There we were, Uncle Oskie, Aunt Sophie and I, cruising north on Transit road in one of the company's newer Chevy vans, going to estimate a job in DEP-pew. It's Sunday afternoon and what's on the radio? Consider who's driving and odds are you'll correctly guess it one of the AM stations playing polkas for the 65+ crowd.
It's very ethnic and the driver and his wife are lapping it up. She's eating pistachio nuts and throwing the shells in a bucket in front of her seat. When she gets home, I just know she'll sprinkle the shells on her garden to give her plants some nourishment for next Spring. These are old-world ways and they seem to work. The pistachios are un-salted, which is a good thing, because Aunt Sophie's blood pressure is about as high as the national debt.
She warbles along with the tunes in a typical blue hair vibratto that you might hear in church at 11 o'clock Sunday Mass. I'm sitting behind the barrier in the cargo hold (our trucks have safety screens between the seats and the cargo hold) looking like some guy who's being taken to the downtown holding center, rather than going to a sales estimate call. I suspect the good men driving the red and white Erie county sheriffs cars, in between bites of Tim Bits, don't usually listen to Marion Lush and Wally Lewandowski who are getting down on AM Thur-teeeen Honnnn-draddd, Douba-you-ekks-are-relll, Lannnnn-cast-ur.
We get to the client's business and Uncle Oskie ambles from the truck. Arthritis and years of kneeling have taken their toll on his knees, yet he greets the client with a big bear paw handshake and a genuine smile that is his trademark. This alone goes a long way to closing the deal even before the estimate is done. If the client only knew where that hand was only minutes earlier!
I get introduced as the "college guy nephew" and partner with the soft hands, even though they're gritty and pasty with years of residue from grout and paint, softened only by Gold Bond medicated hand conditioner. The two old goats laugh and we begin estimating the job.
After about 15 minutes, as Uncle Oskie is closing the deal and the client is signing the paperwork while laughing at bad jokes and talking about last Thursday's bowling hangover, I wander back out to the truck where Aunt Sophie is nowhere to be found. There's a fabric store in the adjacent plaza and I figure there's a good chance she's in the store, spending Uncle Oskie's hard-earned beer money, buying some garrish fabric that will soon find its way to a couch or chair in the middle of their living room.
I begin scanning the AM band. It's mid afternoon on a hazy, cold, January Sunday. The AM's are still at daytime power levels, but it's an RF freak show. WHO LSITENS TO THIS STUFF!? There's a guy on the air in Lockport talking about the Monkees and the "Head" album. It sold 17 copies back in the day... the guy says the song he's about to play charted at #62 on the Billboard charts. Number 62! Well, if the Temps "My Girl" is grossly over-played by every FM AC and Oldies station, why not freshen things up a bit and play a song that NOBODY remembers! There's a REASON the song charted at #62. NO-BODY bought it. It's not even CLOSE to being a "Forgetten 45!"
What? No "Let It All Hang Out" by the Hombres? "...Made Galileo look like a boy scout... let it all hang out..." Now THAT woulda been fun and REALLY freshen things up. If you're gonna do Oldies on a Sunday afternoon and you're gonna play forgotten 45's, at least play songs that some people remember the band playing at the Poorhouse East back in the day. "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen, The Kinks "All Day And All Of The Night" or "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone" by the Thirteenth Floor Elavators (or bona fide lost 45.)
Next scan, a backtrack to AM 1330 WSPQ where I'm expecting to hear ESPN Sports, but what's this?! Oldies? The processing sounds weak. Of course, I'm in the shadow of 1300 and we're a bit too far north to really get a solid signal from the higlhy directional Springville flamethrower, but I hear what sounds like the Four Tops. For a while there, it sounds like a good helping from the 60's, but within about 20 minutes, there's one of those over-played Rod Stewart songs from the 80's... one of the many that gets beaten to death by WTSS, WHTT and WJYE. If you're gonna do Oldies on AM, do the 60's and maybe early 70's and leave the well-tested late 70's and 80's stuff to the stations that already play those songs to death.
Somewhre between the Monkees' "Head" album and "Some Guys Have All The Luck" there's a format to be found.
After that, I stumble upon a Canadian AM that's playing folk music with a very erudite announcer who's also pretty savvy and tight. Nice show, although I don't get the call letters because the station is fading on 1290, I think.
I go to the big boys and it's much of the same Sunday afternoon tripe. ESPN on satellite, WBEN on the bird too and KB... ugh, KB... if only. And here we are again, playing this old saw...
It's very ethnic and the driver and his wife are lapping it up. She's eating pistachio nuts and throwing the shells in a bucket in front of her seat. When she gets home, I just know she'll sprinkle the shells on her garden to give her plants some nourishment for next Spring. These are old-world ways and they seem to work. The pistachios are un-salted, which is a good thing, because Aunt Sophie's blood pressure is about as high as the national debt.
She warbles along with the tunes in a typical blue hair vibratto that you might hear in church at 11 o'clock Sunday Mass. I'm sitting behind the barrier in the cargo hold (our trucks have safety screens between the seats and the cargo hold) looking like some guy who's being taken to the downtown holding center, rather than going to a sales estimate call. I suspect the good men driving the red and white Erie county sheriffs cars, in between bites of Tim Bits, don't usually listen to Marion Lush and Wally Lewandowski who are getting down on AM Thur-teeeen Honnnn-draddd, Douba-you-ekks-are-relll, Lannnnn-cast-ur.
We get to the client's business and Uncle Oskie ambles from the truck. Arthritis and years of kneeling have taken their toll on his knees, yet he greets the client with a big bear paw handshake and a genuine smile that is his trademark. This alone goes a long way to closing the deal even before the estimate is done. If the client only knew where that hand was only minutes earlier!
I get introduced as the "college guy nephew" and partner with the soft hands, even though they're gritty and pasty with years of residue from grout and paint, softened only by Gold Bond medicated hand conditioner. The two old goats laugh and we begin estimating the job.
After about 15 minutes, as Uncle Oskie is closing the deal and the client is signing the paperwork while laughing at bad jokes and talking about last Thursday's bowling hangover, I wander back out to the truck where Aunt Sophie is nowhere to be found. There's a fabric store in the adjacent plaza and I figure there's a good chance she's in the store, spending Uncle Oskie's hard-earned beer money, buying some garrish fabric that will soon find its way to a couch or chair in the middle of their living room.
I begin scanning the AM band. It's mid afternoon on a hazy, cold, January Sunday. The AM's are still at daytime power levels, but it's an RF freak show. WHO LSITENS TO THIS STUFF!? There's a guy on the air in Lockport talking about the Monkees and the "Head" album. It sold 17 copies back in the day... the guy says the song he's about to play charted at #62 on the Billboard charts. Number 62! Well, if the Temps "My Girl" is grossly over-played by every FM AC and Oldies station, why not freshen things up a bit and play a song that NOBODY remembers! There's a REASON the song charted at #62. NO-BODY bought it. It's not even CLOSE to being a "Forgetten 45!"
What? No "Let It All Hang Out" by the Hombres? "...Made Galileo look like a boy scout... let it all hang out..." Now THAT woulda been fun and REALLY freshen things up. If you're gonna do Oldies on a Sunday afternoon and you're gonna play forgotten 45's, at least play songs that some people remember the band playing at the Poorhouse East back in the day. "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen, The Kinks "All Day And All Of The Night" or "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone" by the Thirteenth Floor Elavators (or bona fide lost 45.)
Next scan, a backtrack to AM 1330 WSPQ where I'm expecting to hear ESPN Sports, but what's this?! Oldies? The processing sounds weak. Of course, I'm in the shadow of 1300 and we're a bit too far north to really get a solid signal from the higlhy directional Springville flamethrower, but I hear what sounds like the Four Tops. For a while there, it sounds like a good helping from the 60's, but within about 20 minutes, there's one of those over-played Rod Stewart songs from the 80's... one of the many that gets beaten to death by WTSS, WHTT and WJYE. If you're gonna do Oldies on AM, do the 60's and maybe early 70's and leave the well-tested late 70's and 80's stuff to the stations that already play those songs to death.
Somewhre between the Monkees' "Head" album and "Some Guys Have All The Luck" there's a format to be found.
After that, I stumble upon a Canadian AM that's playing folk music with a very erudite announcer who's also pretty savvy and tight. Nice show, although I don't get the call letters because the station is fading on 1290, I think.
I go to the big boys and it's much of the same Sunday afternoon tripe. ESPN on satellite, WBEN on the bird too and KB... ugh, KB... if only. And here we are again, playing this old saw...
