And radio has changed so much that even the once-popular BIG stations in town, the ones so many grew up listening to, the ones with local personalities we radio wannabes truly wanted to be — well, many of those stations are now just closets with computers locked inside, with announcer-voices coming from national studios in major cities. So, radio is over. But not out.

In Geneva, NY, there is a so-called internet “radio station,” a web address that carries a streaming audio signal that sounds like a radio station, but which lacks the standard radio paraphernalia, small things like a transmitter and tower. Geneva Community Radio hopes to acquire those things when and if it applies for a low-power FM license. But for now, it is home to some imported and home-grown audio features that fill its internet schedule seven days a week, though not 24 hours a day.

The operator of the station (individual or corporate?) has offered time slots to some religious groups, including the Presbytery of which I am a part. The presbytery’s communications staff person called on two of us who had worked in radio to see what thoughts we had for how to use the free time slot creatively and effectively to — what? — inform? inspire? promote? Frankly, I was reluctant to spend a great deal of time on something so squishy as a radio station that wasn’t broadcasting.

If you go way back in the archives of this blog, you will find that I had begun in somewhat squishy radio. In college, where my radio career, such as it was, began, the campus station had no tower, but relied on low power transmitters in two or three dorms, pushing enough signal through the wiring of those dorms to carry whatever audio emanated from the WCRW* studios in the basement of the library. That was if the students knew we even had a station, and if they knew where to find it on the AM dial. Still, we did pretend that we were a real radio presence, and we also pretended that we had listeners.

At that time it was called “closed circuit, carrier current radio.” And it was a good training ground for future radio station personnel. But truth be told, we probably had more people listening to our music outside the open library window than on their radios. That would be four or five listeners.

So, having begun so modestly, I was (and still am) reluctant to sink hours into preparing anything for an internet “station” that may have fewer listeners than could gather around the studio window. Thus, my brilliant idea: to re-edit and rerun my old “Spirit of Jazz” half-hour shows, the ones in cold storage up there in our attic. To the Presbytery communications person I posed this idea: let’s just run those programs for 20 weeks and see if anyone, I mean anyone, responds.

The shows contain mostly instrumental contemporary jazz, with my brief meditations interspersed between the seven or so music “cuts” in the half hour. Most of the music is still played on jazz radio today, the artists still being popular in their genre, and my comments were not particularly timely, being more general meditations on themes such as solitude, mornings, change, the road, dreams, and jazz itself.

To be sure, there will be some editing necessary. Back then, almost 20 years ago (yikes!), I did refer to “l.p.s” (long play records, for the younger readers here), and some social justice issues in Northern Ireland and South Africa. Some electronic snips, and those archaic phrases are gone. So, we run the shows in the allotted time slot, ask for some feedback via the Presbytery website, and if someone is out there, we could eventually switch over to a new and current offering of some kind. If.

(I have my doubts.)

The process is as follows. I dub the old 7″ reels onto CDs (in the attic audio shoppe), convert the CDs to MP3 files on the computer, edit with Audacity, and email the files to the presbytery office which will forward them to Geneva Community Radio for, um, airing. Or, cybering. Whatever.

Part of the process is to slice away the old outro that offered scripts and music logs and included addresses long since left behind, and add new “credits” mentioning both the original syndicators (Presbyterian Media Mission of Pittsburgh) and the current “sponsor,” my Presbytery.

All that is to say that I am now officially back on the air…but yet not. If I let some old friends know about this venture, maybe they’ll find the show and listen. The internet can carry its audio globally, after all. And that sure beats the closed circuit approach that first carried my voice onto the Philco radio in a women’s dorm room in 1963. I think.

[*WCRW : not FCC-assigned call letters, since we had no license. The letters stood for Westminster College Radio Workshop, a designation that had its roots probably in the early 50s.]

My own radio ministry was certainly fed by pioneers in the medium of radio itself, as I’ve noted previously by telling some of  the story of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church and its 1924 entrance into radio broadcasting. With a license granted by what was called the Federal Radio commission, the church put WBBL on the air, in order to broadcast a well-known evangelist who was to speak at the church.  While not the first religious broadcast, it was without a doubt an early effort, and the church has been on the air since, with current services broadcast over a commercial Richmond station.

So I began my first attempts at religious broadcasting at WBBL. I confined my first efforts to a youth-oriented rock show with Christian commentary and interviews. The whole effort was considered creative, progressive, even (dare I say it?) avant-garde.

But nationally, there were bigger fish to fry, er, fish to reel in. By the early 1970s and well into the 1980s something called “The Electronic Church” emerged. Instead of broadcasting services from churches, evangelists created their own TV programs especially for the medium. While Billy Graham persisted in holding his crusades in large venues with TV audiences looking in, the new breed built studios, their own stations, then their own networks, thanks to cable and satellite delivery systems.

One fascinating example of this electronic evangelism effort was Oral Roberts. As a child growing up with the first television set in the neighborhood in the early 1950s, I remember seeing Oral Roberts on the black and white sawdust trail. He was a young Pentecostal preacher and faith healer who let movie cameras into his revival tent services so his message could find its way to flickering TV screens across the nation. It was perhaps 25 years later that Roberts had built (using his viewers’ money) the university in Tulsa that bears his name. On campus he had designed a full television production center so that, instead of pitching a primitive tent in cities and villages throughout the world, he needed only to head across the world’s fair style campus and into his own studio.

And instead of holding a revival service, he emceed a music-filled variety show, complete with choreography (Pentecostals have always “danced in the Spirit”) and contemporary music. Though always, I suppose, a “showman,” his spoken messages, healing “miracles,” and appeals for money took center stage like a glossy form of vaudeville.

It occurs to me that my own radio show was, in a far more modest way, a precursor to some of the trappings of the “electronic church.” Eschewing (always wanted to use that word) hymns, sermons, and heady discussions of theological and social issues, I offered my listeners a Top 40 radio experience musically, while I played deejay. Now I must hasten to note the differences between my modest entertainment format and the more widespread and well-financed glitz of the electronic evangelists. First, I never asked listeners for money. Second, my program was produced under the auspices of  a major Protestant denomination (and therefore I didn’t need to pass the plate among listeners). Third, my presentation came from a liberal heart/mind/soul.

As a footnote to this entry, I recall my own modest participation in the ground floor of the electronic church locally, in Richmond, Virginia. During  the summer of 1967, I was employed as an intern at Richmond’s NBC affiliate.  My job description included running camera on local news and other Channel 12 productions. On Saturday afternoons, that included carrying very heavy TV cameras and pedestals, and lugging huge cables and sundry TV production supplies, to a car dealership just down the road from the station. There we would set up for a live broadcast of car commercials during the breaks of an old movie being run back at the station. When that two-hour slot was over, we packed all the equipment back in a truck and drove several miles to a large Baptist church near downtown Richmond.

We carried those massive cameras up the stairs of the church into balcony and upper transept areas to prepare for the church’s broadcast of its Sunday morning service the next day. I would be there the next morning to run camera on Pastor Vander Warner, Jr., capturing his sermon, the congregation’s hymns, and what little liturgy the Baptists had in their worship. Warner didn’t treat the television audience as mere onlookers or bystanders. He knew how to play to his viewing audience, frequently looking directly up into my camera’s zoom lens to make eye contact with worshipers at home. At one point, during the offering, he’d be sitting in his chair, hidden from the church’s congregation by the good-sized pulpit, and he would quietly speak  directly to the home viewers.

His was not the first local worship service to be telecast, of course. Ministers had caught that vision many years before. And for many years after, when sanctuary, camera, and satellite converged in an electronic trinity of evangelistic entertainment, there was big money to be made in the business of saving souls. From Elmer Gantry to Pat Robertson… have they got a deal for YOU!

“Dr. Kirk” knew the station manager at WRVA-TV and with his help, my summer intern program was accomplished. I was to work in the production department, starting on the floor crew.  My direct supervisor was Bob Griggs who oversaw all studio production, from the two evening news shows to local commercial video production, from the remote broadcasts to his own very popular children’s show, “Sailor Bob.”

My job was primarily two-fold. One piece was to be the “floor director,” relaying commands to talent (“30 seconds, Doug”)  from the director’s booth. (The director’s only view of the studio was through the camera lens, and since this was 1968, the talent didn’t have their own ear pieces… thus the need for a floor director.) Alternating with other members of the floor crew, I would run camera while another person took on the floor director’s job. Running camera was a natural for me, since I had a photographer’s eye and had no problem composing a shot, if not always the shot the director called for.

Production for the live news shows was pretty straightforward: same format, same shots night after night. It’s no surprise that many of today’s news programs are captured by robotic cameras, and computers can establish the shots for each segment. But back then, when color was new to the local stations and equipment was huge (heavy cameras on heavier pedestals and videotape machines as big as pickup trucks), it took human beings to run the show.

As I look back on some of the pictures I took back then, I remember how primitive it was. When the newscaster referred to an event, the primary visual might have been just a black and white photo transmitted via “wire,” trimmed with a paper cutter, and dry mounted to a piece of heavy black cardboard. While one camera was trained on the newsreader, the other moved to the “hod shot,” the photo mounted on a tall easel.  The weather segment was little more than two or three maps with erasable markers indicating trends and temps.

Far more creative were the local commercials we shot in studio. And the “Sailor Bob Show,” a widely popular Popeye cartoon framing device, with our boss as host. Rather than spending words here to describe the program and its wonderfully personable host, just do a search for “Sailor Bob” Griggs, and look for segments of the show. You’ll smile, as kids and their parents did back in the 1960′s in Richmond.

Maybe sometime I’ll write about the other aspects of that sojourn in TV, including running camera each Sunday on a remote from a large downtown Baptist church, and later having an invaluable opportunity to direct a syndicated show from the booth. Suffice it to say, my TV internship that year was a solid foundation for my vocational future when cable TV opened up opportunities for some creative local programming, and when I was invited to found the Video Education Center at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education.

On the day before the show, we met at WCVE to check out the studio where we’d go on the air for the first time since the mid-70s — or was it the late 70s when Guy had left the show? (Amiably, I have to add; he didn’t leave in a huff or anything.) Steve Clark, whom I had known from the old days at WRVA radio, and Sam Straus, whom I’d known from, well, here’s a partial list —  WRGM, WRFK, WBBL, WRNL, and PSCE-Video — were there that afternoon. (Even Greta Dollitz was there; I had helped her produce her first “Hour with the Guitar” programs at WRFK in 1970 or so!)

Sam made sure the turntables were ready for our vinyl jazz albums, and also briefed Guy on the “board,” while I just looked around and thought, “Well, this is really going to happen.”

On October 30, I met Guy at the studio about an hour ahead of air time, and found that he had already rigged the studio with four HD video cameras to chronicle the event. We went over the music list, made some refinements (since we had to report the details of the playlist for some mysterious station bookkeeping), and clarified how one live studio would shift over to ours at exactly 10 p.m.

At 10 o’clock, Guy played the first of only two CD cuts that night. It was the original opening theme of “Headset Jazz,” the “Swinging Shepherd Blues,” Herbie Mann’s reggae version. (Not able to locate the old album, I had downloaded the MP3 and loaded it onto a CD, much to Mr. Spiller’s chagrin. He really was committed to the vinyl purity of the two-hour show, but I was just as committed to using the first theme music, no matter how I could swing it.)

[The other CD cut that night was the last piece we played. It was good of Guy to allow me to break format in order to mention my friendship with Bill Carter of the Presbybop Quartet, and to play a cut from the group's recent jazz CD set: "Psalms Without Words." I guess I wanted listeners to know that I have a "present" as well as a well-documented past.]

Over the opening theme then, Guy opened the mikes, and with absolutely nothing written down, we winged it for two hours. Any worries about whether we could pull it off evaporated early on. The conversation was easy, the rapport right-on, and we had a ball. Between the sets of two recordings, we talked about the music, the history of the show, paid tribute to Alice Riegel (who had died in 2008), and shared some stories.

While the music played, Guy cued records and I hastily wrote down the exact time that records started and ended, rearranged some music choices to keep things balanced, and –  we took phone calls from listeners, off-air.

In fact, the phone calls started before we went on the air. The first call prior to air time was from a couple whose wedding ceremony I had performed 31 years ago. They had both been in Richmond radio at the time and as the unofficial “chaplain” to several stations, I had done pre-marital counseling with them, and led the worship service during which they said their vows. The caller assured me that they were still very, very content after all these years, and that they were happy to hear me and Guy back on the radio.

And then, during the show, another call came in from another radio couple I had married, and they too were reporting that after 31 years (!) they were still happily married. That must have been a good year for my wedding folk! Those calls were the proverbial icing on the cake.

And there were other calls, mostly from former listeners who remembered Guy or me or us from those days of yesteryear. Several friends called in, including a beloved colleague from PSCE, my current next door neighbor here in New York, and friend who told me he was recording the show for us off the radio station’s internet “streaming audio.” (Turns out, that was a very good move; other attempts at saving the show had failed, so Eddie had the only copy!)

Two other notable callers: my brother from North Carolina and my son from Pennsylvania. It was very good night indeed.

Looking back on the show, or rather listening to the playback, I realize how different I sound without a spiffy script to read. Um. Uh. And I sure affirmed what Guy was saying as I uttered “Yes,” and “Yeah” to begin almost every response. Still, and here’s the main thing, we didn’t do or say anything embarrassing… and we didn’t break anything.

And we could do this all over again tomorrow night! We both wish we could. (That said, no one called from the Virginia Association of Broadcasters to invite us to the radio Hall of Fame. Sigh.)

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!

After the standard program opening, I pretty much played through the album, cut-by-cut, and made the following comments:

THE VOICE

“Won’t you take me back to school? I’ve got to learn the golden rule. Won’t you lay it on the line? I’ve got to hear it one more time.”

The “golden rule”. You don’t hear much about that these days. The so-called “me generation” was taught to “watch out for number one,” that is, look out for, protect, serve, save yourself. The golden rule somehow got buried under a lot of garbage.

Yet, while unpopular, the rule survives..., not so much as a rule maybe - and I hope it’s survived as more than just a cliché. For those who follow the Christ, the words are an ideal to be sought, a standard by which we measure our ability to live the faith.

The most familiar statement of the golden rule is, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. In the King James Version of the Bible, it reads, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise”. The Today’s English Version says, “Do for others just what you want them to do for you”. (Luke 6:31)

What makes that rule so unique is its presence in just about every major religion:
Buddhist, Muslim, Sufi, Zoroastrian. In the Jewish Hillel, it’s recorded, “Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you”.

And, it’s got some Chinese roots, too, in the teachings of Confucius who said, "May we take the word of reciprocity to serve as our rule of life: what we do not wish others to do to us, may we not do unto them”.

I have to believe the Spirit of God has planted the seed of that message in every culture for a reason: that we should live by its guidance and judge our lives by how successfully we have followed it. It’s the key to making peace with one another, and finding peace among nations.

TALKING OUT OF TURN

The relationship in this song - the love - breaks down because of some “talking out of turn”. It may be the old story of “kissing and telling”, but it probably runs deeper than that, reflecting the way we often break confidences or betray someone’s trust. It hurts to know that a few simple words can destroy something as beautiful as a relationship conceived in - and nurtured by - love.

Our words seem harmless enough - as if what we say “out of turn” will be immediately forgotten. How surprised we are when what we’ve said comes back to haunt us... and worse... to haunt the person our words have betrayed.

There’s a proverb in the Bible which the Today’s English Version translates this way:
"Kind words bring life; but cruel words crush your spirit." (Prov. 15:4)

And the Moodies sing of that kind of exploitation:
"I took a little more of you each day when I didn’t see that I was breaking you apart."
Talking out of turn - it’s a habit that breaks people and crushes our own spirit. So, beware of thoughtless words and careless comments. Kind words are one way to hold on to love.

GEMINI DREAM

I hear in this song a plea to make it work out - either rocking and rolling right through the night, or making love, or both, because Justin Hayward and John Lodge write, “Tonight’s the night”.

The lines I’ve centered on - almost obscured by the music - offer a three-step progression that applies to all of life, whether it’s a system of ethics, faith, vocation, whatever. The lines are:

“Living it. Believing it. Wanting It.” In that order. Living, believing, wanting. Apply that progression to whatever “it” may stand for.

I live it. That is, I experience it. Therefore, I believe it; so I want it to be that way. Apply it to society and you understand how hard it is to change attitudes.

For a racist, for example.

I live prejudice: I’ve been brought up in a segregated society, therefore, I believe that’s the way life should be. And I want it to continue to be that way.

But, to change an attitude or idea, it may be necessary to reverse the order to “I want, I believe, I live.

I want to see racial harmony and justice and reconciliation. When I want it badly enough, I’ll believe in it, and when I believe hard enough, I’ll begin to live it. My attitude will change - and so will I.

Again, the formula for change is want, believe, live.

Just a thought from The Moody Blues album “Long Distance Voyager”.

IN MY WORLD

“In My World” is a witness to how a relationship with another person can be a life-changing catalyst.

“I’m only just beginning to believe what you’ve done. How you turned it upside down, this world of mine.”

And there’s that touch of hyperbole: “It’s heaven on earth when you’re near.”

That’s one reason we human beings were meant to be “in community,"  if not in love. Our relationships to others, supported and renewed by mutual caring, loving, healing... joyfully sharing bits and pieces of our lives --- all that enriches us.

It may be the result of falling in love with one very special person, but it’s not limited to that. There are other levels of relationship just as important. Singles and couples, families and churches - we all need one another to make us - and keep us— together and whole.
We move from one Justin Hayward song to another. This next one’s called “Meanwhile”.

MEANWHILE
Another song of lost love - with a key line that reminds us that we are not really totally in control of our lives, much as we hate to face that. The Moodies sing, “I thought I’d end up as the hero; thought the glory would be mine. Very soon I was to find it wasn’t to be.”

Newspapers, magazines, and TV sometimes carry ads for books, cassettes, tracts, offers of plans and programs designed to help us take control of our lives in three or sixteen or nine easy lessons.

“Learn to make your own decisions!”
“Plot your own course!”
“Design your own destiny”
“Be your own boss!”

From the power of positive thinking to astrology, we try to assume control of life’s course, but - isn’t there always a place for surprise? Or disappointment?

Won’t there always be the challenge of the unexpected and the thrill of overcoming a set-back? To be human is to be a hero - sometimes... but it’s also to learn to struggle, to admit weakness, to confess sins, and even to fail!

Now that doesn’t mean we’re nothing but dust in the wind, being blown about in every direction by every little breeze, but it does mean that God’s plan encompasses far more than ours. And life is never really knowing what’s coming next.

One thing is for sure: We can learn to live with that!

22,000 DAYS

Let’s see.. .divide 22,000 days by 365 and you wind up with about 60 years and not quite four months. According to the Moody Blues’ Graham Edge, that’s all the time you’ve got. I’m not sure that’s the total from birth, or starting from where we are now, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s praying, “Let me go into tomorrow one day at a time”.

This song calls time both a “foe” and “wealth”. In one line, the Moodies sing, “Time’s the only wealth you’ve got”.

And in the next verse, “Now I know the only foe is time”. Well, which is it?

Time past could be wealth - like looking back on the wealth of experiences from which we’ve learned. And if we consider future’s time is running out and trying to accomplish life’s goals is like playing beat the clock, then maybe time to come is the enemy.

Then again, before you buy fully into that interpretation consider the alternative:
all those days we have left are not enemies, but precious gifts - new opportunities for redemption, healing, reconciliation, new birth. Then time past becomes a foe we’ve conquered and left behind!

Now that I like!

NERVOUS

Written by John Lodge, here’s another song about “the road” (frequent Celebration Rock listeners have a big collection of “road” songs gathered from previous programs.)

What I hear is the cry of one who’s worried or “nervous” that he’s been on the road too long — and he doesn’t know what it is that keeps him on the road. “Has there been a sign that points another way and I’ve passed it by?”

On a less cosmic level, I know what that’s like. I’m traveling on the interstate and I suddenly get the feeling I’ve passed my exit. I keep driving on, looking for the right exit sign, growing more nervous with each mile.

Well, John Lodge - who, like the rest of us is not getting any younger - may feel that way about where his life is going. How young can a rock musician remain? I know some 29 year old D.J.’s who feel the same way. How long do I stay on this road?

I’m getting nervous, too. I’m younger than Dick Clark and Casey Kasem, but in my mid—thirties, how long can I stay in touch with contemporary music trends?

Well, whether you’re a veteran “cosmic rocker” like each of the Moody Blues, or a D.J. at “WOLD”, or just somebody on the road who’s forgotten why, catch one more line thrown us by John Lodge:

“Bring it on home, your love.”

The tie is between home and love. It’s essential to remember that the love we’re offered by God through the people around us, gives us the security and comfort of home, no matter where we are. (And, if I’m loved, my age is irrelevant.)

Along life’s road, I keep my eyes open for signs of love pointing the way home -which is, after all, everyone’s ultimate destination.

PAINTED SMILE

Ray Thomas has given us a perceptive song which helps us understand class clowns, intentional village idiots, and other assorted fools. The lyrics give us insight into those who win our love with humor. From classic clowns like Red Skelton to the girl in your class who’s always acting out for a laugh and personal acceptance. The song reminded me of a play I was in about 10 years ago called “For Mature Adults Only”. Written by Norman Habel and published by Fortress Press, the play contained the stories of several teenagers who needed the understanding of mature adults. Here is Stevie’s story, and her prayer.

[Here I inserted the voice of a friend, Elena Delgado, who read Stevie's story from the Habel book.]

VETERAN COSMIC ROCKER

He’s afraid that he will die. For a performer, to “die” means to fail – to fail to excite, to bring laughter, tears, or applause. To die on stage is a constant fear that even veteran performers are afflicted with. That’s why even the pros still get nervous. There’s always the chance the audience won’t like your song, won’t laugh at your joke, won’t respond to your impassioned reading of the playwright’s words.

The veteran cosmic rocker fears that kind of death, but he also fears the other deaths that haunt every person, star or commoner. Physical death – complete and utter non-existence. Spiritual death – separation from the one whose ultimate gift was life: God.

The good news is that God has sent us a message through Jesus the Christ. Death has been overcome. New life always awaits us.

We face little deaths every day. Those little deaths are called goodbyes, transfers, graduations, leave-taking, separation or divorce: Little deaths that  hurt for awhile  (admittedly sometimes a long while)  until a breath of new life fills empty spaces and we live again

The veteran cosmic rocker, in spite of a spiked coke and sweet smoke, nonetheless was afraid he would die. He seemed to have missed the natural alternative: trust in the Lord of Life.

[And that's the last printed word from the script. No doubt as the program came to an end and the music of the Moodies faded, I added my benediction: "Be gentle with people, and with yourself." Until next time...

A call came into the studio one morning from a guy named Gil. So many years have come and gone since then that I can’t recall which high school he was connected with, but I think he was in “humanities,” and he told me he enjoyed “Celebration Rock.” Could we meet sometime and talk about an idea?  Sure. I was always open to program possibilities, maybe at least a theme for a show.

I invited Gil to the WBBL studio, and he brought a file of hit and album song lyrics, mostly written down as he listened carefully to the records. (What a gift it was for us lyric-oriented folk…to have the lyrics printed on the record jacket or on an album insert. But much of the time, we had to listen closely and write what we [thought] we heard!)  I thought maybe Gil was going to offer to write a show for me, but he had a higher intention. Because of Gil’s work with teenagers, and his many experiences of hearing them voice their feelings, concerns, and “issues,”  — and because he loved music and was able to make connections between current song lyrics and those adolescent voices he heard in school — Gil had gathered some  lyrics and wanted to share them with me. I think it was to kind of “proof read” the lyrics he had heard, but also to test out an idea: that those songs could be used in one-on-one or group sessions with teenagers in crisis.

Again, the memory is fuzzy here, but it seems to me that we met a couple more times, and Gil and I discussed the idea of “rock music therapy” now and then over the next couple of years. It all led to my going to speak to his high school humanities class about rock poetry and music, one of the few times I took the “Celebration Rock” program into a “secular” setting. At the same time, Gil moved into a more in depth study of music therapy with youth in a professional setting, though I’m not able to be more specific than that all these years later.

The main thing is that he was a caring adult who had learned to listen to both his students and his music, and he pursued that connection with a tireless passion to use that music to help youth cope with their often rocky adolescence. His approach helped me sharpen my own use of lyrics as I interpreted song poetry through my radio programs, keeping in mind the life situations of younger listeners who might find solace or challenge in the ever-present music soundtrack of their lives.

I have this regret as I look back on Gil’s contributions to our listening and interpreting: why in heaven’s name did we not do a show together about music as therapy? When music tells our stories, or the stories of people we may know, or expresses feelings that we find foreign or all-too-familiar, can that connection bring healing or understanding, comfort, or even salvation?

Songs of joy or songs “sung blue” fill the airwaves and the internet today.

Who’s really listening? I mean, really listening!

[With thanks to Gil Cumbia]

Like many other amateur audiophiles, I have loaded the freeware “Audacity” onto my computer, just to play with. I might get into podcasting or something; you never know. Plus, it might be fun in my retirement to re-edit some of my favorite Celebration Rock programs, to see what they might sound like without those dated references to “records,” ”Northern Ireland’s troubles,” or male-dominated God language.

Audacity is pretty user-friendly, people tell me. And since I’m almost an expert at video editing with Pinnacle’s Studio Plus, one would think this audio editing/mixing thing would be half the effort that video is. We’ll see.

What occurs to me as I look forward to learning something new, is what audio editing used to be like,  in the days of razor blades and splicing tape. From the first “Showcase” program on to the last of the long-running “Celebration Rock” series two decades later, I tried my best to make the hour-long show seem live. If I had my script, record list, and recording equipment all in order, it was very possible that from the opening song to the closing theme the tape would roll for exactly sixty minutes, and I could put a label  on it (“Master Tape — Do Not Erase”) and call it a day — or a night, depending. But stuff happens.

I might have mis-cued the cut I wanted to play from an album, or maybe the turntable (remember those?) would still be set at 45 r.p.m. as the l.p. started to spin. “Ooops” moments often led to more profane expletives, not “on air,” of course; I was careful about that. But the mistakes had to be edited out. Or, I’d throw the wrong switch, push the right button at the wrong time, or just plain screw up what I had meant to say. Sometimes things were going so badly that I’d have to stop that tape and start from the beginning.

But if the miscues were minor and the timing was close to 60:00, I’d make a quick adjustment and know that when the show was over, I could grab a wax pencil, a razor blade, and some splicing tape, cut away the mistake,  and the listener would never know.

The process was low tech, to be sure. I’d find the offending audio, sometimes having marked the place on the reel by putting a piece of paper in the reel as the tape wound past the error. I’d manually move the tape slowly over the playback head to locate the beginning of the edit point, mark that place with the wax pencil, find the end of the bad audio, mark that, and then place the tape in an edit block, a precisely machined metal tape holder with a diagonal slot where a razor blade would slice through the tape. The length of tape to be cut out might be a quarter of an inch; or, several feet. Specially made adhesive tape would join the remaining audio tape at the splice.

Again, if the splice were a good one, no one would know that anything had been excised. In fact, some splices were so good, I was more proud of the edits than my script, an admission not easily made.

I got good at it. Lots of practice, you see. I could edit the “s” off most plurals to make ‘em singular. I could edit every “uh” from ad-libbed comments. I could polish up guest interviews, editing for time and clarity, but also saving some nervous guests from sounding inarticulate. (“Geez, it’s…it’s a tough question,” the guest might say. On tape it might sound like, “Jesus…it’s a tough question.”  Don’t worry; we can edit that.)

Usually I taped interviews days or weeks away from the show’s production. As I listened to the interviews, I’d begin to rearrange the content to fit the final shape of the program’s flow. Again, this sounds so primitive now, but there were many times when I would have cut the interview tape (quite literally)  into many separate lengths, several feet long, and would have draped those pieces all over the studio, before splicing them back together in the order I thought most useful for the program.

More than one visitor to the studio during those days must have thought the whole thing was crazy. But that’s the way it we did it  before the process became digital, and editing became a matter of mouse clicks. Compared to the “old days,” the digital process is much more precise, certainly faster, and probably still a satisfying art. Sometimes fun, sometimes a pain.  But far less tactile than those “hand-made” edits.

By the way, in the process of dubbing old CR reels to CD, I still have to keep a razor blade and splicing tape handy. You never know when one of those 30 year-old edits will come loose as the tape plays or rewinds. Whether it’s an “ooops” moment or a “damn” still depends on circumstances. It may sound silly, but I still get some satisfaction out of the process.

Now, if only we could edit life itself. Cut out the bad parts and pretend they never happened. Wait. That may be what confession, grace, and forgiveness are all about. God’s wax pencil.

At a 2009 reunion at Union Theological Seminary-PSCE in Richmond, Va., I ran into someone with whom I crossed paths three decades ago. (I suppose that’s what reunions are for…but this acquaintance wasn’t on my UTS radar.) I was producing weekly “Celebration Rock” shows in the studios of the former WBBL at Grace Covenant Church, and part of my informal contract with the church was to enable WBBL to serve the religious community beyond what we put on the air. The faithful stewardship of that production facility was to help local community and church groups in their media outreach.

In exchange for the free use of the studio for my own programs, I served as consultant, producer, writer, engineer, and voice for a number of Virginia volunteer-based community groups who wanted to get their message(s) across through radio PSAs and “slide shows.” (Remember, this was w-a-y before Powerpoint and even before video equipment was easily accessible to non-profits.) The man I bumped into at the reunion was one of the people I worked with early on in this ministry of sound tracks and slide shows. His exact role/title escapes me after all these years, but there he was at the seminary reunion still using the phrase that defined the project we designed: the ministry of higher education. He coordinated campus ministries in colleges and universities throughout Virginia, and needed a way to interpret that work to church audiences in a creative way, certainly with the hope of prompting financial support.

We solicited slides from various schools, and collaborated on a script. Then I was to arrange the slides, add some music, and do the voice-over narration. The whole ”show” had to be duplicated for use throughout the region. Hoping that the statute of limitations has passed, and that no copies of those audio cassettes even exist to this day, I can now admit that we pretty much stole the background music (various obscure instrumental cuts).  We had no budget for “licensed” music, or even for cheap “production music.” So, to give the soundtrack some life, I looked around for some albums and lifted the tracks to mix into our script. I suppose our mantra back then was “no harm, no foul,” but I’ve become a bit of a stickler about such things now. (Well, now that the internet is full of cheap music and my video editing system comes complete with decent soundtrack music cleared for home and/or  non-profit use…)

Other “shows” produced at WBBL back then included a soundtrack and voice work for an interpretation piece for the Richmond Chaplaincy Service, and another for the Virginia Chaplaincy Service, both providing ministries to jails and/or prisons. I also did a soundtrack for something called the Wilderness Odyssey, a Virginia-based environmental adventure organization, and was able to use the audio portion of their slide show as a feature on two of my radio programs.  Another beneficiary of our A-V service (that’s “Audio-Visual” for those under 40!) was a “Synod School” held each summer at the Massanetta Springs Conference Center in Harrisonburg, Va. I recently ran across a tray of slides from that “show” and wondered what in the world to do with that collection. Am I the archivist of the ’70′s? Or, should I just add it all to the local landfill?

Once we moved from slides to video, and from my WBBL base to the Video Education Center at PSCE, it was good stewardship to offer voice, audio soundtrack, and video production services to local organizations such as Volunteer Emergency Foster Care of Virginia, the Richmond Hill urban retreat center, and the Virginia Council of Churches.  

Just so you know, in retirement I’ve created “Digital Shoestring Productions,” and have produced a couple of DVDs to help interpret and promote some Presbytery projects. The next video produced on a shoestring budget will show our local Habitat For Humanity affiliate at work. It will be my first effort available on the web. Stay tuned.

Facebook connections have brought about the recovery of three “lost episodes” of “Celebration Rock,” making one particular listener very happy, while helping me add to my own list of digitized CR programs. (To preserve the anonymity of the folks involved, I’ll use only their first names.)

Some 25 years ago, Mary was a student at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, where I directed the Video Education Center. As part of her work scholarship, Mary was a video production assistant. She was getting married during the summer and asked if I would officiate at the service. I had to decline because I wasn’t available for the date she and Mark had chosen.  

Since I had recently performed a number of other weddings (the word “perform” always an interesting choice when referring to the leading of various church rituals), though,  it occurred to me that “love and marriage” could be the theme of my next CR show. Finding music about love wouldn’t be hard, of course, and I knew there were some songs about marriage and commitment that I could add to the mix. And for the script…that was going to be easy, too. All I had to do was cull some thoughts from the many wedding meditations I had used for marriage services through the years.

With Mary and her financee Mark in mind, I gathered the records and wrote the script. It was evident early on that I had way too much material for one program, so I produced a two-part series on “love and marriage,” and dedicated it to Michael and Illyse, Hal and Debbie, Bob and Ruth, as well as to Mary and Mark. (Now, I have to admit that with all the weddings I did over my 40+ years in active ministry, I have forgotten many couples’ names and circumstances, but those four couples I knew fairly well before their weddings.)

Thanks to Facebook, Mary and I reconnected after all these years, and she read parts of this CR blog. She found the lists of all the CR programs that still exist on tape and/or CD, and looked in vain for the show(s) that she and Mark had been mentioned on. She wrote me to inquire about it, and I confessed that I didn’t have any tapes labeled “Love and Marriage.” I looked again through the collection of existing programs, but no, I had to report, that theme was among the missing. But if it ever turns up, Mary, I’ll let you know.

Well, it turned up a few weeks ago, but not among my scores of reels and CDs. Someone else found me through Facebook, a guy named John. He too had looked through the blog lists of my shows and wrote to say that he had at least three that I didn’t have. He had taped shows off the air, and had saved audiocassettes of the two “Love and Marriage” programs, plus a Gordon Lightfoot program that featured the 1983 “Salute” album. John offered me CDs of the cassettes, and I traded him three other shows that he expressed some interest in.

So, CD copies of the “Love and Marriage” programs are in the mail to Mary. She’ll hold onto them until her 25th wedding anniversary and then give them to Mark. They’ll hear their names “on the radio,” but much more fun will be listening to love songs from 25-35 years ago, some songs they may not have heard since then! 

My thanks to John for his contribution to the CR archives, and for being such a faithful listener in 1985 and taping the shows off the air. And thanks to all who appreciate and celebrate the ministry that was “Celebration Rock.”