The Good Old Days…When People Smiled on the Radio

(This CR blog is inactive now, the 40th anniversary of the program’s debut long past. But now and then a thought occurs…)

My wife and I attended “the theater” the other night. The venue was literally a “storefront” theater, a modest performance space nestled among the Main Street stores of a small town in upstate New York. The play? Actually there were four of them, all recreations of old radio shows, with actors standing at microphones reading scripts, with sound effects, some live and some recorded, coming from a booth near-by.

Among the cast members were four youth, I’d guess from high school to college age. How strange the experience must have been for them. But for the gray-haired audience, the evening was reminiscent of the radio entertainment they had grown up with. The radio shows they recreated that night, all from original scripts, were “Fibber McGee and Molly,” “Palladin,” “Father Knows Best,” and the well-known “Who’s on First” routine of Abbott and Costello. Those four youngest cast members probably had never imagined that radio once told stories, provided family-oriented comedy, and, well, smiled.

But that storefront theater cast reminded me of the radio I grew up with. Yes, I am of that generation that knew life before TV. (But our family had the first TV set in the neighborhood, circa 1953.) Even when TV arrived in the Kellam home, there was only one local station, so the radio still carried comedies, drama, soaps, and variety shows into our living room each day. I won’t list my childhood favorites here. Nostalgia isn’t my aim as I write. There’s a more important point, which is coming soon…I promise.

In contrast to those light radio offerings on stage the other night, there is radio’s angry persona today. We were walking in the neighborhood recently and some workers had a radio blaring as they repaired a house. I heard the local talk show host ranting about something. I’ve heard the guy before as I’ve scanned the airwaves, and he fancies himself cut from the same cloth as Limbaugh and Savage. Except that he has no staff support and has to fill three hours chattering to himself and whoever has the patience to listen to him surf the internet (while on the air) for ideas to mutter about. Less important than content to him is his “personality.” He’s apparently supposed to sound “put out” by local and global events, angry with government (on any level), and generally ticked off.

We walked faster to escape the echo of that radio “personality” and, as his voice faded a block or so away, I recalled how radio used to be. A couple of generations ago, the goal of the local and national radio “hosts” (not deejays, for this was before radio became a juke box) was to lighten the burden of listeners, not to add to the load of bad news. While there were exceptions, of course, radio’s aim was to entertain with warmth, and, corny as it sounds now, a smile. (Before you smirk at that, think about why that’s such a bad thing: to sound friendly and, well, fun.)

Two of the national radio personalities I remember were Don McNeil and Arthur Godfrey. They weren’t musicians, they didn’t do news; they were just warm conversationalists. They paraded their vocalists and comic co-hosts in front of the mics each day, but their primary job was to keep listeners happy, or at least content. Godfrey did reveal his darker side on occasion, once firing a singer right on the air, but for the most part, he played his role well, that of a folksy neighbor you’d enjoy spending each morning with.

When I went into radio, I got this advice from the program director of a local station: no matter how you’re feeling when you turn on the microphone, smile as you talk, and the listener will hear the smile in your voice. Have a throbbing headache? The listener doesn’t need or want to know it. Keep smiling and keep the listener happy. The key was to keep things “up,” warm, and, God help us, carefree.

That script has been shredded. Those radio days are over. To be sure, the former radio hosts did just play a role for the most part. The best of them were actors whose job it was to cheerfully keep listeners entertained, comforted, amused, hopeful. But radio has a new cast of actors whose job is to keep listeners uncomfortable, riled up, worried, and fearful. Be grumpy, the script says. Say something outrageously enraging! Spread fear and loathing. Even if you come into the studio in a great mood, try frowning as you speak, so you’ll sound mean!

Squawk radio.

How strange it must have been for those youthful actors at the storefront theater the other night. They smiled at one another’s lines. Radio was fun once. Now it is downright dangerous.

Journey: Escape

[I abandoned this blog some time ago, but now and then I bump into an old script, and figure that this is as good a place as any to preserve the commentaries I wrote to go with some classic albums. And some not-so-classic. The scripts are from my "Celebration Rock" radio program, a Presbyterian-sponsored media effort that ran in one form or another from 1968 to 1990.]

“Escape” was the name of the eighth and best-selling album by Journey. The year was 1981, and “Celebration Rock” was probably in its prime, at least in terms of the number of stations carrying the program. Randy Allen was the local Columbia Records promotion guy, and I’m sure he had given me the L.P. to listen to, expecting that I might find that it fit my format. Of course it did, and the program was rerun a couple of times over the next year or so. (The tape of the show is missing from my collection, but the script is here, handwritten on the back of a WCVE-TV press release. I was so into recycling…)

It may be that the theme of the album and this CR program was exemplified in the opening song of the show: “Don’t Stop Believing.” My commentary followed: This is still another in a seemingly endless list of songs about lost people looking desperately for someone to belong to. (And not so much in the sense of being owned by another person, but being comforted, supported, and loved by another.) From Jackson Brown’s “On the Boulevard” to the Little River Band’s “Night Owls,” we hear images of loneliness in city shadows. Steve Perry, Jonathan Cain, and Neal Schon have mixed a third-person narrative with a first-person confession. They sing, “Strangers waiting up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night; street light people living just to find emotion, hiding somewhere in the night.”

Then, in the first-person comes the admission, “(I’m) working hard to get my fill.” The implication is that the storyteller-songwriter lives the story. A small town girl and a city boy, and for a smile they can share the night…and the movie never ends. It goes on and on. “Don’t stop believin’,” they sing over and over. The only hint of purpose, the only reason given for that lifestyle in the hope that someday, somehow, they’ll find…emotion. Feeling.

Probably, there in the city’s dimming light, any feeling would do, but certainly happiness, security, peace, but even pain or sadness– those feelings would prove they’re alive, or remind them that they are human.

Humans feel and believe–but the devastating conclusion is that many on the street feel nothing, and believe nothing. The song cries, “Don’t stop believing…hold on!”

The next song continues the search for emotion, with the first line asking, “Looking ’round for a feeling? I love the rhythm and blues.” The feeling is found in the music, a band, a beat, dancing, whiskey, wine, and women get ‘em through the night. The problem is, that if you take away the band, the booze, and the broads, what kind of person is left? Mr. Macho winds up being shallow and lonely, and instead of being  taken higher and higher, as the song sings, he falls lower and lower.

We’ve been so adept at glamorizing the flashing lights and blaring music of the dance floor, without considering the emptiness of unfulfilled and unfulfilling lives. In these first two songs, Journey’s music has moved us from lives devoid of feeling to lives made numb by passion. Somewhere in the middle is love.”

The next cut on the program was “Who’s Crying Now?” “Here’s a piece of music true to life– about the mystery of love. The question sounds cliche: why can something so good hurt so bad? Because there is so much risk in giving ourselves to it? Maybe. But in spite of the pain, love survives…somehow. for every song like Dionne Warwick’s “I’m Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” there must be a song that affirms what the Scriptures tell us about authentic love

“Love never gives up,” the Bible says. It lasts forever. Journey’s song begins with the words, “It’s a mystery…” and I suppose that parallels what First Corinthians 13 says about how little we understand about love (even now). It’s like the image we see in a dim mirror, but someday, we’ll fully understand. We’ll see  face-to-face, and our knowledge will be complete.

Until that day, dry your tears, let the hurt heal, and get ready to feel that love that never dies.

The next cut from the “Escape” album I played on this show was “Keep On Running.” My comment: It’s the blues of blue collar workers, sung by guys who may never have worn a blue collar in their lives! The plight of the factory worker they sing about is that he feels victimized by a pitiless town and a heartless boss. So, when Friday night comes, “You gotta keep runnin’.” Keep on hiding. His frustration is evidently worked on in the backseat. I guess that makes this hit material as far as the record charts go. One more song stripping away the beauty of human sexual love and replacing it with aggressive exploitation deserving of the four-letter word that describes it.

The implication is that sex is part of the escape plan. When love-making includes a third partner, like frustration or disappointment or anger or escape, lovers become victims, and contrary to what the song says, it’s never OK or all right.

“Still They Ride.” Reflecting on the song lyrics, I wrote: Still another “escape” song. The cruising theme continues as Jesse rides through the night. By the end of the song it is clear that they’re in a spell, and “it’s hard to leave this carousel as it goes round and round.”

Many of us at some point in our lives cruise around, in circles, with no destination, afraid to stop, not knowing who we’ll meet. As long as we move in circles, we can escape (we think) accountability and responsibility. So, we cruise though our jobs, our marriages, our personal commitments. We feel safe, but utterly alone. We feel independent, but deeply sad. The song says they “rule the night.” I’m not too sure about that. I suspect the darkness rules them.

Still, they ride. The strong may survive, but for what? That’s the scary part.

Next, the title cut of this album by Journey. It’s called “Escape.” Listen to the instrumental opening. What feeling does the song express, even before the lyric begins?

Escape: At first, it’s angry. Then the beat begins to drive us somewhere. The music has a definite sense of direction, and so do the lyrics. They reflect escape from…and move toward escaping to — from leaving, to being on the way. From the 3rd person “he” to the 1st person “I”  — from fear to freedom. I guess it would be better if you had the words in front of you to understand all this. Maybe it’s enough to let this title cut summarize the meaning of escape.

On the one hand, it’s a desperate evasion; on the other hand, it’s a liberation!  Oh, it may be an irresponsible act: to renounce the bonds of love, family ties, or social custom. But maybe it’s more a celebration of letting go, emancipation that leads to something new, a breaking away that brings redemption!

One line in the song sets the stage for the more positive, healthy side of escape: “I never knew I had so much to give.” If your escape makes you more willing, and more able to give, it’s worth the risk. But if escape is prompted by a selfish need to run away from something in your past, instead of confronting it, escape won’t work. But Journey’s right when they tie escape to the search to live out some dreams. Here’s ELO. (That segue led to “Hold on Tight.”)

Next from Journey came “Dead or Alive,” about a double agent gunned down by a “heartless woman’s 38.” Not exactly an inspirational theme. All I said on the program about that song was this: …redeeming social value? None, except maybe to paraphrase Jesus by saying those who live by the handgun will die by the handgun.

Then came the song called “Mother, Father.”

She sits alone, an empty stare
A mother’s face she wears
Where did she go wrong,
The fight is gone
Lord help this broken home

My commentary on the song: Lord, help this broken home. The ties of blood are strong. “Have faith, believe,” they sing. Mother sits alone, an empty stare. Her son drinks his life away. Yes, Lord, help this broken home. If the prodigal returns, will he find acceptance, or rejection? Will he find rejoicing in his return, or new rules about his staying? Will he find a warm embrace, or a heated lecture?

When all the goodbyes of our lives become hellos, how do we respond? When little deaths lead to new life, do we, like God, open our arms wide to embrace new beginnings, or do we dwell on pain long past?

____________

There is a note in the margin of this script that indicates that I used a song by the Little River Band on this program. It probably would have fit nicely at the end, especially if the last script excerpt noted above is all there was to end the show. “We are riding on our rainbow, it’s nearly at an end, it was given as a promise to each and every man, it’s a long time since we started and the days left now are few, it seems the words sent long ago were true. Life goes on forever, but it changes like the tide, there’s a meaning for existence, no need to run and hide, we are fighting for our freedom, we are searching for a way, and we live in hope of some eternal day.”

At this point, you may escape this entry…

 

Hope Redeemed, Somewhat

 

[You may need to scroll down to find the previous entry called "Hope in Hopeless Times." Best to read that first.]

As I mentioned in the previous entry, I wasn’t ecstatic about every “Celebration Rock” show I wrote and produced. I wasn’t even pleased that a few programs actually had to be aired. Some were rushed, not at all thoughtfully prepared. Others were ill-conceived to begin with. The one on “Hope” was wordy. I talked too much. And even what I had to say was less than helpful, I thought.

I made up the story, for one thing. That conversation with a friend never really happened. Like a parable, or a bit of theater or creative fiction, the story was my way of connecting one’s (the listener’s) yearning for hopefulness by identifying with someone of a kindred spirit. I am aware that parables tell fictional stories in the third person (“Once there was a man who…”), stories that are not factual but nonetheless “true.” Where I crossed the line was in telling the story in the first person (“This man came to me and told me…”).

That problem aside, the real issue I had with the program was its many, many words, interrupting the flow of meaningful lyrics.

I had just suffered through replaying that program a few weeks back, wrote it off as a bad week, and then only days later found the following note in the debris of my files.

“Dear Jeff,

Thank you for the show which aired January 18, 1981 with the theme of hope and hopelessness, which was built around the interview with the silent interviewee. I appreciate the genius that it takes to write such a story and my belief is that the genius is in being able to recall such an interview or to have been able to make up the whole thing. Either way, it was a stroke of creative genius on your part and I was greatly impressed. In fact, I was so impressed, that if you have a copy of the script, I would love to have it.”

The letter went on to some minor “housekeeping details” about previous correspondence we had had. The writer was a pastor in another city, a regular listener, and one who was honest enough to offer some less positive critiques now and then.

The lesson in this? It’s like a preacher who steps into the pulpit on Sunday morning, knowing she/he has a weak sermon to preach; but the sermon must be delivered from its mediocrity, and one hopes that would happen by the grace of the God whom we preach. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stood at the door of the church shaking hands with folks after the service, somewhat embarrassed over that day’s sermon. (Oh, if I had only had more time to prepare! I should have prayed more over this one. I wish I had tried preaching on another of the day’s texts.) And then someone comes by and holds, not merely shakes, my hand, and says with deep sincerity, “Oh, thank you for your words this morning. You’ll never know how much it helped me! It was just right!”

The other side of the coin: the sermon on another Sunday was thoughtfully and prayerfully prepared, well-written, and especially well-preached. And no one noticed. Sabbath passes away, and Monday comes and it all begins again.

Guess what? There is always HOPE!

Hope in Hopeless Times

[This "Celebration Rock" blog is inactive, except for occasional (monthly?) entries that keep the e-journal of radio remembrances alive for me personally-- and for anyone else who enjoys a look back at my syndicated radio program.]

The tape is labeled “Hope” and is numbered “619.” There is no date on the box or reel, but listening to the show I realize that it was produced for the first Sunday in 1981. When I first transferred the old reel-to-reel tapes to CD, I listened to this one and wasn’t all that impressed. In fact, each time I’d pull it out later and listen for some “hope,” I’d think, “Oh. It’s that one. Ugh.” But rummaging around in a box of old letters the other day, I ran across a note from a trusted colleague who had another opinion of the program altogether. So, I listened with his ears. And I tried hard to see (or hear) his point.

The program opened with a cut from the “Cornerstone”  album of Styx. The song was titled “Lights.” Over the instrumental introduction, I set the scene: a new year, and a search for new hope in a troubled time. And then Styx sang:

Give me the lights, precious lights
Give me lights
Give me my hope, give me my energy
You can turn the wrong into right
Precious lights
illuminate me, carry me away…

Then I set up the theme of the program, by quoting the beginning of a conversation with a friend in his mid-20’s, a guy who had come to me with a problem. He told me he was looking for some hope in his life. But if he couldn’t find it, he would stay with plan b: “When hope finally runs out, I have an escape plan: first I cry, then I fly.”

Script:

That was his religious ritual of escape. First came tears…he readily admitted that when his life seemed to be hopelessly stalled, by one disappointment, or defeat, or one pain after another, he wept. It didn’t have to be his personal pain; sometimes, he wept for others with whom he could closely identify. And then after crying, in the privacy of his room,  he would go to his desk drawer, and pushing aside some school stationery, he would retrieve a small plastic bag of hashish. And then he’d get stoned.

“First I cry, then I fly.”

And then what, I asked.

“That’s my problem,” he replied. “When I come down, I still hurt.”

He was sensitive and caring about people… but I told him that if I were to help him, I’d have to know two things about him: “First, what is it that hurts so deeply. And second, what is hope? For you?”

Beyond the script:  Before going on to his answers to those questions, I played Neil Diamond’s “If You Know What I Mean.

“When the night returns just like a friend
When the evening comes to set me free
When the quiet hours that wait beyond the day
Make peaceful sounds in me…”

Can we find peaceful sounds and and hope-filled signs in the new year? Back to the conversation:

His reply to my first question– what hurts– is this: I think I identify too much with the pain of other people. Is empathy the word I want? I look at the morning paper and read stories that make life seem like such a waste. Sometimes it’s like having the breath knocked right out of you. Except it’s not breath. It’s hope. With all that’s going on in the world, I’m scared, man. I feel helpless; I feel powerless. I feel like I’m being held hostage by an inability to cope with the world’s problems.”

Silence. Perhaps too brief. I should have waited to let him go on, but I jumped in before he had a chance to describe for me what hope is for him.  The program segued back to the music of Styx: “Why Me?”

“You know you’ve had enough
You cant take another day
Where to go and what to do
You’ve got those bills to pay
You’re really not alone you know
cause everybody says,
Why me?”

Script: I’m sharing a conversation with a friend. Oh, you won’t hear his voice. It’s one of those personal conversations that you don’t tape. It’s more important to listen. After the too-brief silence, I asked him what hope was for him. “Hope is like a fire inside. Sometimes its fed by good human experiences…some heart-warming story in the newspaper, or some good news filler on TV, or you meet a person who seems to brighten people’s lives, or you make a new friend, and then hope flares up and the fire roars. And it gives off light and warmth. But sometimes the fuel supply is cut off or you begin to worry about something, or you’re disappointed that something didn’t work out. The fire is reduced to just an ember, a glow, a spark. But as long as there’s any sign of life in that fire, he said, I feel like there’s hope, there’s life. so what I want to know is how can I keep hope alive?

A longer silence this time. And then I told him we’d have to work on his answer together. Maybe some stories would help. [ Segue to "Wondrous Stories" by Yes]

“I beg to leave, to hear your wondrous stories.
Beg to hear your wondrous stories.”

We draw strength from the wondrous stories of hope that other people have lived out. Just this side of Christmas, there is that wondrous story of Jesus’s birth in a seemingly hopeless time. Follow his life as he grew, as he died. And then there was resurrection, the most wondrous story of all, the ultimate triumph of hope. 1 Corinthians 13:  three things are eternal: faith, HOPE, and love. Hope is lived in expectation of what God will finally do in our shared future. So hope is not merely some form of secular optimism (everything’s gonna turn out OK); hope isn’t based on some human desire for Utopia. Hope in the scriptures is rooted in God’s plan for God’s people, God’s constant and comforting presence in every situation that cries for hope.

Again, Styx: “Borrowed Time”

“Faith be with me now
I’m just a dreamer in a dreamland”

Is hope just something we dream about? I read 1 Peter 1:3  and its mention of a living hope. To be sure, I’m leaving script behind and getting sketchy now, but you can see the direction this “Celebration Rock” program was heading in as 1981 dawned. Next I played a perennial favorite for any new year show: “Time Passages” by Al Stewart. I followed that with Burton Cummings (formerly of the Guess Who) and a song entitled “I’m Scared.”

“now I’m terrified;
never been much on religion but I sure enough would like to hear the call
come on now give me a sign you’re listening to me
you hear me talkin’, you hear my cryin’,
its confusin’ to me, Lord, I’m terrified
never been much on religion but I showed up,
just fell down on my knees…”

More script from me, and then a contemporary Christian song written by Michael Omartian, “Hold On” sung by Matthew Ward. [A quick web search turned up lots of lyrics to songs entitled "Hold On," but not the one I was looking for!] That song led to the central proclamation of that show: In Jesus Christ, God conquers all that gets in hope’s way. There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I followed that with a song by another Christian artist, Scott Wesley Brown: “You gave us faith to move a mountain, but Lord I’m having trouble with this hill. And I know I need to step out on the water…I don’t need to move a mountain, I just need to move my heart.”

Bob Dylan’s 1979 “Christian” album “Slow Train Coming” included the next song on the show, ”Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” which included the lyric:

“Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
And stop being influenced by fools.”

Nearing the end of the program I quoted Henri Nouwen, though what I’ve transcribed off the tape may not be an exact quotation. “When you pray with hope, you turn yourself toward God who will bring forth [his] promises.  It is enough to know that [he] is a faithful God. This hope gives you a new freedom which lets you look realistically at life without feeling dejected. And this freedom comes through in the words of the one who wrote: hope means to keep living amid desperation, and to keep humming in the darkness. Hoping is knowing that there is love. It is trust in tomorrow. It is falling asleep and then waking when the sun rises…As long as there is hope, there will also be prayer, and God will be holding you in [his] hand.

Two more songs: from Carole King:  May you follow the “Passing of the Days”

May you travel bright and cheery
The many roads ahead you’ll have to blaze
Gonna be hard times to make you weary
It’s a part of the passing of the days

And the program concluded with the England Dan — John Ford Coley song “(Light of the world, shine on Me) Love Is the Answer.”

So that is the gist of the program labeled “hope.” The music was fine, but as you might suspect from this lengthy entry, my comments were too verbose. I talked way too much. I liked to think of “Celebration Rock” as a fast-paced show, but not this one. And that’s why I had filed it away as a “loser.”

Then I found the letter that you’ll find in the next entry.

The Good Old Days of Top 20/30/40 Radio

[Just to keep the "Celebration Rock" blog alive, I'm adding at least one entry each month. For the whole story (God help you and bless you!), look back at the previous entries.]

In the first years of “Celebration Rock,” from its inception as “Showcase,” and until FM stereo rock sucked the life and ratings out of the once proud AM rockers, I was associated, in a peripheral but collegial way, with Richmond, Virginia’s WLEE “Good Guys.” When my radio program started on Sunday nights, the 1480 frequency was home to Richmond rock and roll. It was said that there were only two stations in Richmond that had massive ratings. WRVA had listeners over the age of 35, and WLEE had all the rest. I was connected with the Good Guys in these ways:

• Program Director Dick Reus provided personal encouragement and solid advice to this amateur with little background in rock and radio.
• Dick provided me with the latest records and added me to the mailing list of his “Reus Record Report,” a newsletter that others in the industry looked to for news of current hit activity and predictions of records about to make the charts.
• The “Good Guys” may have thought of me as a rather odd duck, a seminary student and then minister playing rock and roll on their Sunday night air, but they were always supportive, gracious, and welcoming.
• When my show first went on the air, WLEE had given up the rest of Sunday nights to “religious, public affairs” programming. After only a few months, I had been able to carry enough audience over from their rock format into mine that the station was able to sell the hours that followed my program. So, the weekend Good Guys intro’d my show, relaxed an hour, and came back until midnight with Top 40 hits and $-generating commercials. I assume that was a good thing. For me it meant having my hour in prime time radio, and no longer on the edge of the Sunday night public service ghetto time.
• And whether it was Randy Scott or Guy Spiller, or one of the other jocks who got stuck with Sunday night duty, we built good rapport and the audience rarely knew that I was actually on tape, my program run from another studio in a church basement miles away.
• The Good Guys made room for me in the production room on Saturdays so I could tape my shows with up-to-date (if not exactly state-of-the-art) equipment.

The reason I take this time to recognize the WLEE Good Guys from the 1968 – 1974 era is that many of those deejay alumni have re-connected in an on-line group. One-time WLEE jock Steve Hendrix invited me to be part of that group, and I have really enjoyed the camaraderie of old stories, truth, myth and legend, and the reminiscing over the “good old days” of rock radio. Whether the playlist was top 20 or top 40, the stations had personality and energy, and listener loyalty. The jocks were stars to their young listeners. Each jock had a unique style, and each station had a unique sound, even if its rivals were playing the same hits.

As I remember it, WLEE and its ilk had deejays working shifts that were only three or four hours long. Nine to noon. Noon to three. Three to seven. Maybe seven to midnight. Then overnight: a live deejay taking requests, working until dawn and the wake-up show or farm report(!). When they weren’t on the air, they’d be cutting commercials, setting up remotes at car dealers and furniture stores, or promoting dances and concerts. These guys (and they were guys back then) projected an UP sound, never cynical, never sarcastic (or at least rarely), and always keeping the audience entertained.

Nowadays, sad to say, most stations are robotic, computerized, impersonal conduit for music, owned by some out-of-town conglomerate, and both out of touch and out of reach. No longer an entertainment medium, radio has become little more than a desperate way to hold onto a bit of radio spectrum so no one else can get to it. Oh, I know the exceptions…there are some. But all that creativity that once filled (for better or worse, truth be told) a community’s allotted frequencies with individual station personalities is now directed at fewer monotonous voices that share two or three frequencies. A city’s Y-100 might be heard not only at 100 but at 98 and 102 as well. No use wasting resources.

The days of Cousin Brucie, Dick Biondi, and Shane Brother Shane are passed. But what a time we had. And I was glad to have heard it!

No, we won’t go back, of course. Times change and time changes. Still, we can remember.

Jeff Kellam

Post Script: one of a few

At the one year mark of this journal about “Celebration Rock,” I thought it might be interesting to post here the Word Press summary of most popular CR hits. Just for the record:

Top Posts

Satanic Lyrics and Backmasking 97 views

Backstage with Harry Chapin 74 views

About 61 views

The Mennonite Connection 36 views

Side One, Track One 30 views

The Celebrity with Cooties 29 views

Sing Loud, and Leave the Listening to Somebody else 29 views

The Women of “Celebration Rock” 22 views

Fascinating…why “The Mennonite Connection?” Well, why not.

Jeff

The Last “Celebration Rock” Program…and Blog

It was pretty much a rerun. The last “Celebration Rock” show, that is.

On the second Sunday night of February, 1968, WBBL (sharing the 1480 frequency with WLEE) aired the first rock show I had produced/hosted/recorded for the Richmond (VA) Area Council of Presbyterian Churches. My verbal contract with that group called for a month’s worth of programs, and then renewal, depending on listener response. Almost 22 years later, I produced the last of that weekly, hour-long series. It all ended with a re-edit of a program about “Change,” with the program aired only on WMXB (B103.7) at 8 a.m. Sunday.

A year ago, in February 2008, almost 40 years to the day that CR first aired, I happened to recall the significance of that date and wanted to mark it, celebrate it, in some way. I had never blogged before, but thought it might be fun to write some remembrances of some of the ways that doing that weekly radio program shaped my life and ministry as a Presbyterian clergy-type.  It never occurred to me that the memories would flow from one blog to another over a whole year. Or, that someone might happen on the journal somehow and add comments, phone me, or write a letter in response.

Strangers entered searches for topics and musicians that I had written about here. Valued friends and close colleagues found these pages and shared their thoughts. And my wife, daughter, and son have read at least some of this stuff, maybe learning some things about the program (or me!) that I hadn’t mentioned at dinner in 1983. Frankly, I kind of surprised myself;  much of the story in these entries had lain buried under several layers of post-radio ministry debris. One memory fed another, until all that was left was trivia not worth writing about. (OK, maybe I did write about some trivial things along the way. Not everyone got off on the descriptions of my production studio.)

I could prolong this goodbye, you know. I could put on my headphones and track through the scores of old CR tapes that had survived dubbing to CD, and then I could make lists of songs and type up script excerpts…but no. It’s time to embrace change again, and let this go.

If anything does prompt a significant addition to this memoir, something compelling I can’t not add, then I know how to find my way back here and build an appendix.

It bears repeating here, I suppose, that ending production of the  “Celebration Rock” series wasn’t that hard for me. I had many other responsibilities on my media ministry agenda, and CR wasn’t in the job description of either of my two part-time calls. Both the Presbyterian School of Christian Education and the Bon Air Presbyterian Church were glad to have me on the radio each week, but CR was the most time consuming of the three weekly radio shows I was doing “on the side.” But week by week there seemed to be less time for CR to consume, and the program was starved for attention. Thus, one rerun led to another, and eventually, it was time to just give it up.

There was no fanfare. I didn’t write a press release or host a party. I just looked for a decent reel of tape that had a theme I could relate to, something that would lead to a conclusion. I had done a program on “Hello, Goodbye, Hello” (or something like that), but liked the content of the “Change” show better. I listened to it in the studio, made some minor edits that indicated the end of a very long run, and took the tape to B103. I had told the program director that I was ending the show, but hoped he’d run my syndicated jazz half-hour program (“The Spirit of Jazz”)  in the same time slot. I also told the p. d. about Bud Frimoth’s Peabody Award-winning half-hour program called “Open Door,” with the hope that that too would find a place in my old time slot. (But soon after, the jazz show ended its run, too, and I don’t recall if Bud’s “Open Door” ever made it to Richmond on B103.)

It certainly did feel strange the next week. It was a feeling of loss, yes, but also no little liberation. It had not been much fun in the months before its demise. I had been losing touch with the current music scene, had no budget and even less enthusiasm. When I did do a new show, it was good, I think. But there were more weeks when I reran old tapes, and then felt guilty, as if I was cheating the audience out what might have been. When I began getting used to the idea that “Celebration Rock” was over, I’d hear a new song on the radio and begin to build a program around it, a program that would air only in my imagination. Actually, that went on for a few years! New songs, new prompts… but no regrets about leaving the program to the past.

[I had not left radio entirely, I hasten to add. I was still doing WRVA's "Sunday Morning," and "The Spirit of Jazz." (Was the "B103 Jazz Brunch" still going at this point? The chronology is fuzzy here.)]

There are lots of souveniers from those years. The records, tapes, and CDs. Fan mail I’ve saved in what I call my “ego file.” But most important are some lasting and loving friendships.

I invite you to my new blog where I plan to write more generally about peace, grace, and jazz. The blog is entitled, “Peace, Grace, and Jazz.” (You saw that coming, right?)   Go to www.jeffkellam.wordpress. com

In the meantime, please: Be gentle with people, and with yourself.

More Time in Prison

Though now out of season, the “Christmas in Prison” program of the “Celebration Rock” series was aired shortly after Christmas, perhaps in 1980. The Future Unlimited Involvement Corps was a group of prisoners serving time at the Powhatan Correctional Center at State Farm, Virginia. I had visited the group  in mid-December with my trusty Uher Report L tape recorder and asked some of them to describe what Christmas was like in that maximum security unit.

The concept was fine, and much of  the music I chose fit well, but I didn’t carry it off well personally. On one level, the questions I asked showed my discomfort with the prisoners. And once I went back to the studio to edit the program together, I ad-libbed my introductions to each segment, and that made the flow between music and interviews even more awkward. Listening to the recording of the final product recently, I can’t believe how naive I sounded. Still, some of the responses the inmates gave to my queries might well be echoed in similar circumstances in penal institutions today, all these years later. If I were to have played back the show on a station last month, I doubt anyone would have known the interviews took place 28 years ago. That’s a sad commentary on the state of our prison facilities over the years: no progress.

As that “Celebration Rock” show began, the song that led us into the theme was Queen’s “Somebody to Love.”

“But everybody wants to put me down
They say I’m goin’ crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
I got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe…”

Building on the idea that Christmas is usually celebrated in community, I asked one inmate about whether the holiday would bring friends together even within the prison walls.  “You don’t come to jail to make friends; you come here to do what you have to do and then leave.”  He said the people he was closer to there he would call “associates,” not friends; they were people he associated with, but nothing more.

When I asked about what the day would be like there, one person said life would go on whether it was Christmas or not. It’s not really that special a day, he said. But others disagreed, and spoke of heavier visitation, groups from the outside coming in to have a Mass, sing carols, or leave Christmas cards for prisoners to send out. One man told me that visitation is so crowded and such a hassle, he didn’t want his family subjected to it. When I asked what gifts they’d like for Christmas, some mentioned the long range gift of expanding the visitors center. Another wanted the “system” to consider more carefully the classification of inmates. “I’m 43,” he said, “and there’s no way somebody 16 or 17 years old ought to be in the same cell block as us.” [If I'd been a journalist, I would have done some fact-checking to see what the Corrections Center policy was on that issue.] I expected that the answers to the “gifts” question would center more on “stuff” but many responses dealt with various “reforms” the prisoners desired.

[Very often in my other prison visits and radio interviews, the prisoners would take the first opportunity to issue complaints and laments, and only later in our time together would move toward answers more closely aligned to the questions I posed.]

The next music was Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes: “Wake Up, Everybody.” And then John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison”

"The searchlight in the big yard swings round with the gun,
And spotlights the snowflakes like the dust in the sun.
It's Christmas in Prison, there'll be music tonight,
I'll probably get homesick, I love you, goodnight.

I interviewed another man who didn’t want to have family visit at Christmas. He said he felt sorry for his mother. She would become emotional and her leaving would be too painful to balance whatever joy she’d have in seeing him. Another confessed that Christmas memories hurt. When groups came to sing carols to the prisoners, he remembered what it had been like when he was a part of the “mob” of carolers, and knew that it would be several more Christmases before he could sing those songs again on the outside. [I flinched at the term "mob," but figured that was prison lingo for "heavenly host."]

Another album cut: from the Little River Band, “It’s a Long Way There”

“I live for the day when I can hear people saying that they know and they care for everyone
But I feel like I’ve been here for the whole of my life, never knowing home.”

When one incarcerated man mentioned that Christmas was about peace on earth, I asked if that included peace between guards and inmates. He said that on that one day, December 25, there was more “complacency”  between the guards and the guarded. But someone also told me that peace, however temporary, may be attributed to knowing their annual $4 gift is coming from the state, a reward, as one man put it, “for being good little inmates all year long.” Still, having one day when there would be less violence and more self-control on the cell block  was a good thing, many guys agreed.

Next I played the Willie Nelson “classic,”  “The Troublemaker.” It was about another lawbreaker, the Christmas child grown up and in trouble. Google the lyrics. The major glitch here was comparing Jesus being tried and convicted on trumped up sedition charges with these men I was interviewing, people convicted of very serious, very real crimes. I mentioned my naivete earlier. Here’s where it came out again. Certainly a primary reason for doing this theme show was to remind listeners that those we call inmates or prisoners are also fellow human beings. I ad-libbed that they had made some “mistakes” to be sure.  As I listened to this recording all these years later, I thought…mistakes?! Good Lord, this was maximum security. Some of those “mistakes” had cost human lives.

Back to the theme. One man told of parties held in some of the prison shops: there would be free donuts and coffee, someone would bring in tape players for music, and they’d have half  day off  from their shop jobs. I learned that there were also some inmate cell block parties, but for many people it was just an occasion to try to forget it’s Christmas…play some music and maybe we won’t feel so bad.

An inmate told me that what hurts most about Christmas is missing his wife and daughter, and mother and father. He recalled the old saying that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. That led me to the Tom Waits’ song, “San Diego Serenade.”

I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

The same man who lamented his losses (and who admitted it was his own doing) spoke frankly about the need to put up barriers, to be on guard against letting others see your feelings. He said inmates don’t talk about loneliness or admit any vulnerabilities…”People have a tendency to take kindness for weakness.”

At that point I played one of the rare Alice Cooper cuts suitable for “Celebration Rock,” “I Never Cry.”

“If there is a tear on my face
It makes me shiver to the bone
It shakes me, Babe
It’s just a heartache that got caught in my eye
And you know I never cry, I never cry.”

Well, this has been a long entry. Congratulations for making it this far. But this was a program that I probably hadn’t played since the year it was aired, and I’d forgotten much of it.

A quick sidebar: one of the last videos I produced before leaving Richmond media for my Vermont pastorate was entitled “Justice and Mercy: The Virginia Corrections Quiz.” It was an interactive video documentary on the need for prison reform and creative sentencing. It was the last time I visited men and women at Powhatan, or any other secure facility. Said Jesus: “I was in prison…and you visited me.” Or not.

My Time in Prison

Recidivism. A tendency to slip back…into bad behavior. We use the term mostly to describe the return to prison after serving time. Most of us who have been in prison tend to go back, you know.

I know. I was there four times. As a visitor, I hasten to add. A visitor with a microphone. Others who visit do return, especially if one has developed a personal connection with an inmate, or a ministry to those who are incarcerated. It’s one way to follow Jesus, who identified with the hungry, the sick, and the prisoner. “I was in prison and you visited me.”

For about 200 years, Richmond, Va. was home to the Virginia State Penitentiary (or its predecessors). My first visit there was as a guest invited to speak to the Prison Civil War Round Table. I had done a “Celebration Rock” show about Native Americans, and an inmate heard it, assumed I knew something about the subject, made a weak connection to the Civil War, and wrote an invitation. As I look back on the programs I did in the mid-1970’s, I recall at least two CR shows on Native Americans (both already mentioned elsewhere in previous blog entries). One program featured the music of XIT, an American Indian rock band. The other focused on members of a Virginia tribe, the Mataponi, who spoke of their tribal history and current living conditions. Which program prompted my visit to the prison I don’t recall.

But I did go, and presented some kind of program to about 15 inmates who kindly excused my very limited knowledge about the topic they chose for me: Indians and the Civil War. (I’m certain that they didn’t care about my expertise or lack thereof; they just wanted to fill a slot in their schedule and have someone from the “outside” pay attention to their Civil War interest group.)

Sometime later, I returned to that maximum security facility, whose walls were within close proximity to Richmond’s downtown. I was helping the Virginia Chaplaincy Service produce a slide show on their prison ministry. I took a cassette recorder with me as Chaplain George Ricketts introduced me to some inmates. Holding the microphone up to the bars, I asked them questions,  and recorded inmates describing what it was like to live in a cell day after day. I remember distinctly two things about that visit. One was the loud, wailing voice of a man screaming his complaints against…well, everything and anything. The sound of that voice eerily echoing through the cell block while another, more stable inmate calmly described prison life made for a dramatic soundtrack to our audio-visual documentary.

The other thing I remember was interviewing an inmate who was in his early 20s. He looked and sounded like the most vulnerable kid on the cell block. He had been in the infirmary for some reason, and felt safe there. But now that he was back in the prison population he was clearly scared to death.

There is another memory connected with both those visits. After presenting credentials, I emptied my belongings into a basket, was patted down, and walked through a heavy iron door that “clanked” shut behind me. “Clank” doesn’t do it. There must be a better word. Even knowing that I would be coming out within a couple of hours, I heard that slamming cell door and felt a definite shiver.

I just retrieved CR program #464 from my collection of old tapes. The title of that show was based on a John Prine song, “Christmas in Prison.” The program includes interviews I did with members of the “Future Unlimited Involvement Corps,” a group based at the Powhatan Correctional Center, another of Virginia’s maximum security institutions. The Center is located at a place called State Farm, Va. Inmates who had listened to (and written to) my radio program asked me (through their Chaplain Bill Dent) to help them tell their stories. Through my taped interviews they wanted to project themselves as  human beings who were making some progress toward giving something back to their communities through various service projects.

Since my visit took place in early December of that year (the actual date of the show is lost, but the music says late 1970’s), I asked the inmates to describe what it was like to spend Christmas in prison. As I write this, Christmas is “over,” but I listened to the program yesterday and found that some things never change. My hunch is that if I were to interview inmates some 3o years later, their responses would be the same as those I interviewed for that “Celebration Rock” program.

In my next entry: some of the things they wanted for Christmas, how pathetically naive I was back then, and what songs on the show’s play list redeemed the hour.

More on “The Lock Out”

So there we were, ten or twelve teenagers and I, along with a young adult volunteer who had offered to spend the night on the streets with us. All night. After intentionally locking ourselves out of the Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church near downtown Richmond, Virginia, we visited some of the city’s night people: those who worked on the morning paper, a hospital overnight chaplain, an all-night radio DJ, and police officers at a nearby neighborhood precinct.

It was there that I was told by the officer in charge that I was under arrest for keeping the kids out way past the Richmond city midnight curfew. (See the previous blog.) As soon as he said he was sorry but the situation was out of his hands, and I’d have to be detained, there were at least three thoughts in puffy balloons over our heads. The kids thought, “Oh-oh. Are we gonna have to call our parents to come pick us up in the middle of the night? They aren’t going to be happy.” The young adult volunteer (was it Betsy Lodwick or Laura Wohlford?) was thinking, “Oh no! What am I supposed to do with these kids for the rest of the night?” And for about three seconds I thought, “What??!!”

And then the police officer broke into a grin and said he was just kidding. The teens laughed just a little too hard at this. “Let me show you the lock-up,” the cop said. And he took us on the grand tour of the modest precinct house. We noticed no other people around. No perps. No other cops. “It’s a quiet night,” he confessed. “Mostly what we do here is paperwork. Not very exciting most of the time,” he told us. “It’s not exactly ‘Hill Street Blues.’” Another officer arrived, introduced himself, and went right to his clipboard to log his night’s activity. As we left, they both told us to be careful as we walked back to the church to continue our night’s travels. (Our next stop was WLEE’s studio, at that time on West Broad Street.)

When we were finished at the radio station, our last stop was an early breakfast at the all-night Dunkin’ Donuts. It was still dark out, but all of us were ready for food, so we found our stools at the counter and ordered. This was to be a time of debriefing, sharing things we’d learned from the people we’d met, and then looking at Bible passages that tell of the tears and terrors of night (Psalm 30:5 or 91:5) or of Jesus choosing the night time to speak with Nicodemus.  But first there were cream-filled donuts.

While the kids reported on our night to a curious waitress, I noticed that there was only one other person in the restaurant. Sitting at the end of the counter was a young man in ragged jeans and a tee shirt, reading a Bible! I couldn’t have planned that! But when the check was paid and we drove back to the church, we had some conversation together about what might lead a 20-something guy to Dunkin’ Donuts at 4:45 a.m. to read his Bible?

Back at the church, we went to the media room and watched a video of the original Star Trek series, an episode titled “Bread and Circuses,” about “sun worshippers” who turn out to be “Son” worshippers. We ended our official time together with a quick version of morning prayer, and then some of the kids napped until parents arrived to take them home. Others, though, found their way to the third floor of the church and watched the sun come up. (They had said they were going up to the roof, but I was struck deaf at that point and heard no more about that. No one fell off.)

I wonder how many of those kids remember that night some 30 years ago. I’ve not heard of anyone else leading this kind of “lock-out” but it was a highlight of my radio-inspired youth ministry. Wouldn’t mind trying it again. Except for the near arrest.