Many disk jockeys say that there is no “there” in Oakland but a columnist says otherwise.
[Note: We leave it up to other pundits to write columns about the latest developments in the ACA political donnybrook. A nostalgic look at radio may not be cutting edge commentary but that’s the way the cookie crumbles for this week’s installment of a column from the World’s Laziest Journalist. Who knows? Maybe a change of pace in the midst of a tsunami of facts about health insurance will be a breath of fresh air.]
Norman Goldman, the talk radio host who promulgates the philosophy that labels are inaccurate and confining, asserts that radio personalities are entering a new age when radios are superfluous. Since we heard Triple J radio online long before we used a small battery operated Sanyo to tune in to the source for Australian music, we grok what he says but it was a much more visceral experience to hold the radio and work the tuner to listen to that unique blend of voices and music.
When we think of going to visit friends in close proximity to the Big Apple, our heart leaps up at the chance to hear Harry Harrison reassuring the audience that they live in the greatest city in the world but that Eastern Airlines (“The Wings of Man”) stand read to whisk them away to far away places with strange sounding names. We have to take a deep breath and say: “That was then; this is now.”
Armstrong and Getty boldly assert that they have “the hottest show on the West Coast.” There was a time, though, when things were different. Living at Lake Tahoe as the Sixties came to a close, radio reception was very limited because of the basin which meant that very few AM radio signals could be picked up. The two local stations were on opposite ends of the AM dial and so it was that switching from one to another meant a sweep of the AM dial and in that process you would hear a third signal. Fine tune it and you would hear a raspy voice claiming that his radio show was heard from coast to coast and border to border. A signal wall to wall and tree-top tall was heard in 38 states. The people who heard Wolfman Jack before seeing American Graffiti know what the true definition of “the hottest radio show” used to be.
How could Wolfman Jack possibly have been that popular if he never took a position on the Affordable Care Act?
Heck, now folks with Internet access can be in South Lake Tahoe and listen to Triple J in Australia, Sky Rock in Paris (France not Texas), and Radio Caroline. It’s no wonder that Pan Am has vanished. Radio fans don’t need to travel to hear those radio stations.
We did listen, whilst in Sydney Oz, to Skid Row Radio but we have not fact checked listening to them via the Berkeley Public Library computers.
When we went to Paris in 1986 (how can a 28 year old columnist remember a trip to Paris almost 28 years ago? [Trade secret.]) we packed a comparatively bulky portable radio to enhance the “we are really there” aspect of the experience.
Some other time we may expand the question “Why do Internet sites aggregate only American radio broadcasts and not include ones from outside the USA?” into a full column but not today.
Norman Goldman uses sound bytes of politicians to punctuate his broadcasts and that often reminds us of the first time we heard the version of “What the world needs now” augmented by various sound bytes. We heard it on WABC and they usually played only one song at a time and when we heard that version of that song for the first time, they quickly followed with another song. We have always assumed that the DJ, like us, had been caught off guard and was knocked on his ass by what he heard and couldn’t say anything. Is the Pan Am building still called the Pan Am building by old timers?
That was just about the time WICK in Scranton had changed to the talk show format. We called in to ask Evel Knievel which of the many hospitals he had stayed in had the best looking nurses. He said the one in Las Vegas. I had stayed in the hospital in Carson City Nevada and the nurses their all talked about what a good patient Kenivil had been.
WICK had been a sensation when they were one of the first stations in North Eastern Pennsylvania to play “Rock’n’Roll” music. They used some Polish language broadcasts on Sunday morning to pay the bills and more than a few Irish Catholic Democrats picked up on phrases in Polish while waiting after Sunday Mass for the format to change back to the usual new music. What ever happened to Fats Domino?
Their arch rival WARM used the WARMland shtick to excess during the winter months. WARM ridiculed sports news by giving the results of a fictional match up between the Honeypot Cheaters and the MacAdoo Stompers every week during football season.
Before Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was picked up by the ABC TV network, they expanded from their Philadelphia flagship station to one other area TV station, WNEP in the Scranton Wilkes Barrie area.
A Southern California high school football team with the Fighting Arabs as their mascot have been in the news lately and since there really is a town called Honeypot we wonder what their high school’s mascot is. What about Intercourse Pa.’s high school’s mascot?
The mascot of the Whittier CA college is “the Poets.”
Lately with the ACA 24/7 marathon we have searched in vain for KFOG but can’t find that old stalwart radio signal from the Sixties. Can’t seem to find KABL either.
We didn’t hear Don Sherwood until he got his gig up at Lake Tahoe. They had called his radio program the “Will Sherwood Show?” show because more than once the city’s top disk jockey called in sick.
Then the “shock jock” era began. Whatever happened to Don Imus?
Did Westwood One and the count down format really get started in a former rug store in Culver City? The last time we heard Dr. Demento we were living in L. A. We should try fishing around to see what station carries his Sunday night show in the San Francisco area.
Since political punditry from Uncle Rushbo’s clones seems ubiquitous on the radio, we think a new radio format or a resurrected old one might be like rain in the desert for listeners who have been pummeled by nonstop criticism of Obama and have nothing but more of the same to look forward to for the next three years.
Why doesn’t some intrepid radio format wunderkind implement a format that uses a bilingual approach. Folks who want to learn English could learn English and the gringos who want to know what the Spanish speaking employees are saying could benefit from such a style of newscasts. We had an Aunt in Santa Monica who knew enough about baseball that she could have coached a high school team so she learned Spanish by turning on the TV, turning down the sound, and listening to the Dodger games on Spanish language radio. She got to be quite proficient at it.
We can remember working at a large University in the Westwood Section of Los Angeles and we picked up a fair degree of proficiency in Spanish. Once when the head honcho’s lackey came into the room the manager announced to the room in Spanish: Watch what you say because she’s the department head’s spy. The interloper didn’t speak Spanish so the general announcement went right over her head. Since our Spanish was good enough to know what was said we felt like we were “one of the group.”
In the Seventies, one L. A. radio station played only big band era music. We loved the music but since the commercials were all about Depends, denture adhesives, and hemorrhoid medicines, we opted out.
If some San Francisco station went to all Sixties music, now, we’d be tuned in to them in a New York minute. What if they played Sixties music and ran news from 50 years ago today? Could they call it Nostalgia Radio?
A column about radio and nostalgia reminds us how annoyed a friend used to get when, in 1968, we would often say: “Back in 1968 . . .” and he would get mad and say “Damn it! It is 1968!” He died several years ago.
[Note from the photo editor: Is the gigantic “THERE” in the East Bay actually proof that there is a “THERE” in Oakland or is it actually in Berkeley and a confirmation of the folk wisdom that, in Oakland, there is no THERE there? Ask your favorite DJ.]
Back in 1968, a one-liner that was ubiquitous went; “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.”
Now, our disk jockey, who really appreciates good guitar work, will play us out with Link Wray’s “Rumble,” Henry Mancini’s “theme from Peter Gunn,” (that’s Duane Eddy on guitar), and Jody Reynold’s “Endless Sleep.” We have to go buy some strings for a friend’s sitar. Have a “we’ll do it live!” type week.
Big Brother and the end of Liberal talk radio
A two pound dog provides an image symbolizing Liberal Talk radio.
LIFE magazine would be the logical source for some classic photos of the attack on Pearl Harbor which occurred 73 years ago Saturday, but for a writer starting out to accomplish that chore on the day before that column is scheduled to be posted is an impossible assignment. Time magazine and the New York Times newspaper both have staff members who are employed full time to handle such editorial needs but if an online pundit notices on Thursday, December 05, 2013, that the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor is a timely topic, it is too late to try to get permission to use a historic photo of that event. Devoting an entire column to the “inside baseball” aspect of the task would run a high risk of boring readers and that provides an example of how and why the concept of “citizen journalist” is a red herring for those who want to reassure the general public that an alternative source for news is being formed in the realm of pop culture.
Ideally, glitzy photos accompanying a thoroughly fact checked article that has been quickly produced is possible on a one time basis but logistically doing that consistently is like saying that a football quarterback can play an entire game with two minute drill intensity.
Initially when the Internet was in the formative stage, expectations were expressed that the new form of communication would spawn strong unique voices that would help provide citizens with the information they need to make competent choices when the elections are held. The ideal of a rugged individual who can turn in a championship performance makes for the basic material of a wide variety of examples of urban legends such as the movie “Rocky,” and others of that ilk.
The fact that a lone wolf journalist isn’t going to consistently land interviews with the news making politicians is something that average reader won’t consider. Then when a TV network shows a President’s wife answering a question put to the President, most folks won’t stop to think that there is some heavy duty game playing going on off camera.
An online pundit who points out that the sound byte provides an example of subconscious image building (or destroying?) that indicates the President is an example of the “hen pecked” syndrome will go as unnoticed as the sounds of a tree falling in the remote wilderness. So why bother?
At 0600 hours on a Sunday morning, there isn’t much happening in Berkeley and running off to San Francisco isn’t usually going to provide a much greater smorgasbord of interesting diversions, so why bother? It is, however, a good time to write a rough draft of the next scheduled column, if the writer has scoured the media and, on the preceding day, visited San Francisco looking for tidbits of information.
Why spend the time and money to go to looking for items in a column?
Do readers in London, Kalgoorlie (in Western Australia), and Concordia Kansas really care about a trend spotting item about the pizza at the Golden Boy bar in San Francisco? Didn’t someone from Oakland land in Bartlett’s for saying “A trend, is a trend, is a trend!” or something quite similar?
The décor in the Golden Boy is heavy with slap art and it would take a considerable amount of work to expand that topic into column length but if we use it as an item, perhaps the assignment desk at the New York Times features desk will be inspired to assign that topic to one of the available writers and then we’ll just need to find and read the article to learn all about slap art.
Cold winter’s nights in Berkeley are an excellent time to read the classic novels that were assigned reading in high school and college many moons ago. We might get a good column if we complete our reading of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” We fully intend on writing a column as a review of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” when we finish reading it.
On Thursday December 5, 2013, another aspect of the pathetic plight of the citizen journalist became apparent when it was announced that the supply of Liberal voices on the radio was being considerably diminished.
Is an online pundit criticizing Compassionate Conservative Christian propaganda on hundreds of radio stations a fair fight? Did anybody bet on the rebels holding off the Mexican army in the Alamo or was that situation so lopsided that the bookies declined any attempt to make such a long shot wager?
Many moons ago the World’s Laziest Journalist facetiously suggested that eventually the effort to present the Liberal point of view on radio for Americans would eventually lead to a modern pundit doing a Wolfman Jack style of “voice in the wilderness” program on a very powerful signal being broadcast from outside the USA. Our reasoning was that it did happen in Germany in the Thirties and it would happen again in the USA eventually.
If a fellow happens to be a digital hermit living in a pad without Internet access how will he be able to monitor Liberal radio? It ain’t gonna happen.
We could still write about news that intrigues us such as the possibility that Tom Cruise will play Carroll Shelby in film to be title “Drive like Hell.”
We could write a column that features a “Twilight Zone” fan reading some forbidden Liberal Punditry about the Republican long range game plan and mutters: “It’s a cookbook!”
We could (maybe) find a two pound dog and use an image of that beast to symbolize Progressive Talk in the dog eat dog world of the contemporary scene on the radio dial.
There was a comedian back in the day who did a routine speculating about what would happen if the only rule parents gave to their kids was: “Don’t put beans in your ear.” Maybe Liberal talk show hosts should hawk T-shirts advising: “Don’t put clandestine radio ear candy in your brain!” and watch their ratings soar.
When will the Republicans learn the lesson Rev. Gene Scott taught the audience in L. A. Shouldn’t some forward thinking radio station be using the old “Best of” trick to broadcast Rush Limbaugh 24/7 every day of the year?
Watching Progressive Talk radio do the Cheshire Cat disappearing act, we are reminded of the last two sentences in “1984:” “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
Now the disk jockey will play Dave Van Ronk’s “Romping through the Swamp,” Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” and Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “The Cruel War.” We have to go to a hootenanny. Have a “Kumbaya” type week.