National DJ Day

Today is a day to celebrate the Disc Jockey. I was lucky enough to be both a radio DJ and a Mobile DJ. I have mobile DJ stories, but they aren’t as interesting as my radio DJ stories. This is an adaption of an earlier blog. If you are a newer follower, these will be new to you. If you’ve been around since the inception of this blog, enjoy these again.

In my over 30 year radio career, I have (like all of my radio friends) a gazillion stories. There are some that I just can’t share here. But, here are some that I’ll share off the top of my head. I am sure there are plenty more, but for now – enjoy these:

WKSG –

My career started here. I was a lowly intern ripping news and sorting it. I then started to intern with Paul Christy, the morning guy. He eventually was responsible for me doing overnights full time.

Keith Who?

I only used my real name once in my entire career – and almost didn’t. Every hour at the top of the hour we had to play our Legal ID. The FCC requires the station to identify itself and where the signal originates from. Our Legal ID had was what we called a “donut” in the middle of it. The voice guy gave the station slogan, followed by the Station ID. After that there was a 2-3 music bed where the DJ would say what time it was and their name. I’d heard it a hundred times. “It’s 10 O’clock and I’m Jim McKenzie”, “It’s 3 O’clock and I’m John Bailey”, “It’s 7 O’clock and I’m Johnny Molson” – every jock did it. My first night ever on the air, I hadn’t decided what name I was going to use yet. The ID played and I had no choice – “It’s midnight and I’m … (brain fart – and real name)”. I really had no intentions of using my real name, I just hadn’t decided on my on air name yet. A gal I went to high school with was listening that night. I remember her calling and asking if I was Keith (real name). It freaked me out. She told me that she heard my that first night and thought that I had said my real name. I used Keith Allen every day after that and have never been anyone else.

Thinking Inside the Box

Speaking of those live ID’s, Johnny Molson was on before me each night. It seemed that he and his crew always were trying to mess with me when the ID played. They would make weird noises, bang on cart racks, or knock over my music stack. They would do all kinds of things to try to get me to mess up when I turned on the microphone. . Sometimes they’d get me to crack up and sometimes I was able to keep it together.

One night, the time was ticking away to the ID and they were all out of the studio. The ID started and I heard the studio door behind me open fast. They had found a huge box and as I started to talk, they threw it over my head. My hands, thankfully, were still by the mixer board so I could see what button I had to push next. I didn’t know what to do, so I just continued to talk with the box was over my head. Listeners heard nothing but a muffled voice and the music bed. Johnny was cracking up the whole time. He told me, “I can’t believe you just kept going”!

Saturday Snooze

At one point during my time at Kiss-FM, I was doing Friday night and Saturday mornings. This consisted of me being on air from 12a-6a doing my own show. Then running Paul Christy’s show on tape from 6a-10a.

I don’t recall why I hadn’t slept much the day prior, but I was tired. I finished my show at 6. I got about an hour into Paul’s show, and I was feeling exhausted. I had started a song, put my elbows up on the board, my fists to my cheeks, and nodded off. About 20-25 minutes later, my head fell from my hands and I was startled awake. I had no idea where I was. The phones were all lit up, and nothing was on the air!

In a panic, I grabbed the first song on the music stack and jammed it into the machine. Fittingly, the song was “You’ve Got Your Troubles” by the Fortunes. Once the music started, the phones stopped ringing. I, however, knew that Paul was always listening! I dreaded the call that I knew was coming. I was sure to get fired for messing up his show! 10 minutes later the “PC hotline rang”.

I answered it and as usual, Paul was chomping on something (he was always eating when he called). “How’s it going?”, he asked. There was no way he didn’t hear the silence! He had to have heard it, I knew he did. Why wasn’t he saying anything? I finally blurted out that I had fallen asleep for a couple minutes and awaited the verbal beating. Nope. Not Paul. He laughed and said, “You Asshole! I remember this one time I fell asleep while I was at Super CFL in Chicago….” and told me his sleepy story. That was the kind of guy Paul was … a damn cool dude!

Hot Java

One more Paul story for you. He drank coffee all throughout his shift. He liked it black and hot! One time he had Vince, a morning show member, get him some coffee. It sat next to him for awhile while he was doing other things. He finally grabbed it and took a sip. He was disgusted.

He yelled, “What the hell is the matter with you guys?! You call this hot coffee?! I could piss warmer than this!! Get me some fresh stuff and make sure it is hot!” So Vince went to the coffee pot, filled the cup and then put it in the microwave for about 2 …or 10 minutes. I don’t remember, but it was in there for a good while. He took the steaming cup to Paul. Well, rather than setting it down as he normally did, put it to his lips and took a sip. Needless to say, it burned the hell out of his tongue and lips! Paul yelped, “Jesus! What is wrong with you?!” Holding his tongue in pain, he continued, “I use this thing for a living!!” I think every one of us broke a rib laughing so hard. I can still see him holding his tongue with one hand and fanning it with the other!

WMXD

I followed Paul here to do some part time work after being let go from Kiss-FM. The format started as a mix of Urban/R&B music and Pop. Eventually it went all R&B and Urban. It was here that I met The Electrifying Mojo.

Keef

I had known of Mojo for years. He was a Detroit legend. He had this mysterious persona on t he air. I don’t know that there were any photos of him anywhere. So when I saw him for the first time, I was taken aback. He was much shorter than I had imagined.

I have to say, Mojo was one cool dude. He played most of his stuff off vinyl records. The thing I remember most about Mojo was that the studio was always like a sauna! It was always SO hot when I came in. I don’t know how he was able to work with it that hot.

The studio was always a mess, too! Not garbage messy, but music messy. There were always vinyl records all over the studio. He’d have them stacked on the reel to reel tape machine or on the counter tops. Sometimes, there were stacks of them on the floor of the studio. With the records everywhere, it was hard for me to get in and gather the first hour of music for my show. You could barely move in the studio.

He always called me “Keef” or “Baby Keef” when he got ready to wrap up his show. He had a signature line that he always said at the end of his show:

“Hold on tight. Don’t let go. Whenever you feel like you are reaching the end of your rope – tie a knot. Don’t slide off. Keep hanging. Keep remembering that there ain’t nobody bad like you.”

I had heard him say this on the radio many times, but to watch him say it live in the studio … I was in awe.

WHND

Honey Radio! I grew up listening to this station and I was honored to have the chance to work with radio legends! Richard D, Jon Ray, Boogie Brian, Ron Tavernit, Bill Stewart, Greg Russell, and so many others were such an influence. Honey was the first oldies station in the country – and I got to be there as they turned out the light…..

Worst Five Minutes of Detroit Radio – EVER

You can read all about my buddy Rob in a previous blog. I am not sure if I tell this story in that blog or not, so I apologize if I did. It was the last week Honey was on the air – the week of Thanksgiving 1994. Our listeners knew that this was Honey’s last week and we had been given free reign to have fun.

We had a listener who used to call up and his name was Mitchell. I had gotten to the point where I could do his voice pretty well. I had been doing a character based on the real listener and I called him “Mitch”. True story – Mitch would call and talk to us and really never have anything to say. He’s jump from topic to topic. If you let him, he’d never stop talking. So I decided to prerecord some calls as Mitch where I just rambled about nothing and then hung up. Afterward, we’d say something like “He’s a nice guy, but ….” kind of a thing. It was ridiculous.

So now it’s the last week we are on the air. It had become clear that some people were upset the station was going off the air. They were calling us in the studio and calling the managers to voice their anger. I said to Rob, “I bet Mitchell is really angry about the station.” He said, “They better lock the doors, man. That guy is likely to come in here with a gun or something. That was the idea. So we planned a bit.

I was going to do the character live on the air. I was going to come in and say how upset I was the station was going off the air. I would yell and scream and (using the theater of the mind) pull out a gun and start shooting it (keep in mind this was 1994 and public shootings were not as prominent). At this point in the bit, our bouncer character (loosely based on Charles Bronson) was going to come in and grab the gun. He would then beat up “Mitch” and throw him out the studio window. To accomplish the bit we needed sound effects (to make it sound real on the air).

To help you understand what happens next, here is a picture of a studio. It is not the WHND studio, but the Cart machines in the picture are like the ones there.

If you look at the left side of the picture, you will see the machines above the headphones. There are three machines on the left, a stack of carts in the middle and three machines on the right. At Honey, the machines went like this:

1 4

2 5

3 6

Ok, now to the mess.

We had these 6 cart machines and every song, commercial, or sound effect was on its own cart. So in cart player #1 was the song we just played. Cart #2 had the door closing sound effect for when Mitch comes in. Cart #3 holds the gunshot sound. Cart #4 is the “fight scene” – the sound of two guys beating each other up. Cart #5 is where the sound of glass breaking (the studio window) for when Mitch gets tossed out . Finally, Cart #6 had our first commercial.

The plan was that after Mitch was thrown out the window, we would go to a commercial break. I would have already put the commercial we were going to play first in Cart player 1. Once the glass breaks and we wrap up the bit, go to commercial and proceeded with the show. That however, is NOT how it happened on the air.

As soon as I began to do the character live on the air, I saw Rob crack a smile. That is all it took. Seeing him smile made me start to laugh hard. As his Elvis character, Rob tries to save the bit. So I once again try to do the “Mitch” character – which only made me laugh harder. By this point we are both laughing so hard that we have tears in our eyes. Rob, as Elvis, says “That takes care of that bit, man!”

Because we are totally losing it on the air, my first thought is PLAY THE COMMERCIAL! I go to start the commercial, but the commercial never made it to the machine! So the button I pushed was the gunshot sound effect, which only made us laugh harder….you hear us dropping carts and shoving the commercial in the machine and finally we went to commercials. I have often called this the worst 5 minutes of Detroit radio. To me it is also the funniest 5 minutes of our show.

Update: I found the Audio and made a YouTube Video:

My apologies ahead of time …

Becoming The President

The late Richard D was one of the funniest men I ever worked with. He gave me lots of direction and I have talked about him in previous blogs, as well. I was producing his show the Top 12 at 12. This was an hour of his show which featured the Top 12 songs in Detroit on that day. They found those 12 songs from local charts from radio stations and newspapers. Each day featured a different year.

It was a fun show to produce. It included new stories, TV and movie clips, old commercials, info about how much things were from that year, etc… Richard had to play that day’s 12 songs from the chart. Every now and then there was extra time because of short songs. We would then give him songs that were on the charts from that week to play as “extras.” Usually it was a song that was just being released or had been a hit earlier in that year.

On one show, the countdown was from 1966. I had put a Dean Martin song in there as an extra and he played it. After the song, he made some comment about it not being the greatest song or something and moved on. So I went into the studio, as I often did, to give him crap. I said something along the lines of “Why are you messing with Italians! Dean was Italian and so I am I! Look here you “old bastid (a term of endearment), If I were you, I’d watch what you say about Dean Martin … and Frank Sinatra for that matter!” The whole time he laughed. I left the room as he continued to laugh hysterically.

I thought that would be the end of it, but Richard loved an opportunity to make me the butt of a joke. After the next song he said on the air, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I must offer an apology. A little while ago I played (whatever the song was) by Dean Martin and made some negative remarks about it. Immediately after that, Keith Allen came in here with about 12 goons who roughed me up a bit and told me that my comments were distasteful. So I must now publicly apologize. I really had no idea that Keith Allen was the President of the Dean Martin Fan Club!”

From that day on, I always tried to find a way to sneak a Dean Martin song into my show. After each of those songs I would say I was President of the Dean Martin Fan Club.

Related side story

When Honey went off the air, I received a package from a listener named Sandy. She and I remain friends with to this day. The package was a complete surprise and it was awesome. Sandy had sent me a membership to the REAL Dean Martin Fan Club! To make things even better, there was a note in the package. It read: “I thought you might actually want to be a member of the Fan Club you claim to be President of….”

The Sign Off

For years I listened to Boogie Brian rhyme as he talked up song intros until he nailed the post (where the vocalist starts to sing). He would do this with no effort at all. His energy was constant and the smile in his voice was ever present – until November 25, 1994. That was the day Honey stopped broadcasting locally before eventually signing off. My partner Rob and I were listening to his sign off from the other room. The day had already been full of listeners wishing us well and many tears were shed. The biggest tears came as Boogie signed off that day. A powerful memory that I will never forget.

WWWW

My Worst Prediction

In 1994, I had just come back from working on the west side of the state. It was there that I did country radio for the first time. After I was hired at W4 Country, there was a change in management. The new PD, Tim Roberts, would take the chair and offer some advice that I still use today. Every year, Tim was responsible for booking acts to the Downtown Hoedown. It was a huge three day festival with many stages and many acts. At the time took place in Hart Plaza in Detroit.

We worked at the Hoedown in shifts as I recall and mine was over. I was waiting in the blue W4 Country Suburban to go back to the station with Tim Timmerman. The Dixie Chicks were an up and coming act who had a very traditional sound. Their music was really not like anything on the radio at the time. While I loved it, I didn’t think it would do as well as it did. Tim looked out the window of the Suburban and said “Dude, it’s the Dixie Chicks! We should go get a picture!” I was exhausted and I told him that he could go if he wanted to. I then said something about them being way too traditional and that “they probably won’t go anywhere”. Boy, was I wrong! There’s an opportunity I missed and regret to this day!

Thanks for reading, it’s always fun to share radio stories. There are plenty of my DJ Heroes mentioned above, too. That’s fitting for National DJ Day!

The Music of My Life – 1995

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

In 1995 a new form of media was invented – The DVD. 1995 was also the year I hit the quarter century mark, turning 25.

30 years ago this month, in 1994, my partner, Rob, and I lost our jobs at Honey Radio. We searched for other radio work, but no one was looking for a morning team. I kept searching and eventually found some part time radio work. I also ventured out and began to host Karaoke at a few places every now and then.

My full time gig was working in the mail room at EDS. I spent a lot of time in the car and listened to a lot of radio. Many of these songs accompanied me on my deliveries.

After seven years of touring and three previous albums, Blues Traveler finally broke through with the song Run-Around. John Popper had a crush on the band’s original bass player Felicia Lewis. She was actually classically trained as a violinist. She was just playing bass for fun.

Guitar player Chan Kinchla says that Felicia was a great student and eventually became a doctor. “Her calling was medicine, not music” . When Bobby Sheehan was ready to take over on bass, Felicia stepped aside. Kinchla says, “It’s a very amicable situation. John always had kind of a crush on her, but they were friends, as well. So that song’s from that whole affair. They’re still very close. It’s just an unrequited love song.”

The song won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal in 1995.

John Hopper could really blow the harp! His harmonica stuff is just fantastic. It is hard to to hear this one and not feel happy. I often found myself having to set the cruise control, as this one often made me want to drive fast.

If you are a fan of the Wizard of Oz, you’ll appreciate the nod to the classic film in the video.

Run-Around

Until researching for this blog, I had no idea the story behind the next song. I Believe was a top ten record for Blessid Union of Souls. The song is about the power of love and the belief that it can impact life for the better. It is a powerful message.

The song came about because of the end of a relationship. Eliot Sloan recalls writing this song after his girlfriend’s father coerced her into breaking up with him. Many sources say that it was because of his race. Her dad went as far as threatening to cut off her college tuition, if she didn’t leave him.

They did break up, but she obviously meant a lot to him. He placed a message in the liner notes of the Home album. It says, “Lisa, give me a call sometime just to say hello, my number is still the same.”

Sloan says, “I always tell people, and it’s the truth, ‘I Believe’ was written in the middle of the night at about three in the morning. I always used to live in downtown Cincinnati, a really cool spiral staircase up to my bedroom, which kind of ended up as my studio. I kept a piano there that my mother got me when I was nine. In the middle of the night I was hearing the melody and I thought, ‘this is pretty.’ I just had to get up and play it.”

That piano line is really beautiful, and I love the way it intermingles with the strings. I love the message, too:

‘Cause I believe, that love is the answer
I believe, love will find the way

I Believe

There are many stories about how Better Than Ezra came up with their name. As far as I can tell, they’ve never really said. The one that I love is that they were playing at some event that featured many bands. The story goes that they followed a band called Ezra, and when asked what their name was they said, “Better Than Ezra.” I hope that is the real story, because I think that is hilarious!

We just heard I Believe about a break up. Better Than Ezra’s, Good, looks at a break up in a different way. As a matter of fact, I tend to look at my past break ups like this.

BTE’s Kevin Griffin wrote the song. In an interview with songfacts.com he said:

“I wanted to talk about the positive things that come from the end of a relationship. There’s always the hurt feelings and everyone’s guarded and it can be traumatic, but when the dust settles, it was about looking at the good things – no pun intended – that you got from that relationship. How did you grow? What did you learn emotionally? And to experience some stuff. And in this case it was just kind of reflecting on how this person changed.“

That isn’t always easy to do. I have to remind myself, for example, that while things with my ex-wife weren’t great, I have two amazing sons from that relationship.

As much as I heard this song, I find it hard to believe that it only reached #30 on the charts.

Good

A new Beatles song in 1995?! How can that even happen!? John Lennon had been dead for 15 years by then. Believe it or not, you can thank Yoko Ono for it. Yoko agreed to release a demo tape of John’s to the other Beatles the day after he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 1994 the three remaining Beatles recorded around his demo track to complete the song Free As a Bird. It was released as a single in 1995. Before their breakup, The Beatles won just four Grammy Awards. They picked up three more in 1997 when “Free As A Bird” won for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal and Best Music Video, Short Form.

It was Jeff Lynne of ELO who would produce the single. He The Daily Mail that of all the songs he’s produced, “Free as a Bird” is the one he’s most proud of. “I just had to improvise and come up with a few things to make it work,” Lynne recalled. “I did it late at night, 3 a.m. in the studio, just me and the engineer, because I didn’t want to do it in front of Paul and George. But I came in the next day and Paul gave me a hug and he said, ‘You’ve done it, well done!'”

My first records were Beatles songs. So it was so neat to hear all four of them together again for the first time in years!

Free As A Bird

Next is another song that I heard a lot while driving. It stood out for a few reasons. First, it was uptempo. I seem to remember a lot of ballads being played at the time. Driving while tired, uptempo is always good!

Second, it was short. It was very rare to have any song be under 3 and a half minutes on the radio. Many of them were 4 and 5 minutes. This one clocks in at just under 2 and a half minutes.

Finally, it reminds me of Run-Around by Blues Traveler. Ok, maybe it was Blues Traveler that reminds me of this one. I really don’t know.

The first time I saw the video, I laughed out loud. In it the guys from Del Amitri are being wheeled about in strollers by beautiful women. The band members’ heads were superimposed (badly) on the babies to create the effect.

Roll To Me

When I worked at W4 Country in Detroit, they used to host a huge summer festival. It was downtown in Hart Plaza and all kinds of country artists came to play. It was called the Downtown Hoedown. At this time in my career, I had really never done a lot of backstage stuff.

Looking back now, I could kick myself. So many of the singers were just walking around backstage and in the area that was reserved for our staff. I took my ex wife with me and we were just sitting at a table drinking water. This guy walked by with a cowboy hat on and he looked familiar. I couldn’t place him to save my life.

As he walked by, he nodded and said hello to us. I didn’t know if it was an artist, a manager, a roadie, or someone else. We said hello and he continued walking. What was weird was that as he approached us, he kind of slowed down like he expected us to start chatting him up. I know now that this was David Lee Murphy.

Dust on the Bottle was a big hit for him, but it almost didn’t make his album. He tells the story:

“I had the idea for that song, but I hadn’t ever done anything with it. I just remember being at my house the second day [of recording]. We started recording on Monday, and Tuesday morning, I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table. I started playing the opening chords on my guitar for ‘Dust on the Bottle.’ It just came out of nowhere. The song just fell out in like 15 minutes.

I called Tony Brown, who was producing my record, and I told him, ‘Man, I just wrote this new song!'” Murphy continued. “We had all the songs picked out already for the album. He told me to bring it in and play it for him that day. When he heard the song, he said, ‘Man, we’ve got to cut this.’ So we cut it, and what’s on the record is the first take of the song. A lot of the vocals on it were the first time I sang it. It was really a special song, and it still is to this day.”

Dust On The Bottle

I will apologize for the next song right now. I had to include it because it was such a big song when I was DJing. In the US, the Macarena was the biggest dance craze of the 1990s. It was played at weddings, office parties, cruise ships, and just about anywhere there was dancing. Like the earlier dance craze, the “Electric Slide,” it was easy to learn and was done in a group. This made it perfect for Americans who lacked rhythm. It would spawn other dance crazes in the years ahead.

The song was one that had many “mixes.” The meaning of the song changes depending on what mix you are listening to. In the original version, Macarena is upset because her boyfriend, Vitorino, has joined the army. She retaliates by going out on the town and carousing with other men. In the Bayside Boys mix, Macarena gets mad at her boyfriend and goes out to shake it while he’s out of town. In this version, she seems to be more promiscuous. The Bayside Boys also made it a first-person account, with the lyrics being the voice of Macarena.

Macarena

I never cared for the song that much, however two years later, there was a country mix. It sounded ridiculous. I went out and bought one of those hillbilly hats with the feather on it and a corn cob pipe. I would get out and dance with it on. It only made it more silly.

The next song was one that got played a lot on the radio with dedications to someone who passed away. It was played at weddings in remembrance of a loved one, too. When my mom passed away, this was another of those songs that made me think of her.

Mariah Carey wrote One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men. She said she wrote a song that was identical to a song Boyz II Men had written, so they combined the two.

Mariah was in the middle of writing the poignant ballad with her longtime collaborator Walter Afanasieff when she had the idea to bring in the R&B group.“I just thought the chorus was crying out for the vocals that they do,” she recalled in a 1999 interview. “We contacted them, we went through all the channels, this and that, and we finally got together, sang them the song and Nate had written a song that was basically identical to my song in the theme and melodically – he could actually sing it over my song and it was really bizarro, it was like fate, so we put the two songs together and came up with ‘One Sweet Day.'”

This was #1 on the US Billboard charts for 16 weeks! That is longer than any other song up to that time. It held that record until 2019 when Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road was #1 for 17 weeks.

One Sweet Day

Despite being a 1995 release, Give Me One Reason was a song that Tracy Chapman had been performing since 1988. She also performed it on a 1989 episode of Saturday Night Live.

The song would wind up on her fourth studio album, New Beginnings in 1995. In 2005, she said “This is autobiographical,” before performing the song. “I left it on someone’s answering machine, and it worked. I wrote it late one night hanging out with my dog, a mini dachshund.”

The song would be her first hit since 1988’s Fast Car. The charts had changed a bit in 1995. Songfacts.com explains: The mid-’90s were a tougher time for female singer-songwriters with stories to tell, but Melissa Etheridge, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow and Jewel all got their piece of the pie even as the airwaves were dominated by R&B and dance singers, mostly guys. “Give Me One Reason” fell into this bucket, skewing to an older audience averse to hip-hop and modern rock.

I love this song because of the bluesy feel to it. That opening guitar lick and her voice are just so good!

Gimme One Reason

My final pick for 1995 comes from a gang member. Yes, you read that right. Lead singer Pauly Fuemana was a gang member in Auckland, New Zealand before achieving pop immortality with this song. He received his musical training in a New Zealand juvenile prison.

How Bizarre by OMC reached #1 in eight different countries, the first of which was New Zealand in early 1996. Others include Australia, Canada, and the US (on the Mainstream Top 40 chart). What is Bizarre is that it never entered the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. Why? It was released as a radio-only promo single. Therefore it was ineligible to chart on the Hot 100 according to rules in place at the time.

According to songfacts.com: OMC stands for Otara Millionaires Club, after the neighborhood in Auckland where Fuemana grew up. It’s a somewhat fanciful name, as the Auckland suburb of Otara is a ghetto/slum.

This was another one of those songs I would hear driving at work. Many of the drivers would come in to the mail room and if something unexpected happened they’d say “How Bizarre!” Some of my ex wife’s sisters would also say this a lot, but usually they’d say, “How Bizzaaaah.”

The song has a fun sound to it and it brings back some great memories.

How Bizarre

So that’s all for 1995. Did I miss one of your favorites? Let me know in the comments.

Next week, we move forward to 1996. My list includes movie music, a cover song or two, a couple artists I have had the chance to hang out with, and a few I’d like to hang out with. It also includes a song that was given to me by a girlfriend to express how she felt about us. Was it good or bad? Tune in next week!