The $8,000 Years: How I Survived and Thrived in Early Radio

The money I made over the years, I made $8,000 a year working full-time at WHSL in Wilmington in 1980 to 1983. 

$8,000 a year. 

I couldn't eat. Eviction notices on my door constantly. But I had the time of my life, man. I am telling you. The time of my life. I got a job at WRDU after that. 1984, I think.$17,000 a year.

Chapters

• 0:00 Dire Straits and Early Radio Days
• 3:02 Radio Career and Starting Over
• 5:00 Desert Heat and Coffee Shop Tales
• 8:19 Old Rock Bands Still Touring
• 13:10 Doctor's Office and Gambling Advice

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Is that what you call chicken picking? Dire straits. I mean, when that came out in 197, I think. 1978. I mean it changed everything. Sounded like nobody else. Never it didn't sound like anybody at the time. Changed everything. In the gallery. You know what? I got a new song from Dave Adams of Glass Moon. That I'm going to play not today, but next time, next, that I haven't heard yet. He lives in Raleigh still, and he was a band that was a big local band that we played at WQDR in the 70s, 80s. Just great, this fabulously talented guy still lives in Raleigh. You know, good singer. Spent his time over in England and all that, and all these great songs called the kid. You know, the carousel cover song he did and Killer at 25 and all these fantastic Simon, fantastic songs. Anyway, did something new to play that next week. Can't wait to hear it. I haven't listened to it yet because I want to wait until next week to hear it for the first time. But anyway, dire straits is at the time when they came out in 78, I had no money, and I'd just sit at home and I'd just play that thing over and over and over and just sit around and smoke. You know, smoke pot and smoke cigarettes and sit around the house and, you know, go find some peanut butter and you know, spread it on some crackers. I just didn't have any money. 1978. And then I got a job paying money in radio in 1980, and I still didn't have any money. You look at my Social Security stuff. You know, my money I made over the years, I made$8,000 a year working full-time at WHSL in Wilmington in 1980 to 1983.$8,000 a year. I couldn't eat. Eviction notices on my door constantly. But I had the time of my life, man. I am telling you. The time of my life. I got a job at WRDU after that. 1984, I think.$17,000 a year. I was a VJ in Greensboro at a television station. They played rock videos for a while there. I made it$15,000 a year, something like that. I'll tell you more about that. That's a great story. Down the road, you know, and worked myself up little by little by little until finally I got to the point where I was in the a lot of money in the early 2000s. You know, and then, you know, 2012 it all ended. I got sick of it, tired of it, bored, quit, started over and went to work at Dunkin' Donuts, you know, for you know,$12 an hour at a theater picking a popcorn for$12.50 an hour. You know. Little jobs like that. Just because I wanted to start over here in Arizona. Never did much more than that. I just sit here and do podcasts. Hot again, man. 113 degrees again today. Okay, but look, it's August, all right? Why is that excessive heat if it's August here? But they keep telling us excessive heat. It's 113, 114, something like that. You know. Sofa King. Always love that one, a classic. Hotter than hell out here, man. It really is hot out here. One of mine sticking to the other. Unbelievable. The other day I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking. And to boot, they didn't have their mittens on. You gotta have your mittens on if you're an animal in this asphalt sidewalk concrete. Hot though. Wouldn't have it any other way. Sam Kiniston would say, What do you want? You live in the fucking desert. Listen, I know this girl. I just happen to know this girl and she's young. She's like 23 or 24 or something like that. She works in a coffee shop. She was telling me a story the other day. And it goes down to this: any girl that's behind a counter, it's just a dreadful job to have. Let me tell you something, young girls. You can't have a job behind a counter because the young men will corner. No, the old men will corner you behind you. You can't do anything. You got to be nice because it's your job. And the old men will corner you if you're sitting behind a counter. Now talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, you know, and for some reason, men in this world that are old men think that you like them. I know you're 23. Sometimes you're 18 or 19 or 20, but old men think you like them. And they think they still got it. It's mind-boggling. And I finally met a girl who will let them let them have it. What's her name? Charlotte, I think her name is. You know, and I was standing behind this guy, and he was just standing there, you know, and I'm like, I want to get some cup of coffee or something. He's just standing there and talking her ear off. She doesn't give a rat's ass for two reasons. One, he's old. And for two, he's not her boyfriend. You know how it is when you're that age. You know, and finally I heard her say, look, you don't get it. You are old. You are old. And I just turned around and laughed my ass off. And the guy sat there for a couple of minutes. He didn't even get it. Finally, he leaves. I said, Man, that takes balls, man. Hope he doesn't complain. You know, you don't lose your job because of that. I made my day. And she said, they don't care around here. And then she told me she went on to some diatribe. Look, these guys, they come in here and they just talk, talk, talk to me, and they think I like them. And I always have to say the same thing. No, you are old. You are too old. This is a tip for all of you girls that have a job behind a counter somewhere. Quit. Old men are so stupid sometimes. Men are so stupid sometimes. They just don't get it. Okay, here's the thing. Let's put it this way. Let's just say, by chance, you're a 57-year-old guy, and you think the 23-year-old really likes you. You end up hooking up. She ends up liking you because she's got some kind of a daddy thing. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with a daddy thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Really, there isn't. You know. 57-year-old man, let me just tell you something. Be careful what you wish for. There's a difference between being 23 and 57. Leaving it at that. I heard an ad the other day on one of the radio stations around here, and I hate listening to radio. It's the same songs over and over. It's gotten so bad, right? I mean, you just don't listen to real. I just listen to sports radio sometimes, only sometimes. And even that, you know, is no good. Radio is just no good anymore. There's nothing to listen to when you're in the car. You have to plug in your phone on Spotify, make your own playlist, but even that gets a little boring sometimes. Listen to the radio the other day and I heard a commercial. Dare I say it? That's what's interesting now is commercial. The commercials. It was Dave Berry, one of the old general managers I used to have. Bless his heart. May he rest in peace. At WRDU in the beginning, he'd always say to me, commercials are information bits. And damn it, they are. They are. They're information bits. And I heard through this information bit that ZZ Top was doing a concert at a casino at the swimming pool with three other people.$345, you know, to have a seat around Z Z Top, but you can get in for$15 and watch him, you know, a couple of levels up. ZZ Top? Are you shitting me? Z Z Top is still playing. I went back and I started thinking about skipping study hall fifth and sixth period at Fayetteville, Terry Sanford. And John Patton and I would walk across the street to the laundromat and we'd plunk in 50 cents and we'd play Tush, daun, da, and just got paid the B side, you know, dun dun dun dun, you know, and play pinball all periods, fifth and sixth period, and come back for the last period. Z Z Top. And that was 1977. 50-something years, Z Top is doing this. Amazed. And then I saw this Emerson Lake and Palmer are coming to do a date here in Phoenix. How can Emerson Lake and Palmer do a date here when Emerson and Lake are dead? That's worth looking into. Now, Carl Palmer, now that guy I've talked to before, he's an anomaly, man. He's a pisser. He said, Look, I've never done a drug. You know, I don't even drink. You know, so he's the one that's left, and I guess that makes sense, right? Now, wait a minute. How can Emerson Lake and Palmer play when two of them are dead? Let me just read you what it says in the advertisement. It says, rare footage returns Keith and Greg to the concert stage performing alongside Carl Palmer and ELP's Legacies Live. Wow. That has all the potential of being really weird. So let's so let's think here. So you'd see Keith Emerson playing keyboards on the left in sync, I'm hoping, and Greg Lake playing guitar and whatever other things he does on the right on video screen from days gone by. And Carl Palmer basically is playing along with them. Playing along with the video. Just trying to ingest that. It could work, I guess. I'm thinking I'd want a 66% discount. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to think. God, there's so many people. America's playing. America is playing at a casino coming. Little River Band is playing at a casino coming down here. I'll tell you again, man, I said this myself. I want to be known for it. You know, it's not that it's anything spectacular, but I love it. It's like when you sign up for the music business, you sign up for life. Sometimes it's out of love, and sometimes it's out of need. Look, the Rolling Stones don't need it. They're still doing it. You sign up for life. What's the deal? I don't get it. That's 15 feet away from the woman who's 15 feet away. I took that picture because I'm one of three people smashed up against the door in the back because this clown is 15 feet away from the counter, trying to sign in the doctor's office 15 feet away. He has no idea. How can you be so ignorant? He has no idea that there are three people smashed behind him. So I finally said something to the three people. I said, all right, we'll flip a coin and the odd person out has to say something. And they giggled, but no one had any coins. Who has money anymore? So we just ate it. It's only gonna there can't be it can only be one. It's gotta be a restraining order. That can be the only reason that guy, they've got to know each other. That old lady and that guy, they've got to know each other. That's a that's that's a restraining order, is what that is. It makes no logical sense in this world. Listen, just a quick tip. I have a buddy that lost like$2,000 in a matter of two minutes gambling, football in a preseason game.$2,000. You can't gamble on sports. I learned cards a while back because I was gonna go deal at the casino, just deal cards, you know, but I'm not quick enough in my head to do it. You got to be really smart and quick, and boom, you gotta do, do, do, do, do, you know, and you gotta know like a hundred games, you know, and I couldn't learn the games fast enough, and I couldn't deal fast enough, and I didn't have good enough memory left to do it. I tried it and I said, nah, this those guys are good, those dealers, they are. But during the school, it was fascinating because they would tell me there's these four dealer teachers, and they taught everybody how to play cards at the dealing school. And they were seasoned veteran gambler dealers, trust me, drug dealers, you know, they gambled, they lived that life. They did, that tough life, you know, and they looked it like they did. And the one thing I would get from each one of them every single time was this. The one sure thing I got was never bet on sports. And they'd say, as a subtopic, there are no systems. Never bet on sports. So I never have. I've seen so many people lose money and so many people go up for a little bit and so many people go down. I have friends that say, oh no, no, no, no, no. I've made plenty of money, I'll let you see my checking account. The minute they say I'll let you see my checking account, that's when you know they're in trouble. I've just known that from experience. Do not bet or gamble on sports. Nothing but trouble. It's gonna ruin the world. It's gonna ruin the sports world. I don't watch sports anymore. I really don't. It's too expensive to watch. Buy it on cable. Hell, you pay$300 a month to get all the channels you need. I just don't watch sports anymore. Go to the internet and get the final score. Don't miss it a bit. Welcome back, my friends, is the name of the Emerson Lake and Palmer Tour.

SPEAKER_02: 15:26

Welcome back, my friends, to the show of the never friends.

SPEAKER_01: 15:40

You can crash some blades come out.