As I look at the stats for the Celebration Rock blog, I note that there are two very popular entries that continue to draw readers in response to “searches.” And they are as different as night and day. One is “The Animals’ Christmas,” a topic that is certainly popular this time of year. Yet, I’ve noticed that that Christmas-themed legend has drawn some attention year-round.
The other very popular CR blog entry is the one I wrote on so-called satanic lyrics or back-masking. How odd that the interest in that topic persists, especially since, as my college professor son noted last week, CDs and MP3s can’t exactly be played backward as easily as old vinyl records. (The curiosity factor surely tore up some vinyl grooves as consumers manually turned their turntables backward to try to pick up the devil’s music!)
So, warm winter legends and nasty hidden lyrics still top the Celebration Rock blog charts. Odd.
Entirely unrelated (as far as I can tell) is my most recent foray into radio: the “one-time only Headset Jazz Reunion Show,” aired live on WCVE Public Radio in Richmond on October 30, 2010. Except for a live interview (about Habitat For Humanity) in September on our little store front station in quaint Owego, NY, that jazz reunion was the first time I’d been on air in years!
As noted very early on in this CR blog, my first jazz show in Richmond was entitled “Headset Jazz,” a bow to the fact that it was the area’s only jazz show in stereo in 1973, and listening with headphones was highly recommended. After some months of hosting the show on the old WRFK, I asked Guy Spiller to co-host so that I could have a few Saturday nights off…plus it was fun to share the production/hosting duties with a friend.
Guy and I had different tastes in jazz. He was (is) more into funkier, fusion-oriented jazz, and I remain a fan of swing and “straight ahead” jazz. But we also shared a strong interest in jazz classics and contemporary artists. Our give-and-take when we shared the show was unscripted, natural, laid back. We did have a good time together. We did many shows solo, spelling one another so each could enjoy a week off. It was a fine arrangement.
Eventually Guy went on to other things, and I then shared the program for several years with a listener who showed some interest in co-hosting, Alice Riegel. When I finally “retired” from “Headest Jazz,” Alice added Ty Bailey as co-host and Ty carried the show into the 21st century. So Guy and I helped create a weekly gift of jazz for Richmond that ran for almost 30 years.
And last summer we thought it would be fun to recreate the program, if the public radio affiliate would give us a couple of hours some Saturday night. Guy pulled it off, thanks to WCVE’s willingness. It wasn’t exactly a piece of cake; I had to drive from upstate NY to Richmond to do the show. But it was worth it!
We decided early on that we would play the same vinyl jazz records we had played when the show first hit the air. Literally. So Guy and I went through our collections of LPs, blended our individual playlists, checked to be sure the station still had two turntables, and recorded some promo spots the station could use to let listeners know (warn ‘em) what we were up to.
[A side bar: Guy said we could do some conversational spots, in the same unscripted style we used in the 70s. I was thinking a tight scripted approach might be easier. He won. And since he was stuck with all the editing, that was fine with me! Here's the thing that amazes me in this new electronic, digital age -- Guy recorded his end of the conversation in his home studio, and I sat at my computer in upstate New York and fed the files to Guy via the Internet. He edited the audio into several finished spots and delivered them to the station.]
Of course, the real question for me wasn’t whether our old records would sound OK. We’d both kept our collections in “broadcast quality” condition. The question was: given my many, many years off-air, would I sound OK? Would doing this show be like, say, riding a bike? Would I sound out of practice? Would I be able to put a couple of sentences together and make sense? Could we actually pull this off without embarrassment?
I’ll write about how things went that night in my next entry. Betcha can’t wait!
