I’d watched her perform on grand stages like the legendary Beacon Theater, on Broadway in Manhattan and introduced her to audiences.
Phyllis Hyman, a celebrity singer who sought me out and introduced herself to me during my “Welcome to WBLS FM” coming-out party at club 70West in 1984. you may remember her biggest hit, “You Know How To Love Me” ? Check out the video below!
I will never forget the time this late Superstar singer, Phyllis Hyman, found me during a moment of quiet reflection, contemplation and stage announcing prep, sitting aside from the main stage on a smaller, raised carpeted area. I was looking down – we didn’t have cell phones back then – when suddenly I spied this large palm of a female hand offering itself towards me, in front of my face.
I raise my gaze to see a broad-shouldered woman, adorned in a purple and black cape, Khufu-like hat in front of me. I must have looked aghast as she said, in a semi-deep female melodious voice, “Hi… I’m Phyllis…” I was going to myself, “Oh shit! That’s Phyllys Hyman herself!, while trying to play it cool. Yes, I was a little slow back then in retrospect.
Oh my gosh, now so many decades later, I am so sorry I failed to realize her admiration towards me vibe! I never knew, until many years later, how much she liked me!
My girl. So sorry I did not understand your admiration for me.
So, it all came to a head to a point that she, by surprise, cursed me out about it one evening when we ran into each-other at the legendary “Possible 20” bar and restaurant on West 55th Street, in midtown Manhattan, New York City, where all who where anybody in the 1980scame to wind-down after their entertainment, music, and media gigs, who used to congregate. I did not think that a woman of her physical stature and voluptuousness, would ever be attracted to a slim guy like “Jimi B”.
Not sure WHY this came to me here in 2023. maybe it the doldrums of between Social Security checks poverty. Why she revealed and talked to me again, except for my senior social insecurity, aging and wanting to share my legacy, creative poverty and mutual unfulfilled love; but knew I had to post this with sentimental love, going with the current flow of chronicling, educating my DJ years, those who I was privileged to meet and/or introduce and entertaining you who found this post because, in my humble opinion (and that of some psychologists) the mode of music melds mental metal.
Kissing a Kia was a nice ride,
A Pelvic glide;
Not a fender-bender no.
He drove a Pontiac at that time;
Then a Mustang.
She once wore horizontal back and white stripes,
They would make out sometime in his benzo.
Kissing Kia;
So how did that start?
Must have been those copious love letters,
Which I still find when looking for something else;
She penned them while in her class.
Giving her
Keeping her border secret
Impressed by my loyalty I guess,
Similarly needing a true friend was I,
She was not a drive-by.
Kissing Kia,
Coming, or better put,
Stopping-by my office to say hello,
Pulling me near in an embrace,
Very sexy she and I couldn’t avoid that face.
Well put-together by the love God Venus,
Body belied her age or another from the assembly line;
It was all I could muster not to think with my penis.
Kissing Kia,
How I wanted to hook-up,
Yet I couldn’t as I was older
While like the old Sam Cooke Song,
“She Was Only Sixteen…”
Only half of those lyrics applied;
She was one smart cookie,
To an intelligent older man drawn
While unsung will sensibly realize.
Kissing Kia was not fake.
Had she bragged to a friend however,
Would have been a Daily News headline cover,
I did not want to make.
Though her tender, well-built body
I yearned to take.
Kissing Kia drove to express her desires,
In no uncertain terms;
More mature than many ladies my own age,
And those guys of her generation;
Her flirtation taught me an important unknown page.
Why so blessed was I with this decision test?
Kissing Kia,
Upon a time of the whip-appeal era,
She is still Babyface alright with me.
A Kia with an Optima Sportage Soul,
French-kissingly Nero Forte,
Mashina I would still love to drive….
[from the book, “My God…U Practical Joker!” 2020 Amazon Books]
Again, I am late to the Wake. I just learned, via chronicling the unprecidented number of music star and celebrity deaths in 2016, that my friend and sharer of some great stages in metro New York back in the 1980s, Colonel Abrams passed away twenty days ago, on Thanksgiving Day, 2016. Wow. Another one on the list, and as they say on the radio, “And the Hits just keep on coming…!”
I met Colonel Abrams (Colonel was his real name, by-the-way) by dint of getting records as a DJ when I made my rounds, from Michael Halley, then of MCA Records Promotions and because I was a DJ in clubs and mobile parties and on WBLS FM, New York, the WBLS FM Promotions Department, under Janie Washington (“where are they now” candidate) I think, who assigned me as the driver of one of the “Juicemobiles” (promotional vans dressed-up) to dove-tail his appearances in Westchester County’s New Rochelle and a club called “The Palace!”, which must have been a huge account at the time.
The Colonel was a large, tall, strappen Franken kind of a presence. Almost larger than life but not pretentious, he loved the spotlight with a kind of humility that is rare. He was very demonstrative on stage.
Actually, my first Colonel Abrams vinyl is a 45rpm, “Leave A Message Behind The Door” on Streetwise Records. I think I received it while the Program Director of WBAU FM, Garden City, N.Y. – but don’t quote me on it! Somehow it got mixed-in by dint of my many record comapny door-knocks. As a ballad, it went largely unplayed at first on the commercial radio stations. I like it to end my show, “last call”-style, late at night.
This dance track is one of my favorites from him and was a wickedly huge hit record!
Behind the scenes, Colonel Abrams and I plotted to hang out and catch some ladies. Once he asked me to be his Manager but I had no clue as to how to do [it]. He was just a gentle giant with talent of the times in House Music that really fit on stage and over the airwaves. Long, tall and lanky he was party coordinated and positively infectious! The Colonel Abrams I knew is in this Soul Train video from 1986! He became part of the House music party, not a standoffish performer, but one of the most energetic party people of those great ole days of the eighties!
I am really chagrined that I never again got to run into him per chance, and even more deeply shaking my head at the news that he went out homeless, ill and broke. Nobody told me there was a Crowdfunding campaign for him – I am good at that and would have helped. Why do our connections in this physical life become so distant and trite?
2016 has been a very depressing year because of the many superstars we have lost. From David Bowie to Prince, Florence Henderson and Robert Vaughn, to Vanity and another friend, Mr. Billy Paul, this past year is one for the kind of Record Books which we do not want to celebrate.
As you know if you know me (or NOT) I am a House Music junkie and DJ since the Larry Levan days and this next video, “Speculation” (“do-do-do-dooo”) is classic jammin House music from Colonel Abrams:
It is so scary to read of how he ended up because I am only a stones-throw from such a fate, IMO. Those of us who totally committed to show business, no matter it singing, radio, television or other glamour professions, are all at the mercy of “here today, gone tomorrow” because of “How Soon We Forget” [our heroes and stars]. Once your health fails and if you have not saved nor have insurance, one can be on the streets in a heartbeat.
I love the little keyboard-scraping piano or synth intro to that one the best of all of his super jams. I do not understand why he died broke and I pray that MCA Unversal did not rip him off in typical Artist versus big record label with tricky contract-fashion!
I searched him and found this image…is this what he looked like at the end?
Want to know the POWER of Colonel Abrams’ music? Listen to how this track (below) samples his riffs:
“I’m So In Love!” is Colonel Abrams.
‘So sorry we didn’t get to reconnect, my friend. This is yet another fatal blow to my life of missed reconnections. Colonel, I know that you would have smiled, in that genuine way that you always did,we’d have hugged big ole manly bear-hugs upon seeing “Jimi Bruce” again. Your albums and 12″vinyls are cherished classic “children” in da krates, among My Vinyls collection. Cheers.
Finally, “like 1999…” Do you remember where you were when that year actually hit? I bet that song, by Prince, was blazing at the party that midnight!
Prince was a curiosity; basically an anomaly to me, when he came on the music scene at the time that I was a young, rising radio DJ. I received his first vinyl album, “Uptown” from my Warner Brothers Records friend, Jackie Thomas, while the “Awl Nyte Flyte” host on Worcester, Massachussetts Top 40 station, ‘ WFTQ AM/”14Q” circa 1980. Soon I would be playing the single, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” often on the Contemporary Hit Radio air waves. I remember my late radio DJ inspiration and Program Director, Frankie Crocker, referring to him on the air as “his royal purple badness”; a great description! lol
I thought Prince was kind of an ordinary – but naughty – singer, at first.
He had this band and wore what looked like a raincoat on the inner sleeve picture of that first album, “Uptown”. Who knew that this cat would become a major musical muskrat? I played much of his music in clubs and on the radio as a disc jockey talent. He became a little more weird when he changed his name to a symbol in the early 1990s. “Hmmm…”
My top five (5) Prince jams are: “When Doves Cry”[the long 12” extended version], “Little Red Corvette” [ditto the version], “I Wanna Be Your Lover”, “Erotic City” and “Lets Go Crazy”.
I had forgotten about this jam, “Lets Go Crazy”, until it came to me, recently and subliminally while at my day job, a week after his untimely and sudden death. Watching the performance on this video inspired this blog post!
Prince courted some baad babes too! Maybe that is why I ignored him: he didn’t share with me! My top Prince hot chick ladies are: Apollonia, (the late) Vanity, Shiela E and Carmen Electra! More of them are here! http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2010/02/princes-10-hottest-female-proteges/ Some guys have all the luck – and then you die. Ain’t it a shame? Here is some of my collection of Prince vinyls:
Yes, I took Prince for-granted as I am sure you did too (unless you live in Minnesota). He burst onto the scene in the early eighties and became a fixture of hot, dancible contemporary American hit music that people from all walks of life partied to and appreciated. I recently heard some blue-collar types complain that while country music icon, Merle Haggard had passed away recently, he did not receive as much media attention as this “so-and-so” Prince did from the news media. Well, maybe they missed the updates, or misunderstand the nuances of how the body public processes music genres. We are the world, we are the music. I loved that he was not afraid of Controversey and not ashamed of his self deprecating “Dirty Mind” (like mine). His over-protectiveness of his videos being on YouTube troubled me.
You already know how weirdly strange it is that Prince is the latest in a string of musician deaths here, only four months into 2016. This year reminds me of this time in 2012, when we lost the likes of Whitney Houston, Donna Summer and Don Cornelius (Soul Train’s host). It is very strange and the only saving grace is the music they left behind for we, still in the physical world, to listen to.
Above, the flip-side of my first Prince vinyl album cover. Well, “This is what it sounds like when” [Your] Fans cry…
Hey, be sure to save the location of my new, music-reviews-ONLY blog post! https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/
There you will be able to keep up-to-date on the latest music and learn about the contemporary music artists of my lifetime. It is a work in-progress…
Please check it out and let your voice be heard above the herd.
As soon as I saw these roadside posters, I wanted to attend this show! I haven’t heard from or of Billy Ocean since the late 1980s with anything new and of course his hits lasted all through the 1990s when I was still gigging as a DJ in clubs and bars. His first hit, “Nights (Feel Like Getting Down)”, is one of the great dancefloor-filler of all times, that the late Frankie Crocker used to play again and again and…a-gain on WBLS FM during one of its several heyday peaks in 1981.
Of course, his baadest jam, and one twelve-inch vinyl I still own is “Carribean Queen”, a song that often haunts me and wedges itself into my sleep and at other inapporpriate moments. Proving its timelessness is still in full effect. Check out how Billy looks nowadays! lolI dig the “wig” [I know it is his hair and still has gthat big smile. Kool, ‘Mon… lol
Michael Bolton, on the other hand, is a fixture of my career as a Top 40/CHR (mostly on overnights where I liked the novelty of being the only black Brotha, lol) radio personality, where I spun his early hits in the 1980!
But this post isn’t all about me, as this concert I really wanted to see – but didn’t. Summer rain showers threatened that Sunday at the end of June and therefore, to this former neighborhood near where I grew-up, I did not swoon.
Only to learn weeks later (and with those posters still hanging and reminding me at the side of the road) that the show had gone on despite the “chance of thunderstorms”, which were in the area that evening.
On to the videos! Thank you for reading and please leave a comment! Cheers!
Next in-line:
Both these cats are lookin’ and soundin’ Great in-time and space! Bravo!
And now my favorite “Carribean Queen” video for dessert…Come away with me! MmMmmmm, Good…Safe(?)…Travels.
OF COURSE you can glean by now that I probably first heard Vesta Williams on New York City’s famous WBLS FM 107.5, and you are correct. “Vesta” as we first came to know her, could always hit those “Chaka Khan notes” right-down to the “Ooo!”, and indeed, I thought she was Chaka until A&M Records promotions people bestowed her first dance 12″ 45rpm on me, “Don’t You Blow A Good Thing”, back in 1986.
one of "my vinyl" Vesta 12 Inch
You’ve probably never heard of Vesta Williams unless you were into “descendant-of-disco” music in the major U.S. cities like New York City or San Francisco/L.A. back in the mid-1980s! She really did “nail” that Chaka Khan-type sound, as I re-listen to the two 12″ DJ singles that I was lucky enough to add to my library back then. After-all, Chaka was hot with “I Feel For You” in those days, and there were a couple of other ladies that were able to capitalize on that sound, and IMO, Vesta was one of them. I now wonder if somehow living in that shadow of a superstar of your genre may have weighed upon Ms. Williams – if the “overdose” rumors are proved true. Strange – whenever a singer or actor/actress is found dead in a hotel room, a “drug overdose” is always the first guess as to the cause of death. When you hear these initial rumors of an entertainer’s demise, what drug(s) do you think of? TMZ reports “multiple bottles of pills…” The same thing happened with my late friend, Phyllis Hyman.
"and be suspicious when the moon is high..."
I liked my other of my two “Vesta” A & M Records 12-inch singles, “Once Bitten Twice Shy” better. It’s bass line was real even, long-lasting and smooth and the song even became a kind of personal cautionary theme song of mine as I matured through my “playboy” women-dating days. LOL The Steve Hodge remix still sounds boss and full tonight as I play it in the background while I write these words. The song basically means “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!”
I never had the pleasure of being even close to meeting her in my radio glory days when she was “hot”, and yet she could have been in the room, or a club or bar with me simultaneously and I have the feeling we would have vibed, maybe had a beverage and talked about “the biz” and remained acquaintances. She actually “looks familiar” to me from my NYC radio DJ days. She was “hot” at the height of my radio career there. I wish that I had more vinyls by Vesta Williams, but as the art of music always does, it leaves us a wealth of material to eternally remember the artist.
I never stopped playing Vesta through the years when I could choose the music I played on my radio shows. She was made more for the airwaves and the nightclubs, in my opinion, and when I head of her passing away at only fifty-three today, I thought, “Wow! Where has she been all these years?” I pray theat an artist’s frustration with not being in the place that you planned to be at a certain stage of life didn’t get the best of her. Lord knows, I know exactly what that feels like… “Once Bitten…”
“Twice Shy.” Another choice voice who will be missed. If you knew her, or have other songs that are not part of my library that are your favorites, please weigh-in with them in my “comments” section below.
One that a couple of women I know in the singing business have mentioned is a sad ballad of unrequited love and betrayal called “Congratulations”. Vesta is now free from all of the physical world drama that she sang about. Bra-vo, Vesta.
Like Holland-Dozier-Holland, Gamble & Huff, the names Ashford/Simpson under the titles of songs on my records were mostly insignificant to me, the “baby DJ” decades ago. I noticed the artists, and always thought that “Whitfield/Strong” were members of the groups (The Temptations in that case).
As usual with me and my vinyl, it wasn’t until I fell under the influence of the great New York City radio personalities like Frankie Crocker, Jerry Bledsoe, Bobby Jay and others of the day who conducted “live” interviews on the air and often educated listeners as they mentioned who wrote the hits of the day as part of their front or back-announcing of them, that I began to separate “songwriter” from the performers. Ashford & Simpson’s uniqueness was that they could do both roles successfully!
I have observed through the years, that very often, life is like a running play in football: full of misdirection. just when you expect things to go one way, they go in another or opposite direction. So it was again when I heard that Nick Ashford left the physical world, and his other half in so many ways more than usual with a couple, Valerie, behind in late August ‘011 at age sixty-nine; not old yet, but not young either. Nick seemed always a “cool” – yet curious cat to me, those times I was in their presence and too shy to intrude with anything but a brief “Hey, how you doin!” and brief introduction of myself as a DJ on WBLS who played their music. Innate shyness strikes again! I remember watching them from left-of-center stage at New York City’s Palladium, when it was near Union Square on 14th Street, and they opened for Luther Vandross. Shortly after their restaurant in Manhattan, the Sugar Bar, opened I went to check them out with my pals, and I was fortunate enough to be on the set with them at other venues while I was a New York City radio personality. I always looked at them as more of a collaborative couple than a romantic one, but as time went by, you could see that they respected and adored each-other by the looks in their eyes when the looked at one-another while in full song. Looking at their album covers is like watching a time-capsule in mutual evolution, so let’s get to my Ashford & Simpson vinyls!
orig 1976 notes
First and with major thanks to Jackie Thomas, who was my Warner Brothers Promotion Lady at the time, is the back cover of “Come As You Are”, complete with my scribblings (DJ notes) from almost forty years ago! You can’t read it, but my “pik” on this album was “One More Try” – the extended (with guitar solo) 12″ Disco version of I also acquired! It still is one of my best A&S tracks and is very danceable! My next fave on this album was “It Came To Me”, however, the popular hit, which is still poignant today is the lead cut reminder, “It’ll Come, It’ll Come, It’ll Come”. One thing I began to notice back then, even, was the lush presence of a harp flourish during their ‘vamps to the fade’. I like that!
The next one I have has my stamp of “Nov. 9, 1976; the ‘Nick-o-Val’ follow-up, “Tried, Tested & Found True” [5;25] twelve-inch! What is overlooked or not even known these days is that those “disco” 12″ vinyls played at 45rpm! That dance favorite was culled from 1977’s “So So Satisfied” album, which I acquired because a neighbor was (“horrors!!”) throwing their records away in the dumpster because they were moving. Knowing that I was a “DJ” he brought a charity crate over to me, asking if I wanted to “look through some of these…” Well, “Hell Yeah!!” When I pulled the vinyl out and saw it was in reasonably saveable shape, I humbly thanked him and went inside to clean it up like the rest of “my children”. I never have lent my vinyls out over time… “So So” had two other hit in-addition to “Tried, Tested…” and they were the deep, fulfilling ballad title song, “So So Satisfied” and a song that I think the late Sylvester made famous but was (of course) written by Ashford & Simpson, “Over And Over”. I already had the Jimmy Simpson “Disco Mix” 12″ 45rpm of it, so getting the album completed that set of June 10, 1977 .
Next in my collection is my hands-down favorite album by this dynamic musical duo, on Warner Bros., 1977’s “Send it”. An “A” rotation on WBLS FM and any other burgeoning ‘Urban” black radio station of the day, you heard them hit their “stride” on this one! it includes the best instrumental they ever produced IMO, “Bourgie` Bourgie`”. Notice how their cover photos evolved though these years? These guys were fashion templates of the day! it is about this time that I began to truly believe they were an in-love couple and not just an “act”. Also featured hits on this LP , “”By Way Of Love’s Express”, the title song, “Send It” and the dance classic, “Don’t Cost You Nothin’ “. On Nick-O-Val music, there are NO “bad” album cuts though…
Then, all of a sudden (to me, anyway) in 1978, Jackie Thomas laid the 12′ on me called “It Seems To Hang On”. I’m not sure what album it is from, because I don’t have it. All I know is that to this very day and as I write these words, it is my all time Hall Of Fame favorite Ashford & Simpson record! At six minutes and fifty-seven seconds, I can play it a-gain, and again, and a-gainnnn…
As Barry White would say, “it was such a groove…” A great arrangement with orchestra, and those sexy horns.
After that, I guess I lost track or maybe they had a lull, but the next thing I knew, Nick and Valerie were on a new label, Capitol/EMI. I am thinking that my record promo rep was the very amusing John Brown there (but don’t hold me to it, LOL). I always wanted a gig in record promotion back then because all these guys and gals just went from company-to-company (and party-to-party!). I went into my stacks looking for their last massive hit “Solid” (which is still hiding from me as I write this, dammit!) and came upon one that I didn’t even know I had, 1986’s “Real Love”. Skip ahead in time!
I call this album something that every artist has, “one that got away”. The only notable “hit’ was something called “Nobody Walks In L.A.”, and somehow I have the Capitol Records 12″ of it – by now they played at 331/3 rpm – looking like I never played it. Not that it was a “bad” song; it just never really caught-on – on the east coast – in the USA. There are “certain” memories associated with all of Nick & Vals music in my musical mind. Observe again, the fashion evolution of their album cover pose…
“Nobody Walks In L.A.” 12-inch
By now my collection is waning and I have performed on WBLS FM and all the major New York City Urban/Black/R&B?whatever name du jour radio stations. “Solid… as a Rock” was the jam when I was on WBLS FM in 1984/85, but there came a little ditty which was the title track of that album called “High Rise” by them which was so appropriate because at that time I was living my dream of residing in one.
High Rise 45rpm cover
This is the jacket for the 1983 45rpm:
They should have been (and maybe were) fashion models! Well last-but-not-least in my krates-full-o-jointz I found a 45rpm off of the album ‘Performance’ which will serve as a timely and true finale to this post, “It Shows In The Eyes”. Look!…”it” does and always will.
Please comment with your
favorite Nicholas Ashford/
Valerie Simpson memory,
concert or song. I had no
idea he was ill; makes it all the more sad and surprising to think that he is gone, but their voice – harp-flourished arrangements – will live eternally.
It was a truly modern info moment. I’m doing my goodnight ‘My Vinyl’ “Tweet” of the day into the Twittosphere, when next in the stream and before mine can appear pops, “Breaking News! Gil Scott Heron dead at 60.” last night. Immediately I reply to the Tweeter of bad news, “ 4 REal? Oh Sad…major part of my musical comeuppance in college radio via dancefloor-filler, “In The Bottle” RIP Bro Heron”
back coveer
“Wow!” I thought, “ I’m on Twitter and witness history as one of (maybe) the first to know this!” one of the reasons I have grown to tolerate that platform is that appeals to the subliminal sense or need for immediacy of current events in its own special way!
I started to write this then and there; nope, too close to “Au Revoir” for-the-night time after a physically strenuous Friday and mentally gnarly week. Therefore, here we are now with an homage to my one Gil Scott Heron vinyl, “Winter In America”. Obviously, this one should be brief, but no promises, okay? 😀
When I think of the now “late” Gil Scott Heron, I go back to my days at the University and the hit record from this album, “In The Bottle”. His image makes me think of another tell-it-like-it-IS spoken group, The Last Poets. All I wanted to know about most music back then, in my “baby” DJ days, was would it get people up on the floor and dancing to it? That is how I could look good and get paid by whomever was employing me for that purpose – even if that “person” was me. So the larger “message” of Gil Scott Heron – the poet , keyboardist and Brother-man was initially kind of secondary, but in retrospect he was one of those whose lyrics clarified shit from the streets that I had only heard about at the time.
cuts and players
As time went by, I was proud of him as a militant messenger as I like to see part of myself being in the mirror. Principled and even brutally eloquently relevant and truthful in his succinct lyrics and rhymes, I knew intrinsically that he would be “alright” and was a protector and purveyor of the thoughts about our place as Black Americans in society that most people would only think and not say. What’s more, he did it with music, one of my favorite things, and that made him all the more kool. This album felt like conversation as well as a class.
my vinyl GSH
I probably first heard “In The Bottle” on the Frankie Crocker-programmed WBLS-FM of 1974, although another party or DJ could have been just as timely. All I knew was that it was about a guy who drank too much as imitated by Gil from the jam’s outset, but who cared? When that first note hit, the guys were up and asking the chicks to dance with them en-masse! “A dolla-nine-get-a-bottle o’wine, a dolla-nine-get-a bottle a-wine, in the bot-tle…”
I remember getting amusing requests from cats who would saunter up to my booth and request, “Hey, ‘Man, you got any Gil Scott Heroin, Brotha?” To which I learned to sometimes reply, “No, my Brother, we don’t do no hard drugs up in this booth…” (read again to catch the subtle comedy if you didn’t “get-it”), before I’d relent and tell him I “got’cha covered!”. That smacks me in my funny bone annoyingly if you’ve read the stated causes of his death.
Brian Jackson got the co-top billing on this album, which as I write this, I wish I knew the story of how I came to acquire it, or why he did get that recognition and what happened to him. If you know, please write it in a comment below, but he never became as famous as Gil Scott Heron did, and where is he now?
Even though “Winter In America” is the title of my one-and-only vinyl by Gil, the song by the same name came out on his next album, “First Minute of A Brand New Day”. He will probably be remembered by the world’s masses though, for another song/album title, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” which came out right after “Winter”, I believe. Those two LPs set GSH off into the stratocastersphere!
I am sad that his needed voice is now silent too early, but at least being who he was, he left some homework behind for all of us to catch-up on an apply. “Just how blind will America be?” he asked in the wake of the Nixon Watergate scandal . I can rhyme that and say, “these days we continue to see!” Gil Scott Heron performed the serious science with an ironic sense of humor that is lacking among many of the broadcast talking heads here in 2011.
photo props to cafemaroon
Only sixty-two? That is Scary.
Side Two, track five, “Peace Go With You Brother”.
Whether you are a regular or infrequent visitor to my blog, undoubtedly you have heard me refer to Frankie Crocker as my inspiration for wanting to become a high-paid celebrity professional radio personality. I haven’t looked, but I bet in each of “My Vinyls” I mention him. The “high-paid” part never happened, but he hipped me to so much music via his programming and radio show, while teaching me, in a vicarious way, how not to take any shit from people while doing my shows.
I remember him once giving me the advice, to take full control of your show whenever you are on, no-matter what or who (but he put it another way as described in my book) tries to interfere. Frankie was very quotable and had a lot of “sayings” – many direct and controversial.
In my first radio memoir book, “He’s In A Meeting…Adventures In Getting Past Gatekeepers (My Pursuit of Modest Fame In The Radio Game And Other Assorted Lefe Letters/Short Stories)” – which you can see the front cover of below in the right sidebar – I write about Mr. Crocker and how he influenced me and so many of us during his times. I describe some of the ways I got “past” his gatekeepers; secretaries like Denise Colon and Champaine of WBLS FM, New York, and some other fun “things” I did to get his attention along the way, in the book.
Pickhitt: I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit my loving and full-of-good-ideas beloved, Inna, who thought of me doing this book promotional post! Cheers, Babychka!
Read more about the legendary ‘Chief Rocker’ in “He’s In A Meeting, Adventures In Getting Past Gatekeepers” [CreateSpace/Amazon KDP].
~
“If Frankie Crocker’s not on your radio, your radio’s not really ON…” 😀 ~~ Jimi
So it is another sleepless Tuesday overnight after the holidays in the U.S.A., and I am tossing and turning in bed, wondering how I am going to pay the bills this month, get to see my girlfriend overseas, and what is in store for me. This year is already beginning like last year – waiting for paltry checks in the mail. I finally fall asleep around seven-thirty AM only to drag myself up at the crack of Noon, knowing I have things to do that I am behind schedule on. I call in “sick” on my home business to answer some emails only to find that four people I know have sent me this story about this homeless dude getting a voice-over job.
“Why are you tormenting me like this?” I ask one sender. “Because he talks about ‘Theater of the Mind’ radio like you always do, and did on your show”, he answers. Even my eighty-six year old Mum calls asking, “Do you know Ted Williams?” “You mean the baseball player?” I feign. My forehead is now in my hands…”OMG” I am thinking. I was just tired before an a little grumpy; now I am in full D.J. Grumpy mode. No coffee in the decanter to help either. If this be the future, then why does it play like Alice In Wonderland where down is up and up is down? Why are people being rewarded for behavior they used to be ashamed of? I reach for my albuterol sulfate inhaler – getting upset used to bring on Asthma attacks when I was a child, now I just get “shortness of breath” and it is too cold to go for a bicycle ride, although I briefly consider doing so, or at least taking a brisk walk.
Here is the point I made to my friends who said, “He even sounds like you do!” Their hearts are in the right place (I am sounding like my Mum now); I even heard one young lady say how “cool” a story it is that this dude got a job with the Cleveland Cavaliers, on her college radio station. HOWEVER: there are lines of us qualified announcers out here with “pipes” who have been marginalized by terrestrial radio, et al for the past decade. G_D bless the BUM, but I have been doin “theatre of the mind” radio since the ’80s (“The Pajama Bar”) having grown up listening to it done on NYC radio by great D.J.s like Murray the “K”, “Cousin” Brucie (Morrow) and Frankie Crocker.
I recently began to send out my demo mp3s again to studios and agencies and have done so in the interim – without a nibble, hoping against hope that things turn around for me, and some homeless cat with a cardboard sign standing at the offramp of a highway gets a gig bcs a driver pulled-up and taped him to put it up on You Tube?? I’m sorry, but that is the wrong message! So what, I should become HOMELESS, lose all I have, get a piece of cardboard and a Sharpie, stand outside by [the nearest interstate exit] in my army fatigues and hope for the best as my TEETH rot?? Something is very WRONG with the hiring system/pecking order in this land and the UNIVERSE at-large if this be the future of my”specialty”. That shit pisses me off everytime I think of it – and I didn’t get much sleep last night either, trying to figure-out what is next for me and those I hold dear. What do you think? What if that happened in your industry? How long do you think he will last?
Look, I’m not hatin’, I’m just sayin’., seems the wrong prople are getting the “bum’s rush”. Let me see…maybe I can think up something stupid to do to get “headlines” and hired for big reality TV money! I hear my late father saying, “You’ll probably get yourself arrested.”
**PickHiTT: Recently I was almost homeless. And, as I predicted when I first penned this blog, what happened to him was predictable: his habits, which got him to that street sign in the first place, were too much for him to overcome. Not being mean, but he needed more help than glam could get him. Often in life, it is good for writers (and really ALL of us humans) to revisit past opinions, especially when educational footnotes can be added.
As my MARVEL Comics Editorial staff (Stan Lee, et al) always concluded, “Nuff said”.
“Once Bitten…”
Achilliad's Blog! by Jimi B 