Gordon Lightfoot

With the death yesterday of the wonderful Canadian troubadour Gordon Lightfoot, I posted on my other blog a link to a “Celebration Rock” radio program featuring Lightfoot’s music. Not many words from my keyboard are necessary. Others are writing their obits and tributes. I simply posted one of maybe three Lightfoot CR specials I produced and hosted over the long run of the radio program.

{I’d post the link here, except this blog site is the freebee, and I pay for the upgrade which allows audio files at my more recent site called “Peace, Grace, and Jazz.” So, you’ll need to navigate to http://www.jeffkellam.wordpress.com to hear the show.

https://jeffkellam.wordpress.com/

Springsteen: Did I Miss Something? Yes.

This blog has been dormant for over a year. I had said all I needed to say about my media ministry, and more! The program that I have over-written about since I retired still brings fond memories. Social media comments on various radio/TV group sites contain some warm thoughts from those who listened all those decades ago. Now and then someone will say some thing like, “I wish I could hear that program again.” And I’m thinking, “Wow, it’s a compliment for sure. But I doubt the recordings would be as good as they are remembered.” Remember that favorite recipe of your Mom’s? You pulled it out after many years, and it wasn’t quite (or at all) like you remembered it.

Turns out that “Celebration Rock” will wind up being mentioned again on a television program in a couple of days. I am interviewing a friend about his relationship with Bruce Springsteen. Now, they haven’t ever met, but Joe has met Springsteen through his music, and it literally changed his life. I’m looking forward to hearing the details. I only have a pencil sketch of that story so far, but I know in that half-hour conversation on television the lines will be filled in with color, texture, and perspective.

As we talk about Springsteen– his music, his stories, his story — I’ll have to confess that other than a scattering of hit songs, the artist never got an hour-long “Celebration Rock” program to himself. How did I miss him all those years?

If you recall from the previous posts here, my radio work was based in Richmond, Virginia, and it turns out that at the same time my rock show was cranking up, Springsteen was playing in Richmond… a lot. One report says he may have played some thirty concerts in RVA from 1969 to 1975. He and Steel Mill played in a city park, in small clubs, even in a parking deck. Some of his band members lived for awhile in Richmond. He found an easy audience there. And appreciative.

When “Born to Run” hit the charts, I played it, of course. And later when “Born in the USA” was released, the album was in my collection. When I did my hour-long program about “home,” his “My Hometown” was in the line-up. And when I did a program about bars, watering holes, and cafes…the Boss’ “Glory Days” added to the stories. But I never did a Springsteen special. Geez.

So after all these many. many entries about the thematic radio programs I produced over those two-plus decades, here was a confession about a program I didn’t do, and should have. Certainly should have.

So, when we record that interview the day after tomorrow, I’ll admit that I missed big time there. And I promise that the next “Celebration Rock” program I do will feature his music. I mean, after that one-man Broadway show he did, I’m sure my radio program will be another step on the way to stardom.

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.

When Things Go Terribly Right

After that post about glitches, most of which were quite minor and hardly worth noting I suppose, it’s probably a good thing to move on to the things that worked right, and that led to a very long run for the “Celebration Rock” program.

For one thing, people listened to the program, and responded. Over the past few days, I’ve been re-reading scores of letters I had saved, some for nearly 40 years! The letters came at first from teenagers who had found something helpful, dare I say “meaningful,” even inspirational on the radio. But letters also came from teachers and coaches, from church leaders and music therapists, from radio station folk and whole families. Many of the letters simply encouraged me to “keep up the good work.” In the early years especially, some young people sent me poetry, prayers, and song lyrics they had written. A few times, teens came into the studio to read their poetry for the show, and one guy named Sam even directed a short play which we aired. Some of the offerings were dark and filled with angst. I received some troubling mail from kids who had thought about suicide. As I read these over recently, I prayed that I had responded to the most important ones all those years ago, and that my responses had been helpful.

Many listeners wrote often, and now 25, 30, 35 years later, I still remembered their names. Sometimes I met them at retreats or conferences. One young woman who wrote several letters from a small town in Virginia eventually found herself in a nursing home in Richmond. She had cerebral palsy and the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. As I read through those letters, I wondered what became of those writers. Well, for one thing they’ve aged! I think of the teens who wrote in 1970. They may well have grandchildren now! What of the guys who wrote from jail or prison? And what became of the poets and aspiring musicians?

All these years later, it was just time to clean house, and finally let go of the mail. But I did read each letter again, somehow feeling that I had to honor the connection with so many listeners who cared about or affirmed what I was doing on the program.

Something else about the letters…I smiled as I got to the end of some of the longer epistles. The writers poured out their thoughts about their faith journeys, their questions and doubts, their credos, and then the last line would read something like, “Please play ‘Wichita Lineman’ by Glen Campbell.” (Maybe they thought that if I played the request, it was a sign that I had read their letter.)

One more thing: I certainly got a lot of help in choosing artists to “showcase.” In the first couple of years, writers asked to hear programs featuring the music of Crosby, Stills, & Nash, the Moody Blues, Diana Ross, and even the Electric Prunes! (I did play their entire “Mass in F-Minor” one night, and later I used their “Kol Nidre” along with an interview with Rabbi Jack Spiro about the Jewish High Holy Days. In fact, I re-ran that interview and the Prunes album many times.)

I chose the subject of this post quite deliberately. When things went right with this weekly hour-long radio program, there was something terrible about it. Not terror, really, but some genuine fear. The words I wrote and spoke, the music I chose and played, the topics we explored together …very often spoke to the deepest places of many listeners. More than one listener admitted that for them the radio program was as close to church or worship as they would get that week. That became a heavy responsibility, and sobering for me as the writer/producer/voice. Many people, young and older, heard what they needed to hear, or what they wanted to hear, or what God intended them to hear. Boldly I confess that the Spirit moved in my heart and theirs, and the love of Christ embraced us all.