pbf1 said:
Closed circuit to Mr. Ashwood: I thought you sounded GREAT on Musicradio I-95 in the Twin Cities!
Jay? Jay Philpott? Is that you? Sheeeez, if so...NO ONE listened to that station, but damn was that fun.
And Jay, if that's you, you're first bloody class, mate!
Sorry, all, don't mean to turn this into "old home week" but that station was such a good time. Anyone I tell the story to about it, they don't believe me.
Quick, then, as fast as I can tell it: in 1979, mid-summer, I was working at a non-descript no-one-cares-AM in suburban Minneapolis. They fired the PD and the GM informed me that they would no longer support the current format (which was sort of all over the road rock) but, I had 6 months to do whatever I wanted as the new PD before they changed format...Jay was there (great, wonderful f---ing guy, always), as was Gregg Swedberg, now a high level programming VP muckity-muck with CC in the Twin Cities (and also, one of the best, so incredibly smart and talented, another super, friendly, great guy).. So, with no ratings, we devised this strategy designed to get us a)noticed in the profession and b)jobs after they switched the format to MOYL, Sinatra, et. al. Strategy was: we'd become America's only fulltime, commercial and serious-about-it punk rock station. So we did. But with GOOD formatics, clean Top 40 style announcing, etc. After all, we wanted our audition tapes to sound good.
What was really funny about it all was that the station was still under contract to ABC, for Paul Harvey news. So you'd hear Paul do his classic sign-off: "Paul Harvey...............good day!" and we'd launch right into the Buzzcocks doing a song like "Orgasm Addict". Talk about throwing Paul's audience under the bus! So much fun. If it was loud and had a hook we played it. We were the first station in the US to play the Clash "Train in Vain" --the song was unlisted on the album--back then, Epic, their label, didn't care about them; I called the record company up and said hey guys, track 5 on side 2 is a hit but you've only got 4 tracks listed...what do we call this song? And they had no idea what I was talking about....said, "call it what you want, it doesn't matter", so we called it "Stand By Me" until the band themselves showed up at the station and corrected it....they TOOK A CAB out to the station. Can you imagine what the poor cab driver was thinking, driving these rock star guys out to the middle of nowhere in far-away suburban Minneapolis?
But it wasn't just punk rock. We paid tribute to the greats, too, even though it made no sense. One of my warmest memories was the HOURS the brilliant and under-rated Carl Perkins spent with me, reminiscing about the Beatles, and Elvis, and everyone else he influenced (this is the guy who did the original version of "Blue Suede Shoes"); what a marvelous, marvelous man. So the station was all about celebrating "realness"...or at least, that's what we thought.
Our overnight guy (yeah, back then, we had an overnight guy) was named Scott Klone--Da Clone--his real name--he used to have his grandmother call in and do the weather. So there was this 90 year old lady telling everyone about the snow coming our way, surrounded by the Sex Pistols and the Vibrators.
On and on it went, until the day the format flipped. By then, we were getting great press in the major paper, for example. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune was writing us up as "this great little radio station" and everywhere we went, in the industry, we were greeted warmly by other radio people. Result? Every one of us landed a great gig. Keep in mind, this station never cracked more than a 1 share (it was at 950 on the AM dial, for God's sake!)
Warm fun memories. And the pay? Outrageous. I made $200 a week, full time, 7 days a week on the air, never a day off, 6 hours a day on the air. Looking back on it now, I woulda paid THEM!!
