Breaking Format: Fantasy Park

I’ve been to my share of rock concerts (despite the impression I may have left in previous blogs where I’ve talked of doing interviews without actually buying tickets or going to the artists’ concerts), but the best was at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.  Ironically, I was on my way to spend a week of silence at a Trappist monastery in Northern Virginia.

D.C. wasn’t exactly on the way there, but the detour was worth the trip. With “festival seating” the afternoon-evening concert featured the cream of mid-70’s rock: Gary Wright, Peter Frampton, and Yes. Gary Wright had been with the group Spooky Tooth, but was at that point on his own and had a big hit called “Dream Weaver.” Frampton had had several hits, including “Show Me the Way,” and Yes, of course, was the headliner of the show. While thousands gathered down on the field in the festival area, I sat in an upper tier of seats to take in the whole scene. Being alone, and an introvert, I found the seats more comfortable than sitting within the crowd below.

It was an exciting concert, and an interesting prelude to my week at the Guest House of the Holy Cross Abbey. With the amplified sounds of the RFK Stadium show still echoing in my mind as I drove along the Shenandoah River to the Abbey, I maintained a discipline I had begun a few years before when I started those annual silent retreats: when I turned my car onto the long winding driveway that led to the Abbey, I purposefully turned off the car radio to enter the grounds in silence. For the next six days, I would hear no music but the singing of the monks and priests in the Abbey Chapel. On the way home almost a week later, I reflected on the contrasts of the RFK thousands listening and dancing to Wright, Frampton, and Yes, and the quiet solitude I enjoyed while sitting on the stone wall reading Thomas Merton.

This memory reminds me of two particular “Celebration Rock” programs I did around that time. One was right on format…a celebration of silence. Obviously rock radio didn’t allow for any actual silence on air. Tight formats demanded that there be no gaps between music and voice, not an inch of tape without audio, not a second’s pause between a piece of music and a spot or announcement that would lead to the next song. So, I used three components to reflect on the need for (and the meaning of) silence in every human life. I found music that sang of the busy-ness, confusion, and noise of contemporary life, but also songs that expressed some need for peace, retreat, or quiet times. I’ve already mentioned the Supertramp title “Lord, Is It Mine?” which included the line, “I need to find a quiet place that I can call my own.” Simon and Garfunkel’s classic “Sounds of Silence” was an easy choice, too. The second component was my own writing to weave the songs into the theme and encourage finding times of quiet reflection in hectic lives. “Be still and know that I am God….” as the Psalm says.

The third component of that program was an interview, not with a rock musician this time, but a seminary professor of mine and a noted pastor in the Presbyterian Church, Dr. J.A. Ross MacKenzie. I had heard him speak on the search for peace and quiet reflection time, and I knew he would communicate well in conversation. That program certainly provided a much-needed sense of balance for listeners who were accustomed to hearing wall-to-wall sound hour after hour on the radio, and probably in life itself. Nowhere in the program did we advocate that listeners pack their bags for a week-long monastery visit; we merely suggested that everyone could use a few moments here or there of quiet time alone, or build Sabbath times into each day, each week, each month. A quieted heart brings healing.

The other “Celebration Rock” program that came to mind when I thought of that RFK concert was a departure from the normal CR format. Around 1975 there was a 48-hour radio special designed to be aired over a weekend, pre-empting a rock station’s normal format. The special was called “Fantasy Park: A Concert of the Mind” and it featured “live” concerts by the day’s top rock performers. But that 48 hour music festival was purely fictitious. The producers had secured the rights to broadcast recorded live concerts, and wove them together with commentary and sound effects to make the whole thing sound like it was another Woodstock (but with better weather!).

I read that some 200 stations carried “Fantasy Park” and that included WSLQ (The Love Rock) in Roanoke, Virginia. The program director there called me with an idea. He asked if I could create a “Celebration Rock” show that picked up on the Fantasy Park theme. He’d play my program in its normal Sunday morning slot and then return to the Fantasy special. I loved the fact that he wanted to keep CR in its place (rather than dropping it for that week which he certainly had a right to do), and I appreciated his confidence in my ability to blend my program into his weekend special. So, despite my comment about the weather in the previous paragraph, it rained on Fantasy Park that Sunday morning. More than that, there was thunder and dangerous lightning, and the giant fantasy stage had to shut down for safety reasons. And “Celebration Rock” came on with my announcement that with the concert temporarily halted by the storm, concert-goers were scurrying to find shelter. Some found their way to a tent where some Christians were offering a “Jesus Rock” worship service. I used sound effects of a storm as I described the scene, took my audience into the tent, and played a live performance by a contemporary Christian rock group. (The actual music that I used on that show has escaped my memory…the tape has long been erased.)

After a few minutes in that tent, we moved to another and I used “live” music by another Christian group, and used commentary and SFX similar to the Fantasy Park format. When my hour was over, miraculously winds died down, the clouds parted, the sun shone through, and the Concert at Fantasy Park resumed. “I Can See Clearly Now…the rain is gone…”

We did the same thing a year later when the WSLQ program director aired the Fantasy Park sequel. I remember that Fantasy Park thing as great fun to put together. I wish I still had a copy of it.

[Now a disclaimer: I’ve been referring to WSLQ in Roanoke. I hope I’m giving credit to the right program director. I think WRVQ in Richmond also carried the weekend special at some point, and I remember the Q94 p.d. telling me I’d be pre-empted that week by Fantasy Park. When I told him about the CR Fantasy Park special, he was glad to air it right where it belonged. Again, details are sketchy some 30 years later, but I think I have the essentials right.]

Next time, some words of appreciation for a colleague and mentor: Dennis Benson.