Another May Snowstorm

Well, Monday was a pretty standard day. I learned about a new project I get to work on at the office -- if it turns out to be any fun, I'll be sure to let you know all about it. (Well, everything except the proprietary stuff, company secrets, and competitive-sensitive information. Which, come to think of it, is probably a good chunk of the whole thing. So on second thought, you probably won't hear much about it. Oh well.)

The only exercise I did on Monday was a brief workout at the gym. Nothing noteworthy to report about that, except that there was a bit more Bachman Turner Overdrive than we usually get to work out to, so that was good. (Several studies have suggested that BTO enhances lactate processing and provides a temporary boost in power output in athletes...and I have no reason to question those findings. I suspect that the same is true for REO Speedwagon, but haven't seen any clinical reports on the topic.)

[Speaking of REO Speedwagon, I saw Kevin Cronin, Speedwagon's lead singer, on "Don't Forget to Remember Not to Forget the Lyrics", or whatever that show is called. I wouldn't normally watch the show, because I feel SO embarassed for Wayne Brady, who I used to think was immensely talented, but now suspect will end up as the black version of Rip Taylor, making cameo appearances in a bad toupeé, throwing confetti, and commenting on the draperies. Anyway, as I was flipping channels, I saw Cronin, and since I own a couple of REO Speedwagon albums, decided to check it out. It was painful. I changed the channel within seconds, swearing an oath to myself that if I ever say Robert Plant appear on a game show, I would throw myself off a building.]

My son Tanner, being all musically sophisticated and stuff, thinks that BTO is terrible. He thinks they belong in the same category with such bottom-dwellers as The Captain & Tennille, Tony Orlando (with or without Dawn, or even Don Ho), and U2. Boring music, he says, limited chord structures, poor singing, uninspired solos, etc etc. Well, he may be right about the musical complexity, but that doesn't mean they don't ROCK! What's wrong with a few power chords every now and then?

But what most people don't realize is that Randy Bachman has a very jazzy side to some of his work. You can see it in some of the Guess Who tunes, but there was one BTO cut (2nd album) that ended with a swingin' little jazz ditty that was more like Les Paul than Iron Maiden. I liked it so much that I used it as bumper music on my jazz show at the college radio station.

Yes, that's right, I played BTO on a jazz program. (I also played Blue Öyster Cult on my Country & Western program a few years later, but that's another story.) Bumper music is what a radio host plays to bring the program in and out of the news segments. Since news feeds usually do not originate in the same studio where the DJ sits, they are often scheduled to start at a designated time...and the DJ needs to end his show at precisely that moment. It's tough to craft extemporaneous sentences that will end at the exact second that the news feed starts (see KOA's morning news team trying not to step on Paul Harvey at 7:30am for an example), so a lot of programs use instrumental music that can be faded out underneath the opening of the news segment. The trick is to find something in the 10 to 20 second range that won't upset the listener if it's truncated. For me, that was BTO.

I never did learn where the news people were physically located. Their voices mysteriously appeared at the top of the hour, they talked about whatever events were likely to be of interest to the community (basketball scores, mostly), gave a vague weather forecast (50% chance of pretty much anything), and then vanished once again into the ether, returning control of the airwaves to yours truly. I'd throw on a "real" jazz record (Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Maynard Ferguson, etc.), and go back to sleep until the song ended.

If I wasn't sleepy, I'd search through the shelves and shelves of LP vinyl. Since I didn't know much about jazz, a lot of my show featured songs that were chosen for the oddness of their title or eclectic appeal of the album jacket. During these searches, I found one album that had a 33-minute song on one side...and boy did that come in handy. My roommate, Mickey, had loaned me his car to get to work that morning, but needed a ride to a math test at 7:30. So, I put on the long song, locked up the radio station, drove to our apartment to pick him up, boogied over to campus & dropped him off, then made it back into the studio with about 5 seconds to spare.

Of course, nobody actually listened to my show, so I probably could've let the record do the "ta-click, ta-click" thing that vinyl records did on a manual turntable for the rest of my shift...but no DJ ever wants "dead air".

Yeah, I'm serious: nobody listened to my show. At that time, KJHK broadcast with a whopping NINE WATTS of radiated power, which is somewhere around the energy level of a C-cell flashlight. And seriously, how many college students do YOU know who want to get up at 6am and turn on the radio to listen to jazz? Especially when it's hosted by a zit-faced Journalism undergrad who thinks BTO is the epitome of the genre? Ain't gonna happen.

The sad fact of my audiencelessness became crystal clear to me one day during our "Jukebox Album Giveaway" contest. It was a grand contest for listeners, because nearly every single contestant won something, and it was usually an entire album...or better. All you had to do was call the station when the contest was announced and guess the order that the station's call letters would appear in today's "automatic jukebox". Easy as pie.

So, when it was time for me to announce the contest, I said "I'll take the second caller to play and possibly WIN an album!" And yes, I did put a boatload of enthusiasm and vocal inflection into the announcement -- I think I made it sound quite appealing, thank you. But after ten minutes of playing oddly-titled improvisational saxophones and freeform bass solos, I opened the mike again and said, "OK, I'll take the first caller! Anybody who calls gets to play."

Ten minutes of uncomfortable telephone silence later, and I called my brother and told him that he had to play. (I think he was the only contestant all day who didn't win something, and he was pissed at me for waking him up to boot -- but at least I could tell the station manager that I had done my part in promoting and managing the contest.)

Anyway...the point is that I really enjoy the music they play at the gym. And I had a pretty decent workout on Monday morning.

Tuesday was track workout day. Unfortunately, the morning started off with snow, and wet gloppy stuff continued to drop from the sky throughout the entire workday. Pat and I decided that the weather was ugly and the track would be muddy, so it was best to give it a pass. My next running will be Thursday's 10K race in Waterton Canyon; I'll tell you about that on Friday.

Until then, why don't you pull out a few old albums and enjoy some good ol' 70s gear-metal rock n' roll? And have a great day!