REMEMBERING RADIO: AN ORAL HISTORY OF OLD-TIME RADIO

OTR Bookshelf: Old Time Radio Book Review

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See a Problem?

The unsold advertising time is about 12 or 15 minutes a day between 3pm and 6pm. So my kind boss, Kev Cameron, gives me the job of filling the afternoon holes. Andy, like me, is from Manchester, UK. A newly-wed wild teen, he knows little about music but has charisma. He looks 16, rides a motorbike.

Getting Started

Record companies see our popularity and give me videos to play, often on 16mm film: We could have a show, it will be kind of be like radio, but with pictures. We do 13 half-hour shows with no host, just groovy graphics by a TV2 graphic artist called Peter McKliskey. He creates the opening titles, all in frame-by-frame animation, and in those days it took ages to do.

It was really cool for 11pm, Wednesday night. Apparently, the steady stream of uninterrupted video clips gave him the idea that such a show would suit American television as well.

REMEMBERING RADIO: AN ORAL HISTORY OF OLD-TIME RADIO by David S. Siegel

Cut to an ex-Monkee sitting in his Auckland motel room watching our show. So he takes the idea back to his buddy Bob Pittman. There were other pop shows around the world, but not the kind of grassroots rock show we were doing. I think Nesmith recognised the potential the format had, especially given that it was also cheap!

Description

The rest is history. The concept itself had been in the works since , when major record companies began supplying the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation with promotional music clips to play on the air at no charge. Few artists made the long trip to New Zealand to appear live. And one of them was Vladimir Putin … Then we got to Australia and one of the Vladimirs had disappeared off the boat. One would go off and another guy would come on. Thurston, who later became better known for his production of sports and events, looked for some help.

The official word came through: And he went onto the telly. So he put the word out: It was Fred Botica who gave me that. By September 12, , it was shifted back to late-night, this time on Mondays, as an hour-long show. Barry Jenkin on the first show: I was absolutely terrified. What happened, I suppose, was I staggered through. Barry is a true pro, but is always nervous.

Introduction

He agonises over his scripts, then at the end of a long read, he may fluff the last couple of lines. Barry Jenkin on playlisting the show: Behind the scenes, we fought like Kilkenny cats! I would bully my producer, they would back off and I would play what I liked. We always had little battles; Barry wanting to play more alternative rock stuff; Little Feat are his faves. And I know Kevan Moore is watching! Then later on when they had New Zealand videos, the New Zealand video of the week would always be the last thing.

So it was a weird melange between progressive rock and … you know, Little Feat possibly on one hand and Three Chord Wonders on the other hand. So it was quite a thing.

Barry Jenkin on how much in-put he had into playlisting RWP: So it was reasonably democratic but I usually shouted loudest. Generational barricades were forming and music fans often had to rapidly assume a position on one side or the other. I was working at Hauraki when all these punk clips started coming in from Britain. Before then, you only heard about the usual suspects — Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Dylan — then all of a sudden there were great bands like The Stranglers with heaps of attitude, and I suddenly understood what music was all about.

Back then, you were pretty much either a punk or a hippie, and pity help you if you were a hippie! What really did it, strangely enough, was the Stranglers. I was working for the telly at the time, The difference was, they could play. But they had the attitude. That did it for me. I sat there and played it, time after time, all afternoon. That was enough for me.

I got it, I got the attitude.

It was more that than the night I got kidnapped. We embrace punk right from the beginning. In 77, we go on a bus with the Suburban Reptiles and the Scavengers heading overnight down to Wellington. We share a film crew, news are covering this phenomena of punk with Auckland kids on a bus to play at the Wellington Town Hall.

At the time, a vast majority of records for sale in New Zealand were manufactured locally rather than imported. Its distribution arm, HMV, determined which records were fit to be pressed for the local market, and given the low likelihood of getting promotion through radio play, generally avoided punk, or at least delayed the release of punk records until public demand gave them no choice.

This made disc jockeys like Barry Jenkin a rare breed: In a way I was [responsible for punk being introduced to New Zealand]. I will go a step further and say that the book would have been significantly better if Mr. Siegel had removed all of his dialogue, except where absolutely necessary in order to provide clarity. I felt that he frequently asked questions about what his subject had just told him, to the point of my feeling annoyed and wishing one of his subjects would say, "Why don't you just listen to what I say so I don't have to repeat myself!

Also, there were times when he seemed to be more interested in who his subjects may have worked with than he was in his subjects, themselves. There were several times when I felt badly for his interviewees.

Overall, I found him to be a rather curious blend of two traits which rarely go hand-in-hand: I would have given the book a five-star rating, had he inserted less of himself into it. As it is presented, I give it four stars solely for the content provided by his subjects, for, had his subjects not been so interesting, it would have been two stars, at best.

Sylvia Cary rated it liked it Mar 25, Steven Davis rated it liked it Jul 26, Ben Ohmart rated it it was amazing Jun 15, Amy Quigley rated it liked it Sep 29, Ben Ohmart rated it it was amazing Oct 12, David Quante rated it liked it Jan 20, Paul Williams rated it it was amazing Sep 22, Anne marked it as to-read Feb 23, Donald marked it as to-read Feb 02, Jim Miller added it Apr 16, Bob added it Feb 20, Michael Howard marked it as to-read May 18, Brad marked it as to-read Aug 14, Chris added it Sep 16, Samantha Glasser marked it as to-read Feb 28, Nat Lucas added it Dec 04, Catherine Heerter is currently reading it Sep 21,

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