And Now It’s Been 46 Years…But Who’s Counting?

I started this blog six years ago on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of my first effort at a “rock and roll ministry” through radio. Just a moment ago it dawned on me that the 46th anniversary looms. It was, as recounted early in these posts, the second Sunday of February, 1968 that “Showcase” (the forerunner of “Celebration Rock”) premiered as an experiment in religious broadcasting.

In the six years since my first entries in this Celebration Rock blog, Facebook has helped re-connect me with countless colleagues in media ministry, radio station personnel, and listeners. Together we have shared memories, rued the state of broadcasting today, mourned the passing of radio-connected friends, and wondered about the future of the medium of radio.

In 1968, AM was king when it came to rock. Now, even FM is fading, with the internet enabling us to build our personal music libraries and custom-programmed “radio” stations. The 45 rpm record would be a relic of the distant past for my grandson. Vinyl LPs are either scratchy 50-cent antiques at yard sales or, in contrast, the audiophile-purist’s sacred objects. My attic is full of my radio promotion copies of both big-holed and little-holed pieces of grooved plastic. And I am very proud to say most are still broadcast quality. (Yes… the attic. Summer’s heat and winter’s upstate New York frigid temps haven’t harmed the collection. Sadly, though, the years lived a few hundred yards up the hill from Cayuga Lake created what we might call, quite literally, moldy oldies.)

Besides those records, there are the tapes in storage conditions no better than the discs’. Some are the “masters,” the original mono and then stereo recordings of both “Showcase” and “Celebration Rock” programs. With the program’s hour-long length, the first shows were on two seven-inch reels, and on bargain tape with all the hiss, wow, and flutter one would expect from a low budget production. Later, we (OK, that’s the editorial “we” since I pretty much did this thing myself) stepped up to master quality 10 1/2 inch reels with no half-hour break to cue the second reel’s start. No, my budget didn’t allow that higher quality; it was “used” tape, retired after a few uses by the bigger budget broadcasters I hung out with. And not ALL the shows remain. We recycled tape by recording over previous programs. No doubt, I saved more tapes than I should have.

So scores of old shows are up there, along with many audio cassette copies made from the originals, but capturing even less of the audio quality needed for enjoyable listening. Still, I can’t bring myself to throw them away, no surprise to my wife Joan who knows I don’t dispose of much at all. Just about every program remaining has been “digitally re-mastered,” that is, copied to CDs. Before I learned that I could recover “bad” audio tape by heating the reels in a food dehydrator (honest!), I tossed some shows I thought were unplayable. Sad to say, even some of the programs that were dubbed to CD are no longer playable due to some mysterious degrading of the CD digits! Here we are 50 minutes into a Moody Blues CR show, and the skips begin to avalanche, and I cringe.

With us war babies and boomers ripe for nostalgia (as preceding generations have been for the culture, mores, and treasures of their youth), it’s been tempting to try to repackage my old programs as meditations on the “classics” of days gone long by. “On today’s Celebration Rock retrospective, we revisit the ‘Point of Know Return’ album of Kansas!” Might sound great on the local storefront station downtown, or even on an internet radio station looking to fill an hour’s time. But, no.

I am grateful for those (almost) 22 years that I had on (maybe) 50 stations from coast-to-coast (well, from Tampa, FL to Salem, OR). That radio production and the creative process that fed it…the colleagues with whom I connected over the years … the listeners who wrote and the youth leaders who trusted me to lead retreats and conferences .. the churches that supported that unusual media ministry … and the family that tolerated my absence in the studio late at night or on the road all weekend… it was, as they say, a good ride.

And, after these 46 years, I am still very thankful to God for the Call.

Tags: Celebration Rock