In my big honkin’ Radio post the other day, among a crap-ton of other things I said this:
Mr Bill—a dear friend of mine who plied his On-Air Personality trade in unforgettable fashion for many years at WRFX in Charlotte (99.7 FM), after which extended star-turn he made his escape to the Florida beaches—used to gripe to me about the new radio-station production process all the time; he positively HATES it, as do all the other DJs I know. There’s a very good reason for their disgruntlement, one I can readily understand and sympathize with completely.
…I just called my homeboy Bill, a solid CF fan of long standing, to let him know about this post, and will text him a link to it when he gets back to me (Bill keeps busy enough that the first call is usually just the opening gambit of the process; after a day or so’s wait, he’ll call back). Let’s see if he shows up here to enlighten us further on this whole mess, and perhaps correct any errors or clear up any misconceptions on my part, both of which are always a possibility. I do hope he will. Bill, your thoughts will be most welcome, buddy.
True to his usual form, Bill did indeed hit me back right away, whereupon we got ourselves into another of our talk-a-thons, albeit this one not quite as hours-long extended as they usually tend to be. Nutshelling his remarks on the BHRP, and I quote: “You completely nailed it, buddy!” Said that he didn’t find my having a good grasp on the issue at all surprising, since I had in effect spent quite a few years working in radio as well, if in a left-handed kind of way.
Made me feel really good to know he thought I’d gotten it right, I must say; when it comes to radio, Bill has definitely been there and done that, and knows whereof he speaks. In fact, he reminded me of something it didn’t occur to me to bring up in the post: He got in on the ground floor of the radio-automation wave, which was already on its way to becoming A Thing in the lattermost days of his WRFX tenure.
We covered some other needful ground, during the course of which he promised he’d try to somehow wangle a little time to comment further on the post, which naturally I swore I’d hold him to. In fact, should he be able to get around to it I’m thinking that, rather than let his remarks languish in the comments section, I really need to give him the old main-page treatment with a freestanding guest-post.
There was also a good bit of bopping me over the head regarding a resumption of work putting a CF podcast together, which…well, I mean, y’know, damn.
Oh, and he also regaled me with some extremely intriguing tales of his days working a part-time DJ gig at ATL’s venerable and beloved Cheetah club when he was residing in The City Too Busy To Hate (“South of the North, yet North of the South”). Which was another thing I hadn’t known about ol’ Bill, the lucky bastige. “Yeah, you remember the Cheetah, right? On Spring Street? You been there before, right?” I had to confess that, when I lived there, it’s just barely possible I may have hit the Cheetah once or twice my own self. Not as a DJ, of course, nor in any other official capacity.
A-HENH!
More on these matters as and when they develop, folks.
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“You been there before, right?”
Never went there myself but I had customers that would talk about the place. It was always along the lines of “can you believe that place?”
The other day I gave credit to WNEW FM in NYC as a great station and one of the ones that pushed Punk/New Wave.
I also have to give props to another lesser know station in the NYC area that was REALLY into playing Punk/new Wave full time.
WLIR FM on Lawn Guyland. While it was a progressive rock and AOR format until 1982, it was already playing a lot of “New Music” from ENgland the NYC CBGBs scenes. It explicitly went “New Wave” in 1982 but that was pretty much already a done deal for several years.
It’s where I would first hear The Clash or odd bands like the B-52s (Rock Lobster!) before their later in the decade Top 40 breakout.