01-23-2025, 10:43 AM
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LZ STH
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01-23-2025, 12:19 PM
Thank you for a music forum!
I am in the middle of Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon...
Funny little anecdote and trivia factoid to this song.
 We used to call this song the "Takin' a shit" song. LOL! There's a backstory here (not a bad thing)... Now, some of you may recall this, but in a past life I worked in AM radio as a disc-jockey. Mostly small market stuff, with some medium market at the end. Did some FM AOR stuff also, but this story is primarily focused around my time in AM radio. Most small market radio stations only have a skeleton staff after hours. So, at the end of the business day there's usually only a couple people left at the station, and even that only lasts an hour or so. After that, the DJ is often left to run the whole station alone. Most songs which receive commercial radio airplay run from 3 minutes 45 seconds to 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Very few songs go outside this time range. Stairway to Heaven is one of the rare exceptions; it runs 7 minutes and 25 seconds for the commercial radio version. One thing about this song is, there's no way to trim it down without destroying the song. Most other pop songs can have elements trimmed out of the middle by the record label to shorten them, but not Stairway to Heaven. At small market radio stations Stairway to Heaven stayed in "rotation" long after it was wildly popular. There was a reason. Four minutes is pretty fast to make a trip to the head to take a dump and get back and ready to go on the air, soooo...you guessed it...this is when Stairway to Heaven would get played! ! It was longer than every other song, and it was certainly longer than any 30 or 45 second advertisement. But it gets even better...In the studio you usually have two different types of telephones. One of them is the one you hear broadcast over the air for listeners to call in to. The other telephone line is one which is NEVER communicated over the air, and this line is for station management to call in (and usually bitch at you for screwing something up, or going off-rotation). This 2nd line absolutely MUST be answered immediately! At a radio station, you have a pool of on-air talent who work all different shifts. Of course they all know this secret number. So, the minute that Stairway to Heaven came on the air all these jokers would start calling the secret line just so the poor bastard working the station alone couldn't take a dump in peace! So now you know...the REST of the story!
(01-23-2025, 03:26 PM)19Bones79 Wrote: Ah man, you need to share more of these. Here's another quick one about radio. ... I was new, freshly licensed, and one of the first shifts I got was an evening shift (which was very unusual, normally the new guys got midnight shifts). I knew the main broadcast board because I'd been working it for a couple weeks already in 'Studio B' doing the dreaded advertising copy everyone had to do (basically making commercials). Anyway, the guy I was relieving, and afternoon "drive-shift" guy, was one of your typical problem children with management. So, as usual, he was pissed off about something (his usual state). I walked into the studio and he handed me the program clipboard which listed all the advertisements, PSA's and other stuff everyone had to know. We jokingly called this the "football" (like it had nuke codes on it or something). He promptly threw his headphones against the wall and screamed "I QUIT!". My first day on the air was starting off 'smoothly!'. I had about 60 seconds to figure out what I was doing and then say something which didn't sound too stupid. Then I had a bunch of legal stuff I had to do, followed by organizing a big mess this dude had left for me. After coming out of commercial I quickly put in a music "cart" (like an 8 track but specific to commercial radio), punched play, and then I could at least breathe for a second. Things smoothed out over the next 30 minutes or so, and I was starting to get in the groove a little. The difference between Studio A (the on-air studio) and Studio B (the off-air studio) was a huge panel of all these switches behind me. All kinds of different phone lines and electronics with switches and dials. Some of it was obvious what it did, but some of it wasn't obvious at all. After staring at all this stuff whenever I got a moment over the next couple hours I decided to start trying to figure out what the stuff was which wasn't obvious. Most of it was easy enough to figure out, but there was this one switch I just couldn't understand...and it was bugging me big-time. Welp, time for the ol' "smoke test" (i.e. flip the switch and see what happens). So that's what I did. At first nothing happened at all. No special sounds, no noise, nothing seemed to shut down or turn on. It just seemed like a dead switch. After about 2 minutes all three of the "red phone" (it really was red too...LOL!) lit up. This was the special phone I referred to above. I picked up the phone, punched all three lines and had the Program Director, the station VP and the station Owner all screaming at the top of their lungs to "TURN IT OFF RIGHT THIS SECOND!!! TURN IT OFF!! FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD AND ALL THINGS HOLY... TURN...IT...OFF!!" But turn what off? I hadn't turned anything on! (or so I thought). Well, it turns out that little unmarked switch initiated the Emergency Broadcast System, and I'd been broadcasting the EBS tone over the air for the past two minutes non-stop!!! DOH!! I looked down and every single phone line at the radio station was lit up. Oh man! I got it turned off, and got everyone calmed down, and even had the presence of mind to make a quip on air about that being a funky New Wave song (as a joke). But yeah, that was my very first day in broadcast radio. (01-23-2025, 08:35 PM)Ksihkehe Wrote: (Primus "Mud" video) Love their music, or hate it, anyone who can stand toe to toe with the likes of Bootsy Collins and/or Geddy Lee, and possibly even shine them...is legend. Claypool is a legendary bassist, no question about it. I've watched him do stuff on the bass where I wondered..."How is that even possible?". Claypool and Primus is like watching Zappa on hallucinogenics times 5X! You've got to respect talent like that. He's a born natural and genius on the bass. |
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