up very well today.
‘BZ Boston notes
Back in September, WBZ 1030 AM in Boston celebrated its 90th anniversary. On WBGH TV, Boston’s PBS station, veteran ‘BZ announcer Gary LaPierre, now retired, talked about his start at the station, only a few months before the Beatles came to Boston. Note: Paul and Ringo are still working!
[jwplayer config=”wide” mediaid=”17585″]
Another great veteran of WBZ radio, Dave Maynard, died recently. After retiring, Maynard’s familiar voice continued to be heard on the station, doing commercials and promos.
Samjay pointed out that the thing everybody uses to set their car’s dashboard clock, WBZ’s on-the-hour tone, is gone. I had noticed a while ago that it was about ten seconds late, and under the assumption it had mistakenly been put before the delay circuit, I sent a note to the station asking about it. Not much later, the tone once again was synched with the radio-controlled wall clocks in my house, but now the tone is gone. Whuzzup with that?
Follow-up: I wrote to the WBZ engineer, and didn’t receive a reply, but the time tone is back. It’s not hitting exactly on top of my radio-controlled clocks, but I’m not going to quibble over 8-10 seconds.