Reprinted from BlogTalkRadio.com's blog entry dated May 14, 2009:
Rock Legend Rick Derringer: ‘Internet Radio Is the Wave of the Future’
Forget social-media gurus. If you really want to know where the radio industry is headed, ask the man who wrote Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo.
That would be Rick Derringer.
“It’s just like going back in time and rebuilding the whole record business from scratch,” Rick (above) tells us of Internet radio.
And this week on Rundgren Radio, Rick riffs on the subject like no- body’s business.
“I saw the old Elvis Presley movie Jailhouse Rock the other night. And in it, he’s actually able to say, ‘Let’s start our own label,’ the guitar virtuoso, whose new album is titled Knighted by the Blues, tells hosts Doug Ford and Cruiser Mel.
“And they started their own label and they were able to cut this record and bring it right into the radio station and get the guy to play it while they were standing there. And the audience would call in and request it at that time.
“Those days of radio, people figure, are gone because radio is so controlled and it’s so big – Clear Channel and all those stations – it’s programmed and it’s so controlled that that can’t happen anymore.
“Well, they’re wrong. It can happen and it is happening right now. Tonight, you’re listening to it. Internet radio is the wave of the future – but it’s also a big salute to the past, because we’re able to go on, we’re able to do things like we’re doing now.
Rick’s original band, The McCoys, had a No. 1 hit in 1965 with this single.
“Stations can play whatever music they want to, people can either call in or email, immed- iately responding to what the radio station is playing.”
If that weren’t enough of a sales pitch, Rick goes on to explain why oldfangled radio just can’t cut it in this day and age.
“Radio stations, no matter how big they are – the terrestrial stations, we call them – are limited by the output of their transmitter, which means they can only be heard within a certain given metropolitan area,” he says.
“These stations, like the one we’re on now can be heard everywhere in the world.”
One of my favorite telly shows these days is A & E's "Paranormal State." I'm not sure where I've been hiding myself until recently, because this show has been on for quite awhile, yet I only got on the ghostwagon in the last couple of months.
I dig this stuff mucho - well, maybe not in person, but on the tube when I'm in the safety of my own un-haunted home, it's the stuff that gets my ghost. Pun intended.
There have been nights when I have to watch old Frazier or Golden Girl re-runs to get the heebeejeebees out of my head from watching this show. No kidding, I'm a sucker for this shit. And Ryan Buell? Oh yeah. He can exorcise me anytime.
Last weekend was my high school reunion and it was fun seeing everyone that I wanted to see. That's really not related to this blog entry, but it does bring up the fact that I missed my college reunion this past year. And that reminded me that I had a ghostly encounter in my dorm room at said college.
The college I'm talking about is a beautiful campus on a hill in Virginia. The dorms are old plantation homes from the civil war. The school was a seminary for girls for awhile and then became a liberal arts college at some point. Blah blah blah.
ANYWAY - one of the most famous students at the seminary was Tallulah Bankhead. (don't ya love that name?) Tallulah attended the college in 1913, but only lasted about a semester. See - she was a little tough to tame. In fact, she was expelled from the college for hanging upside down from a tree in a skirt. Tsk. She also bit a student or perhaps a professor. Not on the same day. Well, I don't think so.
When I was at the college some many decades later, I was a theatre major. All I could do was eat, sleep and poop the theatre. (Notice the "re" and not the "er"...yeah, that's how I roll.) My senior year was awesome. I finally found a roomie that I could truly giggle with and we were both hall officers - she was hall president and I was the judicial rep for the dorm. (I was always a stickler for da law. Take that!) Barbara and I had an awesome room on the second floor of a beautiful dorm / plantation home. On pleasant days, we'd hang out the windows like proper southern ladies, smoking ciggies and drinking grain alcohol, but unlike Tallulah, we never hung from trees in skirts, never bit anyone and we both made it out alive within 4 years.
Being a theatre major, I was directing my first play just after the Christmas break and had been living solely on Dr. Pepper Big Gulps and cigarettes for about 3 weeks. Sleep was a luxury I couldn't afford. One night, Barbara was studying on her bed and I was stressing about my directorial debut. Though I can't recall just how late at night it was - it was bloody dark outside and it must have been cold as our radiator (yes, this place was old) was banging more than usual. We both looked up from our studies and a rocking chair by the window started rocking pretty wildly. I can recall not believing my eyes and looking over at Barbara only to encounter her eyes - now baseball sized. I think I levitated over to her bed and we embraced, watching the chair continue to rock back and forth for several minutes. I'm not sure what we did next, but I'm sure it involved blowing off our studies in favor of eating or drinking to purge ourselves of that vision.
Being curious about whether or not our vision was a ghostly visitor or just a group hallucination, we did some research in the library....back in the olden days when there were libraries and card catalogs, remember those? We had heard about Tallulah Bankhead being a student in days gone by, but were stunned to find out not only had she lived in our dorm, but had lived in our ROOM. Yes, my friends, Tallulah may have checked out, but she never left.
I think what allowed me to not get completely creeped-out was the thought that perhaps she approved of what I was doing with my play, one theatre person to another. I've often wondered if any other appearances of Tallulah have been witnessed in that room.
Wanna make a little history? Todd Rundgren will perform his entire "A Wizard, A True Star" album top to bottom LIVE (yes, the one from 1973) in Akron, Ohio on 09/06/09! Buy your tickets at AWATSLive.com or Ticketmaster.
