pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary
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GLORY DAYS of CHICAGO AM RADIO
In the fall of 1966, my big brother, Richard (half-brother, really, but he was always big brother to me), returned from his first tour of duty (out of what? Five or six?) in Vietnam. Every time he came home, he brought presents. I don�t know if they were items he bought, things he found or contraband he won in poker games, but he always brought presents. On this day, he brought me a small, Philco transistor radio. It only picked up AM, but it was MY own radio. Up until then, we could only afford a �family� radio.
I was just starting to come of age at that point. I was in 6th grade and noticing both music and girls. The radio helped me to diversify my tastes in music beyond that of what my parents had allowed. Now I was able to pull in 2 Chicago powerhouses: WLS and WCFL. I listened to the latter in the morning because I didn�t like Clark Webber, WLS�s morning DJ. WCFL had Joel Sebastian, then Gerry G. Bishop on in the mornings, then Ron Britain on the way home from school and I liked their style.
(I eventually met Gerry G. Bishop - who started spelling his first name with a "J" - in San Diego. He was broadcasting from the showroom of a car dealership. I went in and told him that I remembered listenting to him on WCFL in Chicago "when I was a kid." He looked at me (he couldn't have been more than 35 at the time) and said, "Jeez, you make me feel old!")
But what really caught me was listening to late night radio. Ron Riley and the legendary Art Roberts played the hits countdown and new music at night. I�d listen to Ron Riley as I did my homework and then would sneak the radio under my pillow and listen to Art Roberts on the 8 to midnight shift. They had DJ�s with the most interesting names: Dex Card, John �Records� Landecker (who made �Records� his legal middle name!), Mort Crowley and Gary Gears.
WLS was the first station to punch out 50,000 watts of power. If conditions were right, you could pick it up almost anywhere east of the Rockies. I remember listening to it on that same Philco radio a year later in Altus, OK which is about 900 miles from Chicago. What song did I hear? Of all things... Kermit The Frog singing �Rubber Duckie.�
When I�d sneak the radio under my pillow at night I�d also hear songs from the great stars of the day. Stars like Gene Pitney, Herman�s Hermits, Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, Rolling Stones, Animals, the Byrds, Blues Magoos, The Chambers Brothers, Dave Clark Five, Chicago�s own Shadows of Knight, Buckinghams and the Boxtops, along with (of course) the latest by the Fab Four. There would be requests called in and put on live and there would be jokes and skits and all the silly things that the late night DJ�s would do � mainly because they could get away with all kinds of shit. I mean, Ron Riley had his �Batman� club and would do spoofs of the popular and campy TV series with Adam West. He was so successful, it earned Ron a cameo on the Show!
I�d also hear these various songs down in my cousin�s basement there at 1323 Lakeview Street in Whiting. In fact, I danced with my first girl there; a lovely lady by the name of Elaine Vacendak who was cute and sweet and had an evil little sister that would tattle on us every time we kissed. (There is also a story about my attending Elaine�s wedding reception in 1976 that is a separate tale I will have to tell, now that the Olympics are in full swing.)
Why am I writing about this? Well, recently I�ve begun acquiring songs from that era and it�s bringing back a flood of memories. I sat here for two hours today bawling my eyes out as I sang along with Peter Noone (the �Herman� of Herman�s Hermits) who had a particularly British singing voice. I don�t know how to describe it better than that. He was the teen heartthrob of his day and is one of the few from that era that has �aged well.�
PETER NOONE
As time went on, I found FM radio when it was truly underground � both on college stations and on a couple commercial ones. I also would broadcast on a �radio station� that an acquaintance named Paul Wolf set up in his basement (aptly given the call letters of W-O-L-F and had a broadcasting power of one whole singular watt � which meant I could be heard to the end of the street). Paul was a sadistic little bastard, though and I soon dropped my friendship.
But FM brought me new things� songs that were longer than three minutes!!! And strange DJ�s that would have a wind chime set up next to his fan in the studio; another that would play sitar music as a backdrop to his commentary and a third that would broadcast stoned, invented his own commercials for Psycho-Cybernetics.
Psycho-Cybernetics was a totally fake company. This DJ on WLS-FM (which changed it�s call letters to WDAI �as a joke� but I never got it � But DAMN, they had a cool poster!) loved making up his own commercials. Each time they aired, there would be a brief introduction stating that this is NOT a commercial but part of radio programming��
Then:
�Have you ever had a wonderful dream and then woke up and couldn�t remember it? Well, Psycho-Cybernetics can help! Just put our patented Brain-Scan Analyzer on your head and plug the set into any IBM Selectric� Typewriter and the Psycho-Cybernetics Brain-Scan Analyzer will send your brainwaves to the typewriter which will type them out neatly for you to read the next morning with your cup of coffee!� (there was no word as to who would change the sheets of paper in the typewriter nor how it would translate brainwaves into coherent sentences).�
�Have you ever met a beautiful young woman, but before you can think of something witty to say, your tongue gets ahead of you and you blurt out something stupid? Well, we here at the Psycho-Cybernetics Corp can help. Just carry our patented Mouth Brake in your pocket and it will stop you from saying something silly until your brain has had time to get in gear and sent your mouth something witty to say instead.�
He eventually got fired for being stoned too often as well as for saying one day: �We�re supposed to broadcast the news now, but fuck that! Let�s play more music!� Fuck, of course, is one of the seven cardinal sin no-no�s of broadcasting. On his last day at WDAI, he did a 10 minute rag on the idiots out there that would actually "write in" to Psycho-Cybernetics Corp only to find that the address was for the Platex Bra factory in Ohio.
From what I understand, he ended up on a station in South Carolina and continued making his own commercials. I think he passed away because I remember a retrospective of his work. He had one more really great commercial though. Back then, Hills Bros. Coffee was advertising about their �Mountain Grown� brand of bean. He took it a step further, with �Juan Valdez� coming back from selling his coffee. �I want to thank all you American gringo�s for buying coffee from Juan Valdez. With the profits, we have been able to purchase enough AK-47�s to become freedom fighters and liberate our country from the capitalistic oppressors! Viva la Revolucion!�
So, that�s my trip down memory lane for today. Hope I made you laugh.
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On a different note, I've been seeing more and more bumperstickers popping up on liberal-mobiles stating: "Vote Democrat in '08! We didn't kill anybody!" There was also a banner running here in diarrhea land stating the same. As I said to that person and any other liberal that wants to put a pompous, smarmy lie on their car: Kennedy/Johnson - Vietnam... Clinton - Bosnia... and we're still in fucking Bosnia! (mainly because THE U.N. DOESN'T HAVE AN "EXIT STRATEGY!" - sound familiar?)
12:38 a.m. - 2006-02-16
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