What the heck is going on with Boston radio? Steve LeVeille retired today and now the Car Talk guys, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, have announced that they’re quitting. I’ve been listening to their on-air antics for more than 20 years. Cartoonist Jimmy “Arlo & Janis” Johnson is a fan of theirs, and some years back he even wrote ‘Click and Clack’ into the strip.
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]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’]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.
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.
