Jeff Laurence

[David Sharp]

I'll tell a personal story here. Maybe others can "chime in" with memories of others, on the air. Jeff, I remember when you did afternons at WYUU. Always listened when I finished up a day's work at Paxon (then Clear Channel). You were usually flawless with delivery, but one day you were doing a live read, and pratically swallowed the entire script. Not sure what was happening, maybe the receptionist took off her top and distracted you ;D ...anyway, despite everything going terribly wrong, you still sounded good. In fact, you're one of the few jocks I've ever heard on air, who sounded good, no matter what happened. Kudos.

 

[Ferreri]

David..the greatest Laurence story took place at a remote. He, Bill Campbell, and I were at a Holiday Inn bar for a promotion tied in with the strawberry festival. We had a strwberry shortcake eating contest. The person who ate the most in a minute or so won some sort of prize. Imagine doing play by play for a cake eating contest! You can imagine that being in a bar there, of course, was a lot of drinking. Well, the contest began and the guys were wolfing down strawberry shortcake at an incredible speed. We were counting down the time and the number of cakes eaten by each contestant when all of a sudden one of the guys starts to throw up. The guy never stops eating! At that point while Jeff and I are describing the contest, Jeff blurts out "Frank, oh my God...he's eating his puke"! And, as you said, Laurence even sounded great saying that.

 

[jefflaurence]

David..Instead of the script it might have been what I swallowed earlier in the afternoon..usually a half a quart of Jack Daniels..but not any more! Those were the days..and Frank I remember that all too vividly..I drove by that Holiday Inn over the summer, and remembered evey shortcake..that was awful..but great radio.

One I remember was another jock from Y95 and I at a remote in Tampa at Floriland mall in the mid 70's to be broadcast on WLCY. We were told by sales that a local car dealer (ernie Haire Ford) was having an outoor 'tent sale". It turned out that the dealer was giving away frozen steaks for each car they sold. This was before Hooters, but they had these big plastic clown heads rotating on sticks, and we were handing out McDonalds "All American Meal" cards to people who took a test drive. Everybody drove a car and got their burgers, but few..if any signed on the dotted line. Of course we got the obligitory late afternoon thunderstorm in August and it was nealry 100 when the power went out. Afer 2 hours the meat was starting to thaw and smell bad and people were complaining about the reeking meat smell. The sales manager at the dealership decided to take the steaks out of the defunct deep freezer, and put them in a Ford LTD sedan with the air conditioning on. He started the car, and loaded in the meat..about 90 min later the car overheated and caught fire. Screaming people stampeded for the exits, and the Florida Ave. fire department soaked us all with water and foam. The tent collapsed, and Ernie Haire refused to pay for the remote because they "didn't sell enough cars". I love radio!

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Just a note to say I'm reading this in Buffalo (where it's NOT snowing... yet) and laughing my a$$ off. Like a lot of jocks, I too have done a few of those "When Good Remotes Go Bad" remotes, with 50 mile an hour lake Erie winds blowing the remote tent across a major highway, blinding the driver of a semi, forcing him to drive off the road and run his rig over the front lawns of three houses, coming to a stop without killing anybody.

The two Jeff Laurence remote episodes had me laughing out loud, especially envisioning the stinking meat, the firetrucks and the all too predictable outcome... no pay. Priceless! Radio truly is theatre of the mind. When does the book come out? And the movie?

 

[David Sharp]

Jeff, your Ernie Haire remote story is hard to top, so I wont even try. But I have had a couple of amusing things happen during remote broadcasts here in Australia (which they call "OB's"-- "Outside Broadcasts"). On one occasion, I nearly choked mid-sentence while broadcasting from a new auto shop, when a fly flew right into my mouth and down the throat.

And then there was the rodeo I broadcast from (which some say may have been the first full-length OB from a rodeo in Australia). The organizers gave me a rather flimsy stool to sit on and while calling the action, I was "bucked" from the stool. Yep, one of the legs gave way and I toppled over. I remember making some sort of comment about how it's "not just the cowboys being thrown..." Embarrassing at the time but still good for a laugh.

Back to Tampa. I remember when (the old) WHBO rebranded itself as "AM 105." One of the DJs was doing a remote in Carrollwood somewhere and asked a child if he knew what "AM 105" was. The child remarked, "Yeah, you're Q105" at which point they quickly cut to a song.

 

[Ferreri]

Way back in 1970 we had a GM at the station in Providence who would sell anything. Really a great guy, however, was from that old school of money first and format purity second. Much to my dismay he hired a guy sight unseen to broadcast a car race. Think it was the Daytona 500. The sales staff sold the heck out of it. Remember, this is long before NASCAR and auto racing was hip. I was the OM/PD and just decided to bite the bullet for a few hours. The big day came and the production piece intoduced the race and all the sponsors. The coverage began with the guy the GM hired saying "Welcome and so on. His voice sounded funny. About a minute into the broadcast you hear the guy throw up! Then all that was heard was the sound of race cars. The GM and I ran to the station and started making phone calls. Meanwhile all that is heard is race cars. The GM finally got hold of someone at the track to find that the guy he hired was out drinking all night, got sick and left. We went back into format after countless minutes of the sound of race cars.