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On the Batwalk
Adam West posted some very cool pictures on Facebook. They show his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame during its construction. West was presented with the completed star in a sidewalk ceremony yesterday. During his acceptance speech, the “Batman” star acknowledged Kevin & Bean and their KROQ listeners. Ralph Garman of the Kevin & Bean Show was instrumental in West finally receiving the recognition he deserves.
Bean There
A picture of the interior of Doc Brown’s DeLorean got me thinking. Yesterday was the 26th anniversary of Marty McFly’s fictional trip from 1985 back to 1955. I realized that on the real Saturday, October 26, 1985, my friend Bean and I were hard at work on a show called “The 25th Hour.” Without the benefit of digital technology, we put together a one-hour program full of songs about time. It aired on WAVA as Daylight Saving Time ended on Sunday, October 27 and the clocks were changed from 2:00 a.m. EDT to 1:00 a.m. EST. One of the songs in the show was “Back in Time” by Huey Lewis and the News from the “Back to the Future” soundtrack. I don’t think either of us realized that we were using that song on the pivotal date from the summer’s hit movie.
Six years later, October 26 once again fell on a Saturday. That year I was in Los Angeles, interviewing for a job with Jay Thomas at Power 106. After a bizarre meeting in which Jay and the station’s marketing director pretended to be a gay couple just to make sure I would be okay with it, I had the evening free. I went to dinner with Bean, who by then had started working at KROQ. After burgers at Carl’s Jr., we went to Bean’s apartment near the Hollywood Freeway to watch the World Series. I’m pretty sure we heard gunshots in the neighborhood.
Bean asked if I wanted to go to a movie or if I would rather go to Las Vegas and be best man at his wedding to Donna. I had not been to Nevada, so I chose the wedding. In rapid succession, we took a Southwest flight to Vegas, a cab to the Clark County Courthouse and another cab to the Graceland Wedding Chapel. The sign out front said Lorenzo Lamas had been married there two years earlier. According to Vegas.com, the Thompson Twins were also married there on October 27, 1991. I never stopped to figure out if Bean and Donna’s wedding took place before or after midnight local time. As a result, I’m not 100% sure if their 20th anniversary was yesterday or today.
Walkie-talkies
Are you ready for some zombies?
AMC will air all six episodes of the first season of “The Walking Dead” on Sunday as a lead-in to the second season premiere at 9:00 p.m. AMC’s investment in the undead extends to a live talk show airing Sunday night at midnight. “Talking Dead” is hosted by Chris Hardwick. I set up a series recording for it on my DVR. The zombification continues on Monday with a 9:00 a.m. airing of “Night of the Living Dead” and an 8:00 p.m. showing of “Survival of the Dead.”
Chris Hardwick got a job at KROQ when he made a good impression during an interview to promote “Singled Out.” He wasn’t even supposed to be on the air but his co-host Jenny McCarthy convinced us to give him some air time. He was so funny that the program director called me to say he wanted to meet with Chris as soon as he got to work. He put Chris on the air for weekend and overnight shifts. I remember that one morning, Chris forgot to log out of his AOL account (c’mon it was the ’90s) and Jimmy Kimmel sent some funny instant messages from Chris’ account.
With a Rebel Yell
It seems like most events in East Tennessee are scheduled so they do not conflict with University of Tennessee football games. One of the biggest festivals in the area goes against that conventional wisdom. The Foothills Fall Festival draws tens of thousands of people to Maryville, or as the t-shirt says, “Mur-vul.” The festival’s biggest musical acts performed while Tennessee and Georgia played a mere 17 miles away in Neyland Stadium.
The Band Perry took the stage about the same time as the Vols took the field. In addition to their hits, they did a medley that included “American Pie,” “Jack & Diane” and “Fat Bottomed Girls.” They also used a little bit of “Love the Way You Lie” as a transition into their song, “You Lie.”
The headliner on Saturday night was Reba McEntire. I accepted press tickets to the show even though I could only name one Reba song. “Why Haven’t I Heard from You” happens to be one of my favorites. I keep an mp3 copy of it on my Walkman. Reba sang two other songs that I recognized, the murder ballad “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” and the Kelly Clarkson song “Because of You.” At one point in the show Kimberly Perry came back onstage to sing a duet of “Does He Love You” with Reba.
When we lived in California, my wife and I shook hands with Reba at the opening of her now-closed Country Star Restaurant. We also were in the studio audience for her sitcom a couple of times. We got tickets for one of the two tapings from KROQ’s Lisa May, who had a small part in the episode. We continued watching the series after we moved to Tennessee. Mark Thompson of KLOS turned up on several episodes playing Reba’s boyfriend Brian.
The Real World
The reason it’s so hard to believe that MTV is 30 years old today is that relatively few of us were aware of the channel in 1981. I didn’t even get cable until my wife and I moved into our first apartment. Prior to that, I would watch “Friday Night Videos” on NBC.
The MTV format was created by Bob Pittman. When he was program director of 66 WNBC, he invited high school newspaper editors in for a tour of the station. I was one of those who attended. I remember meeting Pittman and night jock Michael Sarzynski.
The original five MTV VJs were Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn. A few of them knocked around L.A. radio in the ’90s. I had the pleasure of meeting four out of five VJs:
- Nina Blackwood did the news for us on KLOS on an interim basis before Kelli Gates was hired.
- Mark Goodman worked weekends at KROQ while I was there. He called me a few times to talk about morning radio after he got hired at Q101 in Chicago.
- The late J.J. Jackson worked at KLOS before MTV. He came back to do some weekend shifts around the time I left. I only met him once.
- Martha Quinn was a celebrity judge on “Star Search” the same weekend that Kevin & Bean were guest announcers. Several of us flew to Florida to do the radio show from Walt Disney World on the first day of “Star Search” taping. When Ed McMahon hosted a thank-you dinner for all involved, my wife and I sat at the same table as Martha and her fellow judge, Weird Al Yankovic and their dates.
States of Mind – Part 5
For the past ten years I have been making an effort to visit all 50 states. As my personal quest nears its completion, I decided to write down recollections of the 46 I’ve seen so far, listed roughly in chronological order of my first visit. This multi-part series began on July 1.
When UCLA made it to the Final Four, I got a free trip to Seattle, Washington. KROQ sent the members of the Kevin & Bean show to broadcast from a sports bar near the Kingdome. The station provided tickets to the games and our airfare but made us double up on hotel rooms. This was one of several trips in which my roommate was Jimmy Kimmel. During the time between Friday’s broadcast and Saturday’s games, we drove to Vancouver, Canada. I had arranged for us to visit the filming location of “The X-Files” and for the guys to interview Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. Jimmy wrote a funny piece which they recorded for that year’s Kevin & Bean Christmas album. On Sunday, Bean and I drove to Snoqualmie Falls, to see where “Twin Peaks” was filmed.
The recent passing of my grandmother reminded me of my trip to Hawaii. It was a second honeymoon for my wife and me that happened to include seven other family members. We spent most of the trip on the beautiful island of Molokai. My wife and I took a day trip to Maui to see the expensive resorts where some of my co-workers vacationed. On the last day of our trip, Grandma asked to see the hand of St. Damien, which happened to be touring Honolulu that week before it was reburied on Molokai.
It seemed like each business trip to Oregon started with me getting stopped by airport security. Mark & Brian would broadcast from Portland twice a year. At the time, the Unabomber was still on the loose and the authorities thought he might be a college professor. I think that they thought that I fit the profile. My wife accompanied me on one trip that coincided with our wedding anniversary. We took in a Shania Twain concert and drove along the Columbia River gorge to Mount Hood.
My trip to New Mexico happened by accident, literally. My wife and kids were traveling with another family when their rented van got into a wreck on I-40 east of Albuquerque. I was supposed to meet them a few days later in St. Louis. I dropped everything and flew to Albuquerque immediately to handle the details with the rental company. I remember that we checked into a motel and went to a movie before driving back to Burbank the next morning.
The food in New Orleans, Louisiana, made it one of my all-time favorite destinations. I’ve had three on-air jobs that sent me to the Morning Show Boot Camp convention. In the evenings after the seminars ended, I had the opportunity to eat at great places like Acme Oyster Bar and Brennan’s, where we had their famous Bananas Foster. On one trip I went to Emeril’s with Billy Bush. On another, I went bar-hopping with Aisha Tyler and some other very funny people.
More states tomorrow!
Déjà Street View
Bean was surprised to see another 7-Eleven on Hollywood Way. It was new since the last time he was in Burbank. He was driving from the Weenie Roast to Bob Hope Airport when he spotted it. Because it looked different than all the other stand-alone 7-Elevens in town, he snapped a picture and sent it to my phone. Without being able to zoom in at the time, my wife and I correctly guessed that the cross-street was Victory Boulevard, based on the architecture of the building. It wasn’t too hard for us to recognize. We were residents of that part of Burbank for ten years.
My wife remember that the building housed a drug store when we lived nearby. Google Street View confirms that it used to be SAV-MA℞T Drugs. Notice how Google blurred the face of the guy sitting there.
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