If You Ain’t Heard Your Name By This Time, It’s Probably Cause It Just Don’t Rhyme!

My messy office at home

Helaine has declared it spring cleaning time. There’s no excuse for me to be a slacker. After 23 years in this house we’ve accumulated a lot of crap. Everything must go!

OK–not everything, but if I haven’t looked at it over the last decade (or possibly two) it needs to be tossed. Fair enough.

The anti-intuitive part of cleaning and straightening is the first step is to make things messier! I have two wall units. I pulled most everything to the floor.

That’s tough love cleaning. It becomes easier to toss than return!

From time-to-time a discovery is made. Like most archaeological digs, most of what was unearthed in my room was worthless. Not everything!

I have audio tapes. Reel-to-reel. No player. I couldn’t toss them. OK–I tossed a few unlabeled boxes.

There were audio cassettes too. That’s where this afternoon’s KGB aircheck came from.

Tonight there are audio CDs and three gems I have to share. Indulge me.

Part of what made radio so special was the production of it all. The premier production element was (and is) the jingle.

I’ve written about and linked to the work of Jon Wolfert. He is the King of Jingles. Irrefutable. He is the keeper of the flame.

Alas, none of what I’m posting is his. I hope he doesn’t think I’m cheating.

First up the PAMS copyright notice. A jingle company could have printed its copyright notice on the label. Not PAMS. They chose to sing theirs!

Second, the iconic news opening from the Johnny Mann produced package that ran on stations consulted by Bill Drake (and a few others). After the third note, just say (in your ballsiest voice), “It’s twenty minutes before three. I’m Byron MacGregor, CKLW 20-20 News.”

Finally, a jingle company’s tribute to itself and its clients. This is the TM Song. This blog entry’s title, “If You Ain’t Heard Your Name By This Time, It’s Probably Cause It Just Don’t Rhyme!” is included in the lyrics!

I love this stuff. Radio and I were very close.

Rock And Roll Radio News

Bruce Erik Smallwood (all our newspeople had middle names, whether they did or not!) once said of the local electric company, “Ready Kilowatt says his costs are up, so he’s going to have to (pregnant pause, then with inflection) up yours!

Back when I was in radio at WPEN in Philadelphia, we had a real ‘rock and roll’ news department. Our newsmen (and women) made sure their copy was always snappy with lots of alliteration and plays on words.

Our news presence would never have been characterized as serious.

Bruce Erik Smallwood (all our newspeople had middle names, whether they did or not!) once said of the local electric company, “Ready Kilowatt says his costs are up, so he’s going to have to (pregnant pause, then with inflection) up yours!”

We were good, but we were posers compared to CKLW, a station licensed to Windsor, Ontario, but really serving Detroit. Recently, I was sent a link for a story about CK’s newsroom, which I thought I’d post here.

If you were a radio fan in to 70s, you’ll enjoy this.