Gordon Lightfoot

With the death yesterday of the wonderful Canadian troubadour Gordon Lightfoot, I posted on my other blog a link to a “Celebration Rock” radio program featuring Lightfoot’s music. Not many words from my keyboard are necessary. Others are writing their obits and tributes. I simply posted one of maybe three Lightfoot CR specials I produced and hosted over the long run of the radio program.

{I’d post the link here, except this blog site is the freebee, and I pay for the upgrade which allows audio files at my more recent site called “Peace, Grace, and Jazz.” So, you’ll need to navigate to http://www.jeffkellam.wordpress.com to hear the show.

https://jeffkellam.wordpress.com/

The Archival Radio Programs

editing at WBBL, Richmond

I took the leap and upgraded my WordPress account so that I could experiment with adding audio to these pages. But, oops. I upgraded my newer blog instead and those radio archives are at my Peace, Grace, and Jazz pages at http://www.jeffkellam.wordpress.com .

If you have found yourself here (after discovering the programs there) rest assured (or confused?) that the whole story of my long-running radio program “Celebration Rock” is right here. You can scroll to the earliest entries written many years ago upon my retirement and find more than you’ll even need to know.

It’s as close as I’ll come to writing a book about those “rock” years. With stories about interviews with musicians, how thematic shows came to be, with accounts of adventures along the way, and including descriptions of the various studios I used (ho hum to some, more exciting to the radio nerds), some pages are really fun.

Have at it!

Springsteen: Did I Miss Something? Yes.

This blog has been dormant for over a year. I had said all I needed to say about my media ministry, and more! The program that I have over-written about since I retired still brings fond memories. Social media comments on various radio/TV group sites contain some warm thoughts from those who listened all those decades ago. Now and then someone will say some thing like, “I wish I could hear that program again.” And I’m thinking, “Wow, it’s a compliment for sure. But I doubt the recordings would be as good as they are remembered.” Remember that favorite recipe of your Mom’s? You pulled it out after many years, and it wasn’t quite (or at all) like you remembered it.

Turns out that “Celebration Rock” will wind up being mentioned again on a television program in a couple of days. I am interviewing a friend about his relationship with Bruce Springsteen. Now, they haven’t ever met, but Joe has met Springsteen through his music, and it literally changed his life. I’m looking forward to hearing the details. I only have a pencil sketch of that story so far, but I know in that half-hour conversation on television the lines will be filled in with color, texture, and perspective.

As we talk about Springsteen– his music, his stories, his story — I’ll have to confess that other than a scattering of hit songs, the artist never got an hour-long “Celebration Rock” program to himself. How did I miss him all those years?

If you recall from the previous posts here, my radio work was based in Richmond, Virginia, and it turns out that at the same time my rock show was cranking up, Springsteen was playing in Richmond… a lot. One report says he may have played some thirty concerts in RVA from 1969 to 1975. He and Steel Mill played in a city park, in small clubs, even in a parking deck. Some of his band members lived for awhile in Richmond. He found an easy audience there. And appreciative.

When “Born to Run” hit the charts, I played it, of course. And later when “Born in the USA” was released, the album was in my collection. When I did my hour-long program about “home,” his “My Hometown” was in the line-up. And when I did a program about bars, watering holes, and cafes…the Boss’ “Glory Days” added to the stories. But I never did a Springsteen special. Geez.

So after all these many. many entries about the thematic radio programs I produced over those two-plus decades, here was a confession about a program I didn’t do, and should have. Certainly should have.

So, when we record that interview the day after tomorrow, I’ll admit that I missed big time there. And I promise that the next “Celebration Rock” program I do will feature his music. I mean, after that one-man Broadway show he did, I’m sure my radio program will be another step on the way to stardom.

The Fiftieth Anniversary Party

[I wrote this piece almost a year ago, but for some reason, never posted it. Wow. I guess life happened.]

We had a great time! You should have been there! Really.

As has been well-documented on this site, my first WBBL/WLEE Richmond rock show debuted on February 11, 1968. Fifty years later, on Sunday, February 11, my church allowed me the conceit of a celebration of that occasion. As I told the crowd in the fellowship hall after worship, “These 50 year things only come along every…well, so often.” So thanks for coming.

We had lasagna as the main course for the luncheon, and then I took the microphone and presented a program noting “Fifty Years of Popular Music,” playing excerpts of songs from the early 1940s into the early ’90s. I began though with the intro to the “Celebration Rock” show that featured the music of the Doobie Brothers. It started with their 1971 hit “Listen to the Music,” because listening to the “message” of the music was about what we were going to do for the next hour.

Then, we rewound to a 78 rpm recording of Harry James and his very young vocalist Frank Sinatra. About 45 seconds of scratchy audio faded away, and I talked about how the music of the church’s oldest generation was influenced by WW2. Talk about “meaning” in the music: “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else But Me)” was about couples separated by the war pleading to remain faithful. “That’s Sabotage” reflected the fears of the war years within a romantic relationship: “Some big town jerk did his dirty work and changed your mind about me. That’s sabotage!” Miller also had an instrumental hit with the old song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.” And there was the popular song “The White Cliffs of Dover,” with the vision of Jimmy “home to sleep in his own little room again.” I didn’t play all those songs, but referenced them before moving on to the end of  the big band era.

The bridge between the war years and 1950s’ rock and roll? A singer named Johnny Ray. I played an excerpt of his biggest hit “Cry,” and you could hear the emotion in his voice, just a hint at what audiences had actually seen when he performed: tears streaming down his face, jostled hair, even the singer tearing his shirt as he belted the song, punching the air with each note. He was no romantic big band baritone. More a foreshadowing of Elvis’ gyrations, a rhythm and blues vocal delivery, and (pardon me) Alice Cooper’s theatrics…except no heads bitten off bats.

Ryan DeLap was my “engineer/DJ” for the party

 

Then on to Bill Haley and the Comets rockin’ ’round the clock, Paul Anka representing the 1950s teen idols, and a leap into 1968 when my show first hit the air. Viet Nam, racial tensions, drugs, and assassinations… I played an excerpt from the first “Showcase” interview I had recorded, the legendary R&B/soul composer-performer Curtis Mayfield. After his description of the Impressions’ songs coming out of their African-American church backgrounds, I segued into his song “People Get Ready.”

We played Elvis’ “In the Ghetto,” and noted how all these years later it still fits Chicago’s streets, sadly. After the turmoil of the late 1960s, the early ’70s brought the Jesus movement. Jesus songs made the top 40. I played a verse of “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee,” with a segue into the bold intro to “Jesus Christ, Superstar.”

We had to play some Carole King. “You’ve Got a Friend.” Not only was she a pioneer among women singer-songwriters in the 1960s, her albums were grist for the Celebration Rock mill for over 20 years, with thoughtful lyrics, hit tunes, and those “message songs” that inspired my own brief “meditations.” At the opposite end of the pop music scale (from Jesus to Carole King) came disco, and the 70s and early 80s had a driving dance beat, but not much content to comment on.

Then we played a Billy Joel song called “I’ve Loved These Days,” which I connected to Lent. You know, giving up stuff that holds us back from our true, good selves. I know I would be better off without some of these guilty pleasures and vices, but I have to admit, (confess !), I’ve loved these days. I talked about how I tied popular music to the holy days and holidays of the calendar.

At this point in the decades-long journey of my radio program, I was nurtured by the story-tellers of pop music. We played “Sunset Grill” by Don Henley, and some Genesis, U2, and Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Of course, when the whole party was over, folks came up and wondered why I left out this band or that one, or their favorite singer or group. Well, because we couldn’t spend the rest of the week in the church fellowship hall eating cookies and listening to music! Aside from what was missing, the smiles were broad as people reminisced about the music of their lives. And most of the people in our church learned for the first time what my radio ministry had been about.

Cool.

Approaching the Half-Century Mark

It was a decade ago that I retired and began my first blog. It was about a radio program that had begun forty years before. Let’s see…10 + 40 = 50. So, yes; it’s been fifty years since that rock and roll radio thing started in February, 1968. Seems like an occasion to mark. You like cake?

There are two ways I intend to celebrate the half-century mark. I co-host a television program (with the audio running on local radio too), and one of the other hosts thought we might do a half hour conversation “sometime” about my radio ministry from ages ago. When the second Sunday of February comes, I suggested we use that week’s “show” to do that interview. I know that it’s what some would call (including me) a “conceit,” that is, having one host interview another about his anniversary. But, as I told myself, the 50th anniversary only comes around once every, y’know, so often. So, yeah, let’s talk about me.

Actually, it’s not all about me. It’s about the people who had the idea for the program in the first place. It wasn’t my idea. And it’s about a faith community that went out on a limb and stuck with a progressive, eventually creative media ministry geared toward youth, a radio program that played the young generation’s music and shared some ideas about how Jesus’ life and teachings could lead to a celebration of new life. And certainly, the interview in February will focus on the music itself. I didn’t just sit there and talk for an hour each week. I, um, jockeyed discs. Lots of them. Some the little records with big holes; many the big records with little holes. Hits and album cuts.

Besides the TV interview, there’s another event planned for that second Sunday in February. The church my wife and I attend will have a dinner after worship, and I’ll play (and speak about) “Fifty Years of American Popular Music.” I’ve done that presentation many times. But not for quite a while. I won’t be starting in 1968, but with the first music I remember: my parents’ old 78 rpm big band era recordings from the “war years.” That would be WW2. And I’ll play the hits (mostly excerpts– we don’t have all day) up to 1992 when I left radio behind for a small Vermont church pastorate. That’ll make it 50 years worth.

The music of my parents’ days was not just dance music, and not solely love songs. I’ll probably sample Glenn Miller’s “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)” which was the plea of a soldier that his girl back home would remain faithful. Another Miller tune was “That’s Sabatage,” which includes wartime references such as “When you hear sirens screamin’
Those ‘be-alert’ alarms
Don’t run helter-skelter
There’s a bomb-proof shelter
In my arms.”

We’ll jump to the 1950s and enter the rock and roll era with Bill Haley and the Comets, hit the 60s with the British Invasion, and then I’ll share some of the music of my “Celebration Rock” years, beginning with the songs that reflected the pivotal year my program began: 1968, with a soundtrack that accompanied protests over Viet Nam and pleas for racial harmony, along with the pyschodelic flight that provided escape for many. In the early 70s came the Jesus Movement with the Savior making the charts: “Jesus is a Soul Man” and “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee,” among many hits. Yes, hits.

Followed by disco. And then I’ll move to the 80s and play some songs by story tellers and musical pundits and poets. By the time we reach the early 1990s, I’ll wrap things up with U-2 and Michael Jackson. Or, not. I’ve still got a couple of weeks to pin this down and convert vinyl to MP3.

I wish I could do all this back in Richmond, Virginia where my radio ministry took root. But instead, I’ll be in my orginal hometown, and in the church where my parents were married and where I was ordained to that media ministry 15 months after the rock show started. One or two people in the “audience” that day will be actual “Celebration Rock” listeners from back in the early 1980s when the program was syndicated and the big FM rocker broadcast my voice to my hometown. A nostaligic celebration. So be it.

 

Celebration Rock @ 49

Is it just me, or does 49 years seem like a long time? In 2008, I realized that the 40th anniversary of my first attempt at being a deejay on a local rock radio program for the Presbyterian Churches of Richmond, Va. was looming. I thought I’d mark the occasion by starting a blog, and writing a few entries.

I had just retired from my pastoral ministry, and figured I had some time, so before the stories escaped me, I’d journal them. And after writing every possible memory connected with my “Celebration Rock” program, plus some other related (or not) radio-TV adventures from all those years ago in Virginia, this blog wound down, and it’s been inactive for some time.

I started a new blog I called “Peace, Grace, and Jazz,” and that’s been great fun. But now and then I look at these pages, curious about readership, and the stats show that there are still some folks (like you) who find this public journal and read an entry or two. Some readers have done a search for something mentioned here, take a glance and move on. No doubt the most popular articles posted here relate to an interview I did with the late song-poet storyteller Harry Chapin. He must still have what we call a “legion of fans,” and many apparently are curious about his religious beliefs. So, driven here by the Uber of the Internet, Wikipedia, people read about Chapin teling me that he didn’t believe in God. My hope is that their curiosity moved them to the next entry where it was explained that maybe he did, afterall; at least he wrote some very religious songs for the off-Broadway show “The Cotton Patch Gospel.”

Other readers here at the good ol’ CR blog come looking for memories of a radio program they once listened to and found helpful in some way. I take some encouragement in that. If the music I offered, and the accompanying words I wrote and spoke during that hour-long program had some meaning for listeners, then I am grateful for the call to have produced and hosted “Celebration Rock” over its 20+ year run.

In my retirement, my current media activity is co-hosting a weekly television program, with the audio track sent over to a local AM radio station. (To clarify: we’re talking a real TV station here, a CBS affiliate, not some cable public access show with a potted palm between two plastic chairs . I had some experience in that world back in Virginia.) One of the other hosts said recently, “We ought to do a show about your radio days some time; you could be the guest.” That might be fun, but in February of next year we’ll hit the 50th anniversary mark. That will be worth noting, if I’m not drooling and dribbling by then.

If this is your first visit here, I’d advise that you negotiate your way back to the beginning. Is there a calendar over there on the right? Or, a search bar where you can enter “WBBL,” “Doobie Brothers,” or “sex?” (I assume the search bar is only for this blog; otherwise you might wind up somewhere more exciting.)

Thanks for dropping by. Be sure to get your hand stamped before exiting so you can get back in. Peace!

And Now It’s Been 46 Years…But Who’s Counting?

I started this blog six years ago on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of my first effort at a “rock and roll ministry” through radio. Just a moment ago it dawned on me that the 46th anniversary looms. It was, as recounted early in these posts, the second Sunday of February, 1968 that “Showcase” (the forerunner of “Celebration Rock”) premiered as an experiment in religious broadcasting.

In the six years since my first entries in this Celebration Rock blog, Facebook has helped re-connect me with countless colleagues in media ministry, radio station personnel, and listeners. Together we have shared memories, rued the state of broadcasting today, mourned the passing of radio-connected friends, and wondered about the future of the medium of radio.

In 1968, AM was king when it came to rock. Now, even FM is fading, with the internet enabling us to build our personal music libraries and custom-programmed “radio” stations. The 45 rpm record would be a relic of the distant past for my grandson. Vinyl LPs are either scratchy 50-cent antiques at yard sales or, in contrast, the audiophile-purist’s sacred objects. My attic is full of my radio promotion copies of both big-holed and little-holed pieces of grooved plastic. And I am very proud to say most are still broadcast quality. (Yes… the attic. Summer’s heat and winter’s upstate New York frigid temps haven’t harmed the collection. Sadly, though, the years lived a few hundred yards up the hill from Cayuga Lake created what we might call, quite literally, moldy oldies.)

Besides those records, there are the tapes in storage conditions no better than the discs’. Some are the “masters,” the original mono and then stereo recordings of both “Showcase” and “Celebration Rock” programs. With the program’s hour-long length, the first shows were on two seven-inch reels, and on bargain tape with all the hiss, wow, and flutter one would expect from a low budget production. Later, we (OK, that’s the editorial “we” since I pretty much did this thing myself) stepped up to master quality 10 1/2 inch reels with no half-hour break to cue the second reel’s start. No, my budget didn’t allow that higher quality; it was “used” tape, retired after a few uses by the bigger budget broadcasters I hung out with. And not ALL the shows remain. We recycled tape by recording over previous programs. No doubt, I saved more tapes than I should have.

So scores of old shows are up there, along with many audio cassette copies made from the originals, but capturing even less of the audio quality needed for enjoyable listening. Still, I can’t bring myself to throw them away, no surprise to my wife Joan who knows I don’t dispose of much at all. Just about every program remaining has been “digitally re-mastered,” that is, copied to CDs. Before I learned that I could recover “bad” audio tape by heating the reels in a food dehydrator (honest!), I tossed some shows I thought were unplayable. Sad to say, even some of the programs that were dubbed to CD are no longer playable due to some mysterious degrading of the CD digits! Here we are 50 minutes into a Moody Blues CR show, and the skips begin to avalanche, and I cringe.

With us war babies and boomers ripe for nostalgia (as preceding generations have been for the culture, mores, and treasures of their youth), it’s been tempting to try to repackage my old programs as meditations on the “classics” of days gone long by. “On today’s Celebration Rock retrospective, we revisit the ‘Point of Know Return’ album of Kansas!” Might sound great on the local storefront station downtown, or even on an internet radio station looking to fill an hour’s time. But, no.

I am grateful for those (almost) 22 years that I had on (maybe) 50 stations from coast-to-coast (well, from Tampa, FL to Salem, OR). That radio production and the creative process that fed it…the colleagues with whom I connected over the years … the listeners who wrote and the youth leaders who trusted me to lead retreats and conferences .. the churches that supported that unusual media ministry … and the family that tolerated my absence in the studio late at night or on the road all weekend… it was, as they say, a good ride.

And, after these 46 years, I am still very thankful to God for the Call.

“Jazz Noel: The Album Notes”

[When Bill Carter asked me to write the “jacket” notes for his newest Presbybop Jazz release “Jazz Noel,” I knew I would be headed down a familiar path. I would happily accept the assignment, procrastinate (that is, let the invitation/assignment simmer way too long), and then in a rush of creative adrenalin write far too many words. Ah, the path was well worn, and I followed it along every little turn, and wound up with the following.

One footnote follows, by the way.]

_____________________________________________________________

“When the angels sing, and all earth echoes it, we catch the dance, and we get caught up in the sound;  and the joy is given to us as a gift.”

—Bill Carter

 

While the so-called “Christmas Eve Band,” better known as the Presbybop Quintet, has been swinging the season’s joy every Christmas Eve at the Clarks Summit (PA) Presbyterian Church since 1999, the performance on this disk may have added some butterflies to the normal Yule tinsel, silver bells, and evergreens. For one thing, this concert took place several weeks before Christmas, and not in church, but a television studio. And some of us in the audience knew the vocalist had been fighting a cold.

But there’s no doubt: there certainly was “Joy to the World” that night in the high definition studio of WVIA, and that joy was the swinging marriage of Christmas mystery and merriment, of melodies from ages past and new tunes that sing of the Christmas present. The live audience received the joy and wonder of the season as a gift that night, and celebrated this “Jazz Noel” with broad smiles and rousing applause.

Composer, arranger, jazz pianist, church pastor, and Presbybop founder Bill Carter leads this Christmas Eve band of talented revelers through ten interpretations of carols and holiday classics. Among the musicians: Mike Carbone, saxophones; Jeff Stockham, trumpet and flugelhorn; Tony Marino, bass; and Marko Marcinko, percussion. And when vocalist Warren Cooper adds his voice… well, there’s no sign of that cold. His voice is rich as Christmas pudding!

The music that filled the studio that evening included echoes of the Nativity’s joy to the whole world: English carols, Afro-Cuban rhythms, Mid-eastern dances and Scottish jigs, and good old American blues.

Here’s the line-up:

1)      “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” – the advent of a jazz rhythm that sets the toe-tapping tone of the evening.

2)      “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” – yes, blooming, and swinging in a jazzy breeze

3)      “O Come All Ye Faithful” — a gentle waltz of invitation and adoration, with Cooper’s voice and Stockham’s trumpet both singing

4)      “Angels We Have Heard on High” – celebrating Dave Brubeck’s life-long influence on Bill Carter’s creativity. Cooper offers a syncopated noel, and Marcinko’s drums shine with starlight

5)      “As One of Us” – a Carter composition which begins pensively, with Marino and Marcinko communicating the Mystery of the incarnation of love “as one of us”

6)      That tune segues into the children’s favorite “Away in a Manger” featuring Warren Cooper’s tender interpretation of the familiar lyric, with a bit of a lilt in this lullaby

7)      “Joy to the World” – way beyond “lilt” is this global paeon of pure rejoicing. Marino’s fingers dance over the bass strings, and Stockham and Carbone add some Latin heat, and Carter’s piano swings as every heart prepares room for utter joy

8)      “Wexford Carol” – Jeff Stockham’s horn is the perfect interpreter of this traditional British carol

9)      “I Wonder as I Wander” – this is an extended showpiece featuring Mike Carbone’s soprano sax and all of Marko Marcinko’s percussive shakers, rattlers, and bells. When Bill Carter’s piano and Tony Marino’s bass bring the tune to its fullest sound, Warren Cooper adds the lyric of wondering, and with a mid-eastern flavor, one can almost imagine camels dancing toward Nazareth. (I did say almost!) Bill Carter’s arrangement has led us wanderers to the tune “He Is Born” and if “wonder” was the intention of the Presbybop musicians, we’d have to say the studio audience that evening was no less than enthralled!

10)  “Silent Night” – with the quintet’s jazz noels coming to a close, the audience joined their voices to Cooper’s (and to the choirs of the ages) to sing of the “holy infant, so tender and mild.”

As I listened that night and as I watched the final video recording of that joyous performance, I realized that the jazz musicians’ instruments surely echo the sounds of ancient biblical lutes, harps, trumpets, cymbals, and drums. Maybe there is nothing new here, except the exciting new sounds of syncopation and improvisation. Then again, as in Christmas itself, maybe everything is new! Merry Christmas, and Happy New…Everything!

[Here’s the footnote: it turns out that the “jacket” of a DVD/CD combo is too small to accommodate all that wordage. So, to see Bill Carter’s masterful edit of my notes, you’ll have to buy the product, so reasonably priced at $19.95. www.presbybop.com will get you there!]

Just for the Record: The Way It Was…in Radio

I’m following a Facebook group of mostly-former broadcasters these days. Among the topics: how times have changed since the group members were active in radio. And not for the better, of course.

Many of the contributors to the Facebook posts look back with some satisfaction on their experiences. Oh, they had some less than generous station management to deal with, and there were some professional bumps along their career paths, but for the most part these guys and gals (quaint, I know) had a good run as “air personalities.”

They remember the days when stations in larger and mid-sized markets were not under common ownership, but competed in ratings races and enjoyed the sometimes bitter, sometimes more friendly, rivalries between stations fighting for market share. They look back with pride on the creativity that was fed by the freedom they were given by management. And many of them thoroughly grooved on the music they played, some off vinyl, and later “carts” recorded off vinyl.

I never lived the fulltime deejay existence, but I spent a lot of time with those who did. And I understand completely the disdain they have for local stations controlled by huge out-of-town media conglomerates, as well as for the electronic gadgetry that grinds out programming without the need for human talent, that is, air staff.

I recently went to a meeting of the local county historical society to hear a current broadcaster speak about the changes that have come to the industry in past decade or so. The speaker has been around the block you might say, having one foot in the past and one in the present. He knows the radio universe before deregulation and pre-computer. And he’s still on the air, though not that pleased with how things work now.

He distributed to his audience a sheet containing the list of stations (more accurately, I guess, frequencies) that are owned and operated by one company*. The list also showed the air shifts of the stations’ personalities. I saw that the same “jocks” also had shifts on one or two other stations, with timeslots overlapping. Both naïve and curious, I asked how one personality could be on two or three stations at the same time, with those stations having slightly different music formats.

Came the “aha!” moment. The speaker said that the radio group (“chain” or common owner) has the on-air personality record (no, not on tape…good grief…that would be so archaic, so primitive) announcements for each “show” (PSAs, ad libs, some references to music played). The station’s hard drive holds the comments and mixes in the music, commercials, weather, etc. without the announcer actually hearing the mix, except for the last, say, 20 seconds of a song, in order to pick up some vibes from the music, before opening the mic and “back-talking” that song. Since that process certainly telescopes real time, the air personality has plenty of time to go to the studio down the hall and do the same thing for a sister station. And even a third time, for still another station in the group. I guess with only hearing 20 seconds of each of the last songs in a set, recording a four-hour shift might take only an hour.

Of course, the advantage for the ownership is that they can staff three stations in one market with a handful of personalities. (I was tempted to say, “..with a minimum of talent,” but that would be mean and not accurate.)

Now, if jocks used to get bored (but pretended for the audience that they didn’t) playing the same top 30 plus a few oldies sprinkled in, imagine how uninteresting it must be now to simply be computer voices, not even hearing the music the audience will hear. If there had been some fun (heck, use the word joy here…we’re talking about someone’s vocation, their calling), how dull it must be to move from one computer to another recording voice tracks and never really enjoying the “on air” experience or the live give-and-take with your listeners.

And since I’m commenting on today’s radio personalities, (we called ’em deejays, DJs, because once, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, they jockeyed disks, that is, records) …what’s with this use of only one name? As in, DJ Michelle, or just plain “Eric.” Heck, even knowing that radio personalities rarely used real names, it was kind of fun to think up “air names,” even if there may have been 23 guys named “Dusty Rhodes,” or “Rick Stevens.”  Alas! So little imagination these days.

Enough for now. I’m not really cranky about this. Just a little sad.
* Oh, yes…that asterisk. I wanted to be clear that the frequencies are not owned by any commercial entity. The airwaves belong to the public, the saying goes. Owners own the facilities, but are only licensed as stewards of the airwaves. That said, the “control” of the airwaves used to be the purview of the FCC, but truth be told…

Weird, I Know… I Still Dream of Radio

I’ve always been a dreamer.

My imagination is rich, and it has led me along some intriguing paths and along delightful roads. It is certainly not idling at night either. It’s grinding out dream after dream as I sleep.

Invariably the first words I speak to Joan upon waking are, “Well, that was some dream.” They say that if you wake up two or three times during the night, you’ll probably remember the dreams you were having as they were interrupted. (Don’t parse the grammar; just move on.)

Oddly, after all these years, I still have a dream about radio almost every night. Maybe it’s not so odd. I did spend much of my life dreaming up radio show themes or ideas. Then I produced the content by writing scripts, calling guests, choosing music, setting up the studio, recording the programs, editing tapes, and delivering the final products to the stations that gave me chunks of airtime so the dreams (fodder? debris? wonder?) would be broadcast.

Still, these almost nightly sojourns with radio are puzzling. Am I dreaming these fragments as something fed by memories? Or, are they left-over fears and frustrations that haunt me? Or, are these dreams a kind of prompt, perhaps the seeds of some call to actually act on what I am doing in my sleep world?

One night, I’ll be returning to the dark, ultra-cluttered closet of the church that housed the studio in which I created so many radio programs. I’ll be peering into the boxes I may have left behind, discovering old relics that ask for new life: old records that want to be played again…reels of tape that are ripe for “racking up” on the studio equipment. In one dream, I’m disappointed to find that perfectly good shows have been tossed aside, or erased. Another night, I’ll have dreamed that someone cleaned the place out and valuable things have been lost.

But on many mornings I awake from dreams where I’ve been producing anew. I have a program to get to a station within an hour of broadcast time. Or, I’ll be building a music list for a show, and finding that all my records are somewhere else, and maybe it means swimming some distance for them. Or, I’m working with a youth group on some theme, and we need visuals to go with the songs they’ve chosen.

Now, I dream about other things besides radio. Usually I’m at a conference of some sort, or in a meeting. I rarely dream of people I know or places I’ve been. Almost all my dreams take place in a parallel universe with little or no recognition of anything familiar. On rare occasions a member of my family makes a cameo appearance. But not often.

If there is a recurring theme, Dr. Freud or Dr. Jung, it is that of having an opportunity to create something new to get on the air. It might be frustrating or fulfilling, the sensation I’m having as I dream. But there it is. One way or another I am “back on the air.”

I suppose that I should admit this now, as I move toward a conclusion. The radio I once worked in (with, through, and for) no longer exists. Rare is the station that gives away “public service time.” And rare is the station that does creative local programming. The skills I had that brought spiritual meaning (I hope and pray) from vinyl records, magnetic tape, and thoughtfully-written scripts will find no home in today’s broadcast arena. That’s history, folks.

But, I am trainable, digitally-speaking. I can still imagine. I can still write. I can still speak, though, as I have previously written, my voice is changing…maturing, one might say. Aging.

I have this spiffy new contraption of a microphone that records pristine audio onto a memory card. I have a list of people in my community I imagine interviewing. The audio editing capability of my computer has already been put to good use. I dream of doing this show…but finding someone to listen in this day and age…well, that’s the catch isn’t it?

Weird, I know.