Radio Survivor

He may not have been able to successfully inherit the leadership of the Republican party this year, but at least good ol’ Rushbo gets a consolation prize: a whole musical performed in his honor.

Last night Chicago’s famed Second City comedy company premiered their newest production, Rush Limbaugh! The Musical! The play follows Rush through his rise to prominence as aided and abetted by comrades like Anne Coulter and opponents like Rep. Barney Frank. Second City says,

The score for the show will feature a pastiche of Broadway musicals such as Spring Awakening, Wicked, and Rent. You can call it “Dispirit of the Radio.”

I have to admit that I am both intrigued by the concept, and a little disappointed. Limbaugh is such an over-the-top personality on-air that he verges on self-parody. Not only does he seem sometimes to know this, but he even seems to revel in it. So aiming a parody musical at him is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

Reading today’s reviews of opening night, it looks like the critics agree. The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones writes,

this uncertain show can’t compete with the outsize personality of the object of its satire….

In last year’s “Rod Blagojevich Superstar!,” the disgraced former governor of Illinois went down like a nine pin… . But Limbaugh is a tougher customer than the truly weird Blago, not least because (like a lot of successfully outrageous radio personalities) you never quite know with Limbaugh where the revelations end and the act begins.

More to the point, Hedy Weiss at the Chicago Sun-Times simply concludes,

Sadly, the whole exercise… turns out to be largely predictable, unfunny and surprisingly dated.

Even so, I’m not entirely dissuaded from checking out the show. In this day and age, when’s the next time I’ll have the opportunity to see a musical (even a parody) about a radio star?

Skulltime for Kids Pirate Shirt

Debuting back in 1987, way before pirates were ever deemed cool and a full 8 years before “Talk Like a Pirate Day” was ever conceptualized, Skulltime for Kids hit the airwaves of Foothill College radio station KFJC 89.7 FM in Los Altos Hills, California.

Captain Jack, the creator of the show, told me that the original idea for the program was born during a graveyard shift that he did with a fellow DJ in which they pretended to be pirates. He said that those initial late night shows were hilarious and that other station staff members encouraged him to base a show around that concept.

So, in 1987 Skulltime for Kids began as a Wednesday afternoon “children’s show,” hosted by the pirate Captain Jack.

The early years were a solo operation, with Captain Jack playing children’s records and spinning tales about his pirate life. He always alluded to a character called Skully, who was the “phantom bartender on Skull Island,” but it wasn’t until 1992 that another DJ offered to join the show in order to bring Skully to life. By 1996 or 1997 Skully was a regular fixture on Skulltime for Kids and around that time I started listening to the show (and joined the staff of KFJC).

There are a lot of things to love about Skulltime for Kids. There’s always plenty of banter about pop culture and music trivia and over the years I’ve found the show to be the “go to” place for news about dead celebrities, as they do rousing tributes to recently departed pop culture fixtures. Both Captain Jack and Skully are also thrift store junkies, so they often play amazing vintage children’s records with songs and stories from the past. (more…)

Dr. Demento (image from www.drdemento.com)

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, the Dr. Demento show began in 1970 on Los Angeles freeform station KPPC as a “rarities” show.

By 1974 the popular radio program, which specializes in a mix of music and comedy, moved into syndication all over the country.

Hosted by former college radio DJ (at the Reed College station), music historian, and record executive Barret Hansen (aka Dr. Demento); the show has celebrated not only novelty recordings, but also rare musical and comedic gems.

When I was a kid my sister and I used to spend hours and hours listening to the Dr. Demento show, cracking up over the silly comedic songs that were aimed at just our level of maturity. (more…)

I need a good laugh about once every twenty minutes, especially these days. So I listen to Onion Radio News.

“A giant 6-year old devastates a local ant community!” announces ORN’s hard nosed reporter, Doyle Redland. “Ant-hill scouts reported today that a mammalian destructo-beast some ten thousand ant-links in height smashed a nearby ant-hill and left thousands scurrying to rebuild.”

The kid was caught on tape, Redland continues, “using a Stone Cold Steve Austin action figure to pummel the colony flat.” Though reports from the scene are sketchy, “all stress that The Queen is unharmed,” Redland emphasizes. “Repeat. THE QUEEN IS UNHARMED.”

At a time when so much on line humor is about being snarky or trashing people, ORN somehow finds a way to be laughing-out-loud funny without being mean. The service succeeds in this by making whimsical fun of nobody in particular, just mythological figures , crash test dummies , “area” women and men, and recently deceased animals, often with salutation names. Redland’s but-seriously-folks voice is provided by the actor and cartoonist Pete S. Mueller.

“If there’s a Ferret Heaven, an area woman’s dead Ferret is in it!” Redland disclosed in an April 15, 2008 exclusive. The breaking story (and one of my favorites) boils down to an interview with former ferret owner Kelly Isgold, who says that if a ferret heaven exists, “her recently deceased pet Mr. Slinky has been given a gold halo” and a full pass. (more…)

For as much as I love radio I have to admit that there’s very few programs that I might consider appointment listening. Sure, I tune in to NPR daily to catch up on the news with Morning Edition and All Things Considered, but they’re pretty interchangeable to me. If, for some reason, the BBC News Hour were on instead I’d notice the difference, but I wouldn’t turn off the radio.

My #5 is not appointment listening. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I do know when it’s on, and if I happen to be in a radio listening mood at that time, I will be sure to tune it in. In fact, when it comes to commercial radio–especially syndicated commercial radio–it’s my favorite program currently on the air.

Little Steven’s Underground Garage stands out from most commercial music radio because it still shows the idosyncratic touch of its namesake host. Focused on the somewhat ill-defined subgenre of garage rock, the program plays rough-edged rock and roll that finds its roots with 1960s bands like the Troggs who went on to inspire early punks like the Ramones and later rockers such as the White Stripes. While this sort of rock is a mainstay of the Underground Garage, Little Steven takes a kind of “I know it when I see it” approach to the show, including a healthy does of Motown and other early rock nuggets alongside the more catholic selections. But his approach is not a hodge podge, like any real music DJ he draws connections between the songs he plays, often explaining why he deems an unorthodox choice worthy of inclusion.

Host Little Steven Van Zandt is otherwise known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, but in his off time has dedicated himself to the promotion and preservation of garage rock. While I certainly like most of the music labeled garage rock, I would never have considered myself a particular fan, as such. I first became aware of Little Steven’s campaign for the subgenre when a band local to Champaign-Urbana, IL, where I used to live, The Blackouts (now The Living Blue) won his first Underground Garage Battle of the Bands. That’s when I first tuned in to the program Sunday nights on the local classic rock station.
(more…)

I think I can speak for my fellow Radio Survivors when I say that we really enjoyed putting together our run-down of the fourteen most important radio trends of the last decade. And yet, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the many aspects of radio that we really love.

So, beginning this month each of us will run down our own personal Top 5 of something radio-related. For January that Top 5 will be our favorite radio programs. These programs can be local or syndicated, commercial or noncommercial. But what joins them is that each of us thinks they’re amongst the best that broadcast radio has to offer. We’ll be counting down our Top 5 radio programs beginning this coming Monday, January 25.

We’ll share our Top 5s the last week of every month. We also hope that you’ll share your responses to our picks, along with posting your own favorites in the comments.

We’re also interested in your suggestions for future Top 5 countdowns. If you have an idea post it as a comment or drop us an email to editors@radiosurvivor.com.

I still think the last word on explaining radio genres goes to Strong Bad of the Home Star Runner series. Listen and loin:

Radio France has quite a few devotees in the San Francisco Bay Area, among them the noted filmmaker Veronica Selver. You can listen to the service live, or you can download podcasts via your iPhone, as does Veronica. It helps if you understand French, of course. If not,  she sent us this summary of some recent shows.

L’Avventura, a weekly show on cinema, with Laure Adler, hostess (The July 22 and July 29 shows as a typical format)

The show opens with the same passage from l’Avventura each
week, Italian dialogue and music. In depth interview with a filmmaker and extensive quotes
from the film(s) discussed. Examples:

An interview with Elia Seleiman, a Palestinian filmmaker whopresented his latest film at Cannes, Elia Suleiman speaks in English with a French translator. Laure Adler always contextualizes the present work within the body of work of the filmmaker. (more…)

I started reading the Professor’s detailed travelogues of his AM and shortwave radio band excursions back when he was writing for WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. After he quit contributing to BotB I learned that he was keeping things going at his own Radio Kitchen blog.

The Professor belongs to a group of radio enthusiasts who record what are known as “airchecks,” which are simply off-air recordings of radio stations. Usually created as a form of historical record, air check recordings serve as an often valuable capture of what is an otherwise mostly ephemeral medium.

In the analog era airchecks were mostly recorded on boombox style radios with built-in cassette recorders. Enthusiasts often traded copies of these tapes with folks from other parts of the country or the world. You see before the internet that was the only way to hear what local radio sounded like somewhere else without traveling.

Only the fanciest radio cassette recorders come in woodgrain.

In the digital era you’d think that recording and sharing radio airchecks would be much easier, given the near ubiquity of digital audio and video recording devices. But while radios with built-in cassette recorders were omnipresent at any electronics or discount store in the 1970s through the 1990s, there are few digital equivalents in existence in the 21st century. Although Apple recently included limited FM radio recording capabilities into its newest iPod Nano, it only records up to 15 minutes, and has no AM reception. So what do you do to digitally record hours of AM or shortwave radio?

The Professor recently took up that very question. One solution one might consider is connecting your computer’s audio input to a radio. The big problem there, however, is that computers generate a ton of RF interference which can seriously mess up AM and shortwave reception. iPods and other MP3 devices wreak similar radio havoc.

In his long, but worthwhile and info-rich, post the Professor gives an overview of the state of recording radio digitally, giving a nice user review of C. Crane’s CC Witness radio, which includes an MP3 recorder.

Aside from recording my own radio programs (usually direct off the studio board), I’ve only dabbled in recording radio airchecks over the years. In the 20th century I also mostly used cassette recorders. Due to sloppy labeling practices I’ve mostly lost all of those tapes over the years. I’ve also done some recordings in the 2000s, primarily to capture source material off shortwave for unfinished audio art projects. I did most of those recordings on minidisc recorders which seem to be very well shielded compared to other digital recorders, injecting almost no noise into the signal. The last Hi-MD models let me upload the recordings directly onto my computer for sharing and manipulation. Hi-MD is also how I recorded my mediageek radioshow for podcast distribution up until last year.

I’m not sure that I will ever record enough radio airchecks to merit spending $179 on a dedicated digital radio recorder. But I sure am glad that such a device exists, keeping alive a hobby that documents the rich history of broadcasting that otherwise would just dissipate into the ether.

Casey Kasem in 1975

The relevancy of the Billboard Top 40 singles chart seems to have faded over time in concert with the splintering of genres and audiences, and so the final broadcast of Casey Kasem on American Top 20 this past weekend seemed to garner only the barest of media notices. Perhaps that’s because Kasem handed off the keys for his signature program, American Top 40, to Ryan Seacrest back in 2004.

I have very fond memories of listening to AT40 growing up in Toms River, NJ, hearing it on the slightly distant WJLK-FM out of Asbury Park (of Springsteen fame). As a ten-year-old I could get quite excited when my favorite single of the moment climbed up the chart. Even then I don’t think I ever had much of an emotional response to the schmaltzy Long-Distance Dedication Kasem ready every week. But I enjoyed learning the brief trivia and bio info of the top artists, which was more than I’d hear even from the DJs on the local stations.

Besides the thrill of the countdown, the joy of listening to Casey’s program was how it represented the diversity of the pop chart, from disco to soul, hard rock to country. While I might not have listened to a lot of these styles of music otherwise (especially country), many of those past hits stick with me to this day.

By the time I hit high school my music tastes had both broadened and narrowed, and I was much less interested in mainstream pop music. Aside from the occasional encounter while scanning the band on a road trip, I can’t say that I’ve tuned in to Casey since the 1980s. Although most of the time I’m a cynical indie music snob who snubs most of commercial music radio on principle, I do have a small little place in my cold, dark heart for Casey Kasem and AT40. Especially during a time when radio was locally programmed by default, the weekly countdown had more of a unifying effect rather than a homogenizing one. Sure, the 40 most popular songs in New Jersey were probably different than in Wyoming — heck, Toms River’s Top 40 was probably a lot different than Newark’s. Yet, the national diversity seemed to seep through at least a little bit. And, as an already avowed radio geek, I got to hear exciting national radio ads of the sort rarely heard on the comparatively podunk stations at the Jersey Shore.

Negativland

Now when I think of Casey I can’t help but be reminded of Negativland’s ill-fated U2 single featuring outtakes of Casey losing it with expletive-laced tirades (NSFW YouTube link) while cutting voiceovers for the Top 40. Any mention of U2, Bono or the entire country of England spurs me to blurt out, “These guys are from England, and who gives a sh*t?” (Yes, it’s a problem, but I don’t want help — another NSFW YouTube link, BTW).

Although American Top 40 continues on, the retirement of Casey Kasem is still indicative of a real change in radio. In some ways the relevancy of the Top 40 has changed not just because of narrowcasting, but also due to the loss of localism. The Top 40 isn’t that different from most station’s whole playlists, only the order is different. And compared to many other national hosts–from Rush Limbaugh to Howard Stern–Casey was much more gentle on-air presence. In a lot of ways he was even a throwback when I was listening to him the 1980s.

I’m not sure Casey’s retirement is sad or even bittersweet. Perhaps it’s simply just worth noting, recognizing and paying due respect to a breed of broadcaster and a kind of radio that is already a very distant memory.