Radio

When I was a kid I only slept five or 6 hours a night, but my mom forced me into an 8:00 bedtime. Listening to my parents, not quite being able to hear the TV, hearing the noises of the house after the parents went to sleep, was torture. Then, after getting the sleep I needed, waking and the awful wait to get up as soon as it got light. This always annoyed the hell out of my mom.

For my 4th birthday my dad bought me an AM radio to keep me entertained at night and out of my mom‘s hair. This was one of the most important gifts I have ever received. It changed my life. It saved my life.

I started listening to the radio all night. Not only music and the news, but I would also listen to old radio shows, most of which were repeats. Fibber McGee, The Shadow, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, X minus one, and a dozen others.

I can't tell you how happy it made me when Clark Olliff was listening to the last gasp of old radio shows on KNX when he was a teenager in the 90s..

The discovery, when I was five, that the classical music station KFAC had a show sponsored by The Gas Company, when they aired two hours of uninterrupted classical music without commercials. They said you could get the printed program for this radio show at the gas company office. So I asked my dad to take me. Then for more than 20 years, every month, off to the gas company to get the program. So much to learn about classical music.

Much later, maybe in my 40s, I came to the realization that so many people listen to classical music, not for the pleasure of the music, but so they could show off. The snob appeal. They were very proud that they knew the Kochel Mozart numbers. They would know and identify the conductors and the orchestras and titles and dates and more. I call this baseball appreciation, where showing off the knowledge of names and statistics is evidence of your position as a true baseball/classical music appreciator. Understanding that this is what was going on, what I had learned from those gas company programs began to fade. But once in a while, something comes up, and remembering something about some classical piece that I learned from the Gas Company tickles me.

@ When I was 8 and we were spending so much time in Tijuana, my dad got me a hand sized transistor radio. They weren’t available in the states yet. It was greatly appreciated and used. He got me multi packs of 9 volt batteries. Here’s a story about that radio on page 11.

When I was 10, my father got me a beautiful old radio from the 40s, which had FM (!) and also shortwave. It had buttons like a car radio with many of the Los Angeles radio stations preset. What a pleasure to listen to the BBC and The Voice of America. Then, listening, sometimes for far too long, to the mysterious station that had only a voice saying numbers.

The transformer caught fire one day. The carcass of that radio was never thrown out. I had great intentions of fixing it. I’m sure Max or Noah have tossed it out since.

A real favorite of the FM shows was Jazzbo Collins. His show started at midnight. He played jazz, poetry, and spoken word, and also many other interesting things. One of the fascinating things he used to do was play short scenes from old movies. On the radio!

As a 10-year-old I would sneak the phone into my room to request the “stinkin’ badges” scene from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Jazzbo would talk to me a bit on the air, this would be like two in the morning, and he would ask, When do you sleep? And I said, I only need five hours of sleep and I already got my five hours, and sometimes this actually was true. More often I’d go to sleep at 8 or nine and wake up at midnight, listen to Jazzbo, and then to sleep again at four, and then wake up again for school.

One night Jazzbo arranged for the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to be shown at midnight in the nearby town of Sierra Madre. After more than a little negotiation, my dad agreed to take me, so off we went to Sierra Madre.

Jazzbo says some opening words, then he asked,

Is David in the audience?

I stood up and waved and he called me up onto the stage and talked with me a little. I said how my dad had given me the love of old movies. After the show people came up to talk and congratulated my dad on having a wonderful son.

My dad looked at me as if I was a stranger.

I was merely using up a little bit of my 15 minutes of fame

Radio was very important to me. I could write a couple of more pages on the subject, but I'll spare you if you'd indulge me a bit more.

Mr. Horace Vidatoe, my inspiring 5th grade teacher, gave me a crystal radio kit. My dad put up the aerial antenna. I listened on the old fashioned headphones.

A big influence on my life were the alternative, lefty, eccentric radio stations KPPC, KMET, KPFK, and KRHM.

There were fringy radio people and stations from all over the country that I would listen to if the radio/weather gods allowed. Wolfman Jack, Art Bell, Ken Nordeen, Jean Shepard, Johnny Magnus, Alan Watts, J.Krishnamurti, Jack Gariss, some funny guys in San Francisco, to name just a few

During the day I listened to the soul stations KGFJ and KDAY.

Top 40 stations, there were many, but the best was KRLA.

My sense of humor was formed by listening daily to Gary Owen, and Sweet Dick Whittington, and also Cynic's Choice on Sunday morning.

For much of my life I arranged my life to listen to Paul Harvey News and Commentary at 11:45 (Good Day)

For decades I listened to Hour 25 on KPFK, a show that exposed me to so much good reading and authors, A Prairie Home Companion on KUSC, I would arrange my life so I could listen to it live, and then there was Dr. Demento, who was a great influence, a corrupting influence, on my musical taste, as well as the children’s.

And then there were the Sundays with my dad, driving around listening to opera, The Boston Pops, old radio shows, and The Swinging Years with Chuck Cecil, while I was in the back seat reading.