Bob the Blade
Rock radio DJ of 32 years tells the stories in the side-splitting and eye-opening podcast.
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Bob the Blade
Your Hurricanes Are Our Haboobs
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The whole Phoenix Metro is taken over for a while, and they don't last long, these haboobs, and that's the good thing about them. They'll go maybe an hour, and you know, right after the dust, it's just like a miracle from above. It rains and cleans us up for a while. And it's a beautiful thing if you think about it. What I hate about it, is it puts three and a half inches worth of dirt in my Caribbean style swimming pool.
I always appreciate your support, I am very clear in my understanding of how unclear I really am of myself
and the kaleidoscope in my head makes me laugh.
Desert Heat and Haboob 101
RegentHey, it's another hot one today in the desert, and we find out about Haboobs. Here he is, the man himself, Bob the Blade.
BladeJust uh another sweltering day here. You walk outside and it's like you know, you're in an oven, and it feels great, and you just say, I just love it. Because it's better than freezing. You're warm and it's hot, it's like you're on vacation. As you come to a close in September. Finally had a haboob. It was like a couple days ago, right? 25th of August, I guess. You know, I was wishing we need a haboob because we need rain. We need something to happen here. It's just so boring around here. Haboob happened the 25th of August, and you could see. Look at this picture. It's imposing, isn't it? It's definitely imposing.
Driving Rules and Dust Aftermath
BladeJust a bunch of dirt and a bunch of dust. You can imagine what the dust bowl was like in Oklahoma. Way back in the day, that, something like that, but you know, haboob comes, and that's what they call it. I think hab means blowing, and boob means wind, haboob. And you know, after the haboob comes water for about an hour, and that's it. That's how they work. And there's always an article in the newspaper on the internet what is a haboob? Well, we all know what a fucking haboob is. It's the same thing every single time, and it always has been. And they're cool, but you can't drive in them, and so they ask you to drive over to the side of the road, and you know, you can't use your lights but leave your flashers on. And so people waiting for the haboob to take over, you know, and it takes over the town in many different directions. I mean, the whole Phoenix Metro is taking over for a while, for a minute, and they don't last long, and that's the good thing about them. Maybe an hour, possibly, and you know, and right after the dust, it's just like a miracle from above. It rains, you know, and cleans us up for a while. And it's a beautiful thing if you think about it. Thing I hate about it is it puts three and a half inches worth of dirt in my Caribbean style swimming pool. Piss me off. Takes me three days to clean it up. Clean the filters, clean the cartridges. But now look.
Pool Grit and TV Storm Theater
BladeAnd the funnest part is going into your house after the hab and watching the TV coverage of all the cars floating away. You know, and all the all the managers start to put together their their military operations to go look for their cars. Because they're somewhere out there in the desert. They don't know where, but they take a tow truck with them, you know, and everybody they're they're gonna find those $300 Chevy Malibus out there somewhere in the desert, and they're gonna be taken off. You see him going out there and you kind of chuggle. Haboobs. Follow along with me. Who
The Riddle: Who Was He?
Bladeis the guy that I am talking about? In 1973, he was smoking joints before breakfast, drinking 20 beers a day, and sharing a heavy cocaine habit with his wife, Brenda. But in the end, when he died, he was only 71. He was worth $10 million through his TV, his stand-up, his comedy albums, and his books, etc. etc. Who am I talking about? How can you act like that and end up with 10 million like he did? That was kind of my dream. But I'm not as smart as this
Carlin, Talent, and Living Hard
Bladeguy was. You gotta be smart to be rich. Came across that theory a long time ago. You can't just dumb into luck or dumb into rich unless you inherited. I mean, if you're smart, you can be rich. I'll never be rich. So we got this millionaire and this guy right here, and I'll be a thousandaire until I. Anyway, the guy dies at 71 years of age. And I was thinking there was a comedian out there that said, hell, I'd rather live hard and live fast and die at 71 than live the years from 71 to 86. Who wants to be alive during those years? You know. And then my buddy Mr. Excitement from WQDR in the old days told me, you know who said that? The guy you're talking about, George Carlin. He actually said it and it came true. And here I sit trying to behave, trying to live to 86. Do I want to live to 86? I think so. I don't do any of that now, but I did it all in my 30s. Let me tell you. Didn't work out for me the way it worked out for him. I guess I just didn't have the talent that George Carlin did. You know, it's not like I'd look at him and laugh and go, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, that guy is so damn funny. I wouldn't. I'd laugh at him in bemusement. I would listen to him because he entertained me and I enjoyed listening to him speak. And every now and then he'd say something funny and I'd giggle. That's about it. If I wanted a good laugh back then in the 70s, I'd watch, I'd take a look at at Cracked the Magazine. Remember that? Am I saying it right? Or Mad Magazine. Then I'd get a good laugh, you know. But he was smart and clever, but I wouldn't call him like, you know, ha ha ha ha ha ha, a comedian. C.K.
Being Amused vs. Big Laughs
BladeLewis is another one of those guys who I just completely love. And it's not like they make me laugh all the time. They say things and I am completely amused at what they say. Thoughts that come out of their head. I remind myself of them. Now I don't know about you, and I don't give a shit. But I am amused with the thoughts that come out of my head.
MarkKI don't know why.
BladeI make myself laugh. I do. But apparently it didn't translate into $10 million.
Zeppelin Rabbit Hole Opens
BladeListen, I was in a rabbit hole the other day. It was a Zeppelin rabbit hole because once you get started on Zeppelin, you can't end because there's too much. Right? And I always do this maybe once every month, maybe once every month and a half, I go to the When the Levy Breaks CD, or not CD, but video, which is on Plane for Change. Group of musicians playing all over the world at the same time playing different musicians. And they did when the levy breaks, and I did a special on this a while back on one of my episodes, and I sit there in tears, watching in tears every time I watch it. Susan Tedeski, the way she her performance, and Derek Trux and all the other guys in the world who get it note for note perfectly.
When The Levee Breaks Origins
BladeIt was written in nineteen twenty-nine by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe, guitar players, about the Mississippi flood, the great Mississippi flood of nineteen twenty-seven. And it was a song of revitalization, too. It was horrible. And the deaths and for lack of a better term, the inconvenience. But it was a song of revitalization. Get your ass out of here. You gotta move to Chicago. And that's what almost all of them did. They moved to Chicago, hence the Chicago Blues movement that they had up there. The great Mississippi flood of 1927 when the levee breaks and it broke. So I watched that video and I start thinking about Led Zeppelin. I start thinking about some arguments I used to have at a sports bar at the table, the greatest Zeppelin song. You know, and finally learned it took me 50 years to learn there is no greatest Zeppelin song. You can't have a discussion on the greatest Zeppelin song. Listen, first of all, the greatest rock song of all time is Stairway to Heaven. Okay? Shut up. It's Stairway to Heaven, the greatest rock song of all time. The greatest song that Led Zeppelin ever did is the one you are listening to at this moment. If you're listening to Achilles' Last Stand, Brian Yarra Stomp, or The Ocean in the evening. You know. Any song that you're listening to at that moment, you sing, damn, that's brilliant. That is my favorite Zeppelin song. So that's the answer to the greatest Zeppelin song. It's the one you're listening to right now. Now, clickbait. I hate it, but you know, you're gonna fall for it because it's just too good. They've gotten so good
The Greatest Zeppelin Song Debate
Bladeat it. The clickbait is this Jimmy Page stops and watches a guy do a Led Zeppelin cover on a street corner. At I play this this one song and they love me for it. What's the name of that music festival? At the not the crossover, at uh the crossroads music festival. I think it was in Florida somewhere, right? Jimmy Page stops to watch a guy playing a Zeppelin cover song. Okay, let's just see. And so I put this guy on and he's good, and I don't know the guy's name, but he's really, really good. You know, and he starts with Stairway to Heaven on his little machine and he does his solo of uh Stairway to Heaven, and it's great. And so the whole time I'm watching. Where's Jimmy Page? And he's not there. Jimmy Page was not there. It's clickbait. Lies! Advertisement by and large is a bunch of lies, anyway. Or embellishments, if you want to put it that way. No Jimmy Page there. But guess what is there? 6.9 million views. And it's amazing.
Clickbait Traps and False Teases
BladeClickbait. It says here, wait till you see Caitlin Clark, WNBA player, on the beach in her swimsuit. It'll knock your socks off. Okay, I click on that four or five times. And so I click and I zoom down, and it's a bunch of people I don't want to see in their bathing suit on the beach, and she's never even in the presentation. Never even in it. Finally found a way today to find out what she looks like in her bathing suit. Not bad. You have to look it up. There's a bunch on Facebook. I just thought I'd let you know. But my point is clickbait, you know, and they clickbait you and say, look at look at Caitlin Clark and her swimsuit, and then you click, click, click, and look at all their ads, and you don't even see Caitlin Clark. She's not even in there. Just a bunch of lies. The great and I I'm in this Zeppelin hole. This is Zeppelin rabbit hole. And I and I and I'll always think of this and I'll go to my grave with this. The greatest lead Zeppelin day of my life. And we were out one day and we planned for this day. I was in college. I was 1979. I was probably 18 or 19 years old. And you know, lived in a dorm, Galloway dorm, had a bunch of buddies that lived up there, Matt Gokey and Gene Jones and Blaine, somebody forgot his last name, and Ray forgot his last name, and you know, and Keith Donnelly and Tom Williams, all these guys lived up there, and we were all buddies, you know, and a bunch of party girls lived right down the hall. And so we're going out at 10 o'clock one morning to School Kids Records because that is the day they have released Led Zeppelin's In Through the Outdoor, the new Zeppelin In Through the Outdoor, which ended up being their real last real studio album. Right. And we bought four copies of the album. And we had four copies of the brand new album and four eight tracks of In Through the Outdoor from the Zeppelin. And there it started. We went from bar to bar to bar to bar to bar. Went down to Riceville Beach, hit every single bar there, and we'd run in, you know, each one of us, different one, say, look, we got the album. They've got the new Zeppelin album, man. Let's play it. And damned if they wouldn't put it on their turntable and we'd play it loud. Shoot pool, you know,
College Day: In Through the Out Door
Bladequarter draft. We did this 12-30 every single bar, probably at Riceville Beach. And in between going from bar to bar to bar, if we weren't walking on our flip-flops, you know, with the sun beating down on us, you know, we'd flop in the eight-track of In Through the Outdoor in the car before we got to the next bar. And that's what we did. We listened to Led Zeppelin's In Through the Outdoor the entire day. What, six or seven songs? I'm gonna crawl hot dog fool in the rain. You know, Carousal Ombra, which turned out to be my favorite, All of My Love, you know, Southbound Suarez. Look, let me just tell you something. Three or four or five o'clock in the morning, I think, is when it all ended. We were up all night. You know. And I am telling you, by four or five o'clock, all nine or ten of us knew every single word of every single song of the new Led Zeppelin release in through the outdoor. We knew every song, we knew every word. The greatest Led Zeppelin day of my life. Now, listen, man, I promise you, and I am a man of my word. Every now and then, when I feel like being a man of my word, I am a man of my word. When it fits the situation. Last week that I'd get you the new Dave Adams. See, no, I love Dave Adams as a person and as a musician. As a musician, he's this incredible songwriter. He's an incredible singer, he's an incredible musician, he's a nice person, and he lives in Raleigh and he's been there forever. And he was in the band Glass Moon, which we loved as a radio station, WQDR and WRDU back in the late 70s, maybe even mid-70s to the early 80s. We loved Glass Moon. We loved Dave Adams and the rest of the guys. He has come up with a brand new song. He and Chris Jones. He told me that he and Chris Jones were dicking around one day and they came up with this song, and it's called The Last Lost Weekend. I promise you I'd play, and I'm gonna play it. Right now, here we go. Let's give it a listen and see what Dave Adams has for us. Some 50 years later.
MarkKI know you feel too. I'm feeling down, down, down, down, down
Bar-Hopping With Eight-Tracks
MarkKto break my heart.
A Promise Kept: Dave Adams Premiere
MarkKAnd you got to break your heart to break my heart. And you got to even break my heart. To break your heart.
BladeHasn't changed a bit. Hasn't changed one bit. Dave, let's talk about that like next week on the phone or something like that. Is that you playing bass at the end of it? I know you're playing the piano on most of it. The last lost weekend. Hasn't lost it. Same old Dave Adams. Love you, Dave, miss you, Dave. Let's talk next week.
RegentAll Bob the Blade content can be found at bobtheblade.com. Our
Reactions and Shout‑Outs
Regentthanks to Mr. Dave Adams, Chris Jones, Bobby Patterson, Caitlin Clark, and the Mighty Zeppelin. We will see you next time.
