Tag Archives: radio

The Allure of the Flute.

14 Apr

April 13, 2011

Love him or hate him, Bob Grant is a New York radio legend. One of the pioneers of political talk radio, he’s been on the air since 1970 and he’s been cranky since Day One.

He isn’t genteel. Phone calls frequently end with him telling a caller to “get off my phone, you jerk!” Guests are often informed that “you’re a fake, a phony, and a fraud!” Shows would end with “Somebody’s got to say these things, it has to be me!”

Howard Stern used to credit Bob Grant as an influence, then Stern decided that he had invented everything in radio down to the original Marconi wireless and called Grant an imitator. (“Tell ‘em Fred.”) This despite the fact that Grant was in radio causing controversy long before Hoo Hoo Howie.

However, it was his regular (and slightly irregular) callers who often stole the show. This is from Wikipedia, whose journalistic content exceeds the sewer but doesn’t approach your car’s owner’s manual:

One of Grant’s most memorable regular call-in guests was Ms. Trivia, who aired her “Beef of the Week”, a series of seemingly trivial complaints, such as her objection to stale gum in baseball card packets, the exaltation of the lowly mouse in popular cartoon culture (Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse) at the expense of portraying felines in a discriminatory manner (Felix, the trickster, Sylvester, the loser cat with a lisp, etc.) She later insisted that she be called “Mm. Trivia” in support of doing away with titles that differentiated men from women (such as Miss, Ms. or Mister). Grant referred to Mm. Trivia as the most popular personage on WMCA radio who was not even on the payroll. Ms. Trivia was Grant’s guest at a Halloween Festival dinner held at Lauritano’s Restaurant in the Bronx, where a young Ms. Trivia, not long out of her teens, revealed herself for the first time to a startled radio audience, many who had expected and assumed, based upon her articulation and intonation, that she would be an elderly, prudish woman. Instead, a statuesque and fashionable Ms. Trivia, wearing an elaborate Victorian costume, was the surprise guest seated next to Grant at the dais table along with several political figures from New York. The following day the majority of calls to the show were for the purpose of obtaining information about the mysterious Mm. Trivia, with Grant in his typical manner finally in exasperation hanging up on the callers, shouting, “THIS IS NOT Mm. TRIVIA’S SHOW!”

I only wish I were as accomplished a crank as Mm. Trivia.

The caller I remember most, however, is simply known to me as The Flute Guy. Long before people would call a show just to shout “Ba Ba Booey!” this guy called Bob and, without ever saying a word, played a few notes on a flute until he was cut off. It wasn’t much of a tune; sort of a simple yet haunting series of rising and falling tones. Sometimes he’d manage to get in several times each show, other times you’d go days before hearing him again.

It got to the point that you wanted to hear him because Bob couldn’t simply hang up and go to another caller, he go off for the next two or three minutes on what the Flute Guy’s problem was, if it was a mental problem or if he was just a jerk. Eventually his call screener got pretty good at keeping him off the air but sometimes he’d manage to fool the screener and get through.

Bob: “OK, Michelle from Sunset Park, you’re next on the Bob Grant Show.”
Flute Guy: haunting melody quickly cut off.
Bob: “Get off my phone, you jerk!”
Me: “Yay!”

The Flute Guy remains my favorite radio show caller thanks to being so esoteric, just ahead of the legitimately nuts (and eventual subject of his own blog) Jerome from Manhattan who calls WFAN and pretty much every other station in NYC.

So what is the appeal of the flute?

This is the appeal of the flute.

Interested in more New York radio?
Check out Breakfast with Bob and Betty and Bernard Meltzer.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Old Time Radio Convention: Old Folks Enjoying Reruns.

27 Oct

October 27, 2010

Recently I attended the Old Time Radio Convention in beautiful Newark New Jersey. This convention boasted the most octogenarians per capita of any hotel outside of Florida. I was there as the token young man. I was the only one there under forty. In fact, I may also have been the only one there with laces on my sneakers instead of Velcro.

The hotel was located by Newark airport and directly adjacent to the Newark prison. In fact, the only way to the prison was a narrow road that was also the only way to the hotel. I drove past the hotel entrance because it looked closed, which it wasn’t, and went past the next turn because it looked like the hotel exit, which it was. My plan was to make a U-turn and go back to the entrance, but the only room to do it was about 20 yards down the road. I pulled ahead and wondered why there were large orange barrels blocking half the road. Then I saw the low brick buildings, barbed-wire fences, and angry man with a large rifle. So I slowly backed away from the prison, only then noticing the large KEEP OUT- NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTON sign that I totally missed.

I was at this same convention in 1994, sixteen years ago. All this time I’ve had a magnet on my fridge from the event with the year on top. I took it with me and when I paid my admission I pulled out the magnet and showed it to the old gent running the convention. I told him that I was last there with my father, now deceased, all those years ago. It was a heart warming anecdote, or so I thought. The guy looked at the magnet, and totally seriously, even a bit angrily, sneered “so where have you been all this time”? I took back the magnet and walked in. BTW- there were no magnets this year, but I did get a pen.

The convention attracted about one hundred people, and many of them were blind. It makes sense. Radio is for the ears, for the imagination. All of the blind people, except one, seemed very interested in the events of the day. There were many discussions of various old radio shows and people involved in OTR. One blind woman, however, was a total loudmouth who must have thought she was at Yankee Stadium.

PRESENTER: “So it was back in 1942 that I met Bruce Freedkin and-“
LOUDMOUTH: “Yay! Bruce Freedkin! We love you!”
PRESENTER: “Right, yeah, well, Bruce Freedkin and I were mixing tapes in the Brill Building when-“
LOUDMOUTH: “Brill Building!”
PRESENTER: Sigh “It’s going to be one of those days.”
LOUDMOUTH: “Yay!”

The days events were broadcast live over internet radio. Right in the back of the main hall was a table set up with broadcasting equipment manned by a guy who looked like he took some time off from following the Grateful Dead around and a young woman who may have had a date once in her life. She had a strange, almost alien looking face, with makeup that seemed to simply accent the alien-ness. Her T-shirt, reading, I brake for MGTJSPE didn’t help. And I have no idea what that meant. Over the course of the day I lost track how many times some old codger shuffled over and asked “what station are you from?”

So I sat there through interesting panels about old radio shows, punctuated by the occasional “Yay! Radio!” from the blind woman. There were demonstrations of sound effects, clips from old shows, discussions of how radio influenced the comics, and more. If you like adventure, the Scarlet Queen panel was for you. Like mystery? The Shadow discussion was up your alley. If you get a laugh out of white men pretending to be black men, the Amos and Andy panel was for you. Not for me, mind you, for you.

Eventually I left the old folks remembering their youth when they sat around and stared at radios the size of today’s refrigerators for awhile. I went to the dealers rooms, all eight of them, and if you went into one you didn’t need to bother going to the other seven.
They all sold nothing but bootleg old time radio show CD’s. No longer did fans of Phil Harris or The Whistler have to get their OTR fixes in dark alleys. Buck Rogers addicts and Little Orphan Annie junkies alike could get well with all the OTR they could imagine in one place. More than one Mysterious Traveler fan overdosed on $2 bootleg discs. TV wasn’t forgotten either. Every single lousy cartoon you remember from the 50’s or 60’s was there too, all cheesy off-the-air broadcasts, complete with static, bad editing where the tape was paused for commercials, and tons of picture degradation as copies were copied from copies of copies of copies copied from copies that were bad to begin with. On the other hand, who could pass up the complete Gigantor for $5?

The highlight of the day was the live performance of an old radio show and it is not as interesting or exciting as you may be imagining. Oh, I know it sounds so glamorous, but trust me, it is an actor’s wet dream to do this and get paid. Imagine a play. Now imagine you don’t need sets. Or costumes. You sit on a comfy chair until you have to speak, then you walk over to a mic and read your lines, then sit down again. Yes, I said “read” your lines, as this is radio so no one needs to memorize the script when you can just read from it. We all did the same thing in third grade.

Of course, there was a catch. The loud blind lady sat right behind me, just to the left, so that during the introductions she cackled out “we love you!” to every performer- right in my left ear- and screamed at every joke “that was a good one! HA HA HA!” Yes, she laughed just like that, HA HA HA.

The day ended and I left. The old folks stayed behind, as there was a buffet and more recreations to come- all at an extra charge, which I declined. I had already had my share of overpriced food- $2.50 for $1.25 bottle of orange juice, and a bag of fruit snacks for $3.25 that even my local newsstand is embarrassed to charge $1.75 for. I also later had a thin $6.50 tuna wrap and a $4 bottle of Pepsi. This is why there is a fence between the hotel and the prison- there is nothing the felons could steal in the area worth more than the Pepsi sold at the hotel. I’m sure it is a tempting target.

By 5:30 I was driving home, the hotel in the rearview mirror, some CD’s in the backseat, and half a bottle of soda that I was not throwing away at those prices right beside me. I had a good time, the shows were enjoyable, and the people who weren’t laughing in my ear were nice and friendly, if a bit dusty. I look forward to the show next year, where the people will be another year older and the blind woman a few decibels louder.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →