We all hide some episodes in our lives from others. My secret is about radio.
I never listen to talk radio. My aversion began a long time ago. As a bright and lively average American, I’d wake and immediately turn on the radio. Mostly, music was my preferred listening genre, but occasionally I’d catch a little conversation.
One morning, I happened to catch this God-awful raspy voice that grated on my ears like a deep-throated buzz saw. I mean. seriously, the speaker should never have been permitted to grace the airwaves of mellifluous Columbia School of Broadcasting graduates.
And then like a bolt out of the blue, it dawned on me. I knew this man. He was an utter lunatic. He also was the voice of Razorback Jack (remember Wolfman Jack?) the station’s country music DJ and Larry T. Worthington bringing big band sounds to the world one song at a time. Now, here he was doing a poor imitation of a talk-show host. What the hell was going on? Was this some damned one-man station operating out of a basement?
But that wasn’t the worst part. This horrible imitation of a human voice, which sounded vaguely like a computer-generated monotonic monster from Mars, was mine.
At the realization, I actually gagged. I’d never heard my own voice before, and the actual sound of it made me ill.
So, my real secret is that I was once a genuine radio talk show host. I still have some of the tapes laying around, and I sincerely hope that I can find them before I die so that no one will learn the truth about my halcyon days.
Those were crazy and maddening times. I’d schedule a guest for a recording session in the studio and ask a few prepared questions, which the guest always ignored. In fact, more than one apparently thought it was his/her own personal show and co-opted the mike. Once, I had to pull the plug on the recording console.
I’d usually work around this minor glitch by recording for an hour and a half and then cutting the most obnoxious fifteen minutes. After hearing my own voice, I realized that I should have cut my own part.
I learned some valuable lessons in my radio days. Even then, I figured, no one listened to radio on Saturday, with the possible exception of some drunks at the corner bar who always called to request their favorite country whine at the exact moment I cued a tape and fell asleep.
I also learned that on-air personalities could be, well, quirky. One guy who had a Filipino music show used to phone me when he had a hangover or a hot babe lined up and ask me to cover. For a couple of hours, I would be Johnny Maldonado, the Manila Music Man. True story.
Another one regularly rang me at midnight and ask me to cover because “this babe just called.” So I’d haul my buns out of bed and drive to the station, slip a tape on, and fall asleep on a cot in the manager’s office. The station manager slipped in one morning and caught me. My penance? I had to sit at the console and sleep while he used his cot for other purposes.
The radio game is different these days. More genteel, more refined. With one exceptions. I doubt very many listeners tune in to talk radio on Saturday.
Which explains why I didn’t listen to el Gavo and Ariana. Others more talented and energetic will cover all bases. I prefer the U.S. Open.
However, if Gav needs an emergency substitute, I may be available on short notice. Call my agent 24/7.
