The Day The Music Died Was In 1983

I'm gonna tell you, I did it right. I did. I sit here today, many, many years later, after being in radio, I was there 32 years, 32 years, something like that. I really believe I played every single song that I love so much in my life, somehow or another. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Scene In QDR’s Glory
• 1:18 The Computer Called Selector Arrives
• 3:00 Brit Pop Dominates And Rock Bristles
• 5:05 Breaking Format With Turntables
• 7:20 Suspensions, Probations, And Ratings
• 9:20 Nights Versus Afternoons And Sobriety
• 11:05 Tough Love, Rehab, And A Career Reset
• 12:40 Chaos With Traffic Reports
• 15:10 Pre‑Recorded Traffic And Sign‑Off

Transcript

Regent Voice Intro: 0:00

Welcome back to the Blade Video Podcast. From the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, this right here is Bob the Blade. All content available at BobTheblade.com.

Blade: 0:16

Yeah, okay. Listen, story. The end of music, the day the music died for me, 1983. I was working at WQDR. I moved up there in 1982 to work for WQDR and do, you know, work for them on the air as a disc jockey from WHSL in Wilmington, which was the first job I ever had. I was a kid, 22, 23, something like that. We all were. And uh it was the greatest station in the nation. I mean, I still say that. It's the greatest station in the world, you know, because we would all sit around in a group, all of us, you know, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee in the morning, put on a bunch of albums, find the good tracks, and then go play them. Isn't that what it's about, man? Yeah, that's why I got into the business so I could play dire straits, you know, Sultans of Swing, so I could play Sweet Madam Blue by Sticks, you know, songs like that, great songs that everybody knows are great songs. No stations did that. WQDR did that. It's happy as fuck to be there. You know, I was. And so the day the music died was 1983 because I walked into that station and there was somebody, I think it was Joe Lee Ferris, who was in there, and I was relieving her at 10, maybe, one night. And she says, Look, and there's this computer up on the right hand side of the control room, right? And it's one of those long ones, right? One of those old long computers. What are they? DOS, DOS, long beige ones with a screen about that big, you know, and on it was a list, straight list of things. And I looked at the list and the list just to be curious, and it was like, you know, four commercials, five songs, stop, four commercials, five songs, stop, four commercials. I said, What what's that? And she said, That that's our new computer. What do you mean, our new computer? It's called the Selector, and we're playing our commercials and songs from that. 1983, that was. Never forget it. I'm just sitting here waiting for the stop break to come up on the computer and then I come on and talk. Is that all we have to do now? She said, Yeah, that's it. Wow. And the damn song that was playing was Karma Chameleon by Culture Club. And I said, Well, what does it come pre-programmed with songs like that? She said, No, no, we program it, she told me. Who programs it? Walden and Guild. Now listen, now keep in mind, this is a time in the uh early 80s when there was nothing but pop music from the Brit from Great Britain, and they were great at it. They came out with some really, really good songs. You know, even then uh Luft Balans, I called it. You know, songs like that. I know she's German, blah, blah, blah, but songs Kasha Good, Shy Shy, and you know, and all these great pop songs and Tears for Fears, and they were fantastic, and you know, and then and then and the bangles and and banana rame, even that kind of P. All these songs you could tap your toe to that sucked, that weren't rock bands at all. You know, bands that you say, okay, that's a good song, and you appreciate it for being a good song, but you'd never go to the concert. Here's a free ticket to the brand new, you know, Madness concert. You know, no, no, don't think so. The 80s, you know, if it weren't, I just you look, if you don't appreciate them, appreciate them now, please. And I'm talking about Z Z Top, and I'm talking about Rush and Bruce Springsteen and the Who, you know, and Van Halen and these guys that kept it, Tom Petty, especially. God, do I miss that guy? I do. These kept rock alive for us, these guys did in the 80s, because otherwise it would have been taken over by the Brits and their 80s pop music. Madonna was on that list, man. I am telling you, the Pointer Sisters. I know we can make it. I know damn well songs like that. Sade, I played that one night. You know, when I was at WQDR, I think. Sade, you know, smooth operator, and you don't know the phone call I got. Phone calls I got, just people just blistering me. So that's the day the music died when that selector machine came in at 1983. How do I work around this? Is my thought. And that first night I figured it out. I look around me and there are albums everywhere. The album bins hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of albums, all in alphabetical order, still in great shape. The two turntables are still there. Joe Lee told me all I need to know. There was a you know a stapled four set piece of paper up there where it gave you instructions how to work the computer, you know. But Joe Lee had already told me how to work it, you know. So I wait for the stop break, and I'm looking around in the control room for a good song to play. What the hell? And I find the T's. I'm in the T's and I find Pat Travers, Pat Travers band, and and and and they've got this new kind of thing out called Crash and Burn, right? Which I loved. I said, okay, that sounds good. And I cued it up on the turntable, ca-thunk, that's what I called them, because they were loud. When you cued up a song, you know, and that's what it sounded like. Shh when you cued it up. And I cued it up, waited till the stop part came on the computer. Boom. Started Pat Travers Crash and Burn. Super cool. Came on afterwards, after I finished playing the song, and said, those guys are playing with 38 Special and they're doing a show in Myrtle Beach coming up. I don't know, next month. Tickets are available for it, blah, blah, blah. And then I hit a button, I go right back into the commercial. You know, so that's the way I could break format. Look, I'm a format breaker, man. I'm going in there to play my show. I'm going in there to play songs that I like. That's why I got into the business. Man, you can't give me Culture Club. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to skip right over it. You can't give me Madonna. I'm going to skip right over it. Do delete. Not going to happen with Blade. It's not. You go back and listen to every song I ever played, you've never heard that on my show ever. And believe me, it was in the format from time to time. That's just the way it was back then. Those things were hot. Everybody, all rock stations were doing that then. You know, but I would always find a way to find something that I could play and break format and hope I didn't get fired. I get phone calls so many times the next day from the program director and the music director. Why did you play? You didn't play. You could have at least written it down. Why did you? And we're going to suspend you, you know, and we're going to put you on probation for a week until you realize what it's like for you to do the job that you are paid handsomely for properly. So we can get our ratings up. You know, okay, so I'd sit out for a week. You know, they'd suspend me for a week. There was no shortage of suspensions and probations for me. Unpaid, no less. You know, but they never fired me. Weird. You know, um, you know, and I'd wait a week, behave, two weeks, behave, and then I found out that these guys go to bed at ten o'clock, you know, you know, wh after watching TV with their families. They had families and kids and stuff. You know, they went to bed at 10 o'clock and that's when I break my formats. You know, and the DJs that worked at the station would be listening, they would never rag me out. They were great. You know, and listeners think that's just Blade playing Blade songs. Two people I had to worry about. Millions listening. Two people I had to worry about. I'm gonna tell you, I did it right. I did. I sit here today, many, many years later, after being in radio, I was there 32 years, 32 years, something like that. I really believe I played every single song that I love so much in my life, somehow or another. I played Get Ready, the version by Rare Earth once, during a short order lunch that I was substituting for many all requests. 22 minutes of Rare Earth Get Ready. You know, uh and I played Three Dog Night Live once. Aha, aha, said you, you, you, you, one or something was the name of the song. Everything. I played it all, man. I did it right. I went in there for the reason of playing songs that I like and getting paid for, and I did it in the very end. And Phil Zachary was the per was the general manager, and he would look, come to me, make sure he had an audience, because he was like that. You know, make sure he had a bunch of people around to set an example, and he'd say, You are a format violator. And what am I gonna say? Try was try not to laugh inside, and don't tell me I wasn't the only one. And I got you know, I I go to bed at night thinking that I was a format violator. I did blades format, blade was blade. You know, in the end there, it got rough because gosh, it was uh Bob Edwards came in as a program director in the 2000s, I think, and I had to sober up. You know, he told me that. He said, Look, look, I'm never gonna fire you. I want you to know, Blade. This was in 1999 when they had moved me to afternoons from nights. I worked most of my career doing nights, which I loved. But they moved me in 1995 to afternoon drive. You know, and he came in was the program director. He's the guy that put me there, afternoon drive, right? And he said, Look, I, you know, I uh after about a month or two, he said, Look, I'm never gonna fire you, but you gotta get to rehab, man. You know, and I knew it. I was just waiting for someone to make me do it, you know, I knew it. So I did, you know, I came back. And here's what's so funny about it is uh by the time I left it to to get out of there to spend my 28 days in a locked room, my ratings were like through the roof. You know, and then when I came back and acted as a professional gentleman on the air, which I did, you know, because I was all sober and I was acting like a pro at that point. Not before, but now I was. Ratings went. Imagine. But the guy saved my life by helping me that way. He did. I mean, someone needed to do it and he did it. And my apologies at this point before I get out of here. This is my last step. These get too long. My my podcasts are too long. You know, but my apologies to all the traffic girls that I that I went through when I was working afternoon drive from 2000 on until I quit in 2006, and wait to hear the story about quitting. I had to quit in 2006. But for six years I went through 15 traffic girls. Nobody would do it. You know, they knew me. They'd seen well, except for one girl that made it through all the way through, and her name was Robin Fox. You know, she was the toughie man and funny and cute and witty and quick. You know, but the only one, you know. There were a couple in there, but they couldn't last very long because, you know, as soon as I'd get a traffic girl on there, the first question I'd ask was, Hey, you want to sit on my lap and talk about the first thing that pops up? You know, there were some that would walk out immediately after that. Some would stay for a day and quit. Some would stay for two days and quit because I was such an asshole. I did shit like that all the time to these poor traffic girls. I just sat in there and gave them hell. One day a girl comes in, a new traffic girl, probably the tenth one at the time. Um, and hi, I introduce yourself and she introduced herself to me. And I said, That's your microphone. So you can stand over there and just do your traffic reports. It's pretty cool. However, there will be a test, a trial on your very first traffic report day. You can see her eyes roll back in her head. Great. And I pulled it out. Cuervo Gold, whole day Jose Cuervo Especial. The gold. I'm going to give you one shot before each traffic report. Let's see how it sounds by six o'clock. Let's see if you can hang in there. And she did fine. You could tell she was drunk a little bit, but she did fine. And she, I want this on record, is the only girl I ever know that answered this question like this. I'd say, come on over now. And of course, she was drunk at the time. Come on over, sit down now on my lap, and we'll talk about the first thing that pops up. She said, I'm thinking about it. I went through a traffic report. She did, she had something else to do and took off. And, you know, they all do. You know, there they don't want to do anything with me on the air. They don't want to go on the air with me, and I don't blame them one bit. One point, last last story about the traffic girl, I was walking down the hall and tra and some girl, pretty girl, was talking with Chris Jones, who's a friend of mine and one of the big wigs of decision makers, you know, Chris Jones, uh, their clear channel at the time. And he said, Oh, speak of the devil, Blade, come on in here. And I introduced myself to her, and she introduced herself to me, and she was applying for the new traffic job, right? And I said, Oh, it's a great job. I mean, it's just some helicopter up there in the air, you know, sending down information to you by radio something, you know, and you just repeat it on the air as soon as you get it from those guys. It's an easy job. You know, just remember it's called topless traffic. You have to have be topless every time you tell your traffic report. Just before you tell your traffic report, you got to be topless. And she didn't know how to react. There was no reaction from her, which is a bad sign for me. No reaction at all. You know, just kind of like a you know, maybe a little nervous thing. And Jones is the reaction I wanted. He takes a look at her and he goes. And she said, Well, I'll give you a call back if I'm interested or not. And of course, we never heard back from her. Then they started to pre-record the traffic reports. They'd put some kid in a broom closet somewhere, you know, and and pre-record the traffic reports from up in the helicopter. So I couldn't say anything or harass them. But then I'd say that pre-recorded traffic report was brought to you by Clear Channel. Hey, job, nice job, guys, on the pre-recorded traffic report. I'd say they'd say, okay, okay, okay.

Regent Voice Intro: 15:48

This is Regent Mercedes. We will catch you next week. Always happy to have anyone here. It's the Blade video podcast, unlike any other. All the content available at bleed.com.