Inka Dinka Doo
Apr. 29th, 2011 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI should start by explaining one of the many conundrums of my life. With the exception of one extended stay in the UK, back in 1983, I have never spent more than two consecutive weeks outside the Empire State of my birth. I've spent my time at and between nearly its extremest of ends, logging 17 years apiece one county removed from its northwest and southeast tips, but I have no basis for holding myself out as anything other than a lifelong Noo Yawkah.
Yet for the better part of a decade, through the combined miracles of skywaves and insomnia, I was more in touch with the goings-on in Roxbury than in Roslyn or Rochester, and I knew more about Kevin White's problems in Boston than those of Jimmy Griffin right here in the B-lo.
Hi, my name is Ray, and I was a Glicknick.
----
Blame Jim and Jean, my roommates for varying spans of years at Cornell. He was from north of the Hub of the Universe (Chelmsford), she from the south (Brockton, home of the daily Emptyprise), and both kept in touch with Things Back Home, mostly, through WBZ-AM, the 50,000 watt blowtorch that came in at 1030 on your AM dial and kept me from listening to the Mets on the misdirected station at 1050. Most of those hours came in the late evenings and overnights, when the clear channel signal could penetrate even Ithaca's hilly barriers. In those years, and most of my first round of later ones in Buffalo, that meant keeping company with Larry Glick- "the Commander" of the airwaves, who didn't use shock or awe to keep you hooked but just talked to you, like you were a friend he'd missed or hadn't even met yet. Somebody likened his style to the Magliozzis of "Car Talk," who came along on Boston radio a few years later and remain there (and nationally on NPR); I'd agree with that assessment, as they didn't resort much to overproduced bits or celebrity crap but just made their living, and your day, by being themselves.
Key to the Glick schtick were "the calls," and they had to be "good" ones. Early in my LJ days, I met a guy through Googling who'd made one of those calls, and who proudly earned himself the prized Glick University t-shirt-
- where the only requirement for ownership was that you "keep it clean." Shane (still occasionally posting through a feedsite I RSS'd as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
nickerblog) made a call to the Commander about some cool stuff his Dad was doing up in New Hamp-shah, and duly scored his bling for it, a memory he shared more than 20 years later and from 3000 miles away. I called in to the show a few times over the years, never with a good enough call for the prize, but just to hear a friendly voice up close and personal (if on seven-second delay); Larry was never fazed by calls from hundreds of miles away, since that signal bounced from the upper reaches of Canada all the way down to Florida without even trying.
As it became harder and harder in those pre-internet days to find humor on the radio (Dr. Demento never aired in the same city as me for more than a few months, and tightening station formats limited other comedy options), Larry had a shorter but regular repetoire of such "bits," which callers would request and usually get. I knew "The Ballad of Irving" from Dr D, but it was Larry who played "The Reading of the Will" from the same album, which was less musical but just as funny. ("Hel-lo, Louie!"). A Rich Little medley of numerous past and current voices, called "The Presidents' Poker Game," was another of that ilk. (Carter: "Um, the pot's a nickel short." Nixon: "Well, why's everybody looking at ME?!?")
Many a night, I'd fall asleep with the radio on, and awaken to the BZ morning guy, Dave Maynard, who woke you up, literally, with a playing of Reville at the stroke of 6 a.m. The signal would usually drop soon after that, and I never got to know Dave as well, but in those days, Boston's WSBK-TV was a cable "superstation" carried on upstate systems, and Dave's show, especially, was heavily promoted on that station with commercials usually ending in him crashing into some sort of calamity, the tag line being someone saying to him, "Piece of cake, Dave!"
I randomly used that line the other day, as old farts my age will do now and again, but now we old farts can Google things to reclaim those memories. I lost touch with the Commander after I moved to Rochester and he, soon thereafter, moved to another station that didn't carry, but there he was, just like he was on the air last night, doing one of those promos for Maynard in the Morning as preserved on YouTube:
It took only a few of the comments to realize something I'd never heard, and reacted to with deep sadness: the Commander signed off for good from this world, just over 2 years ago, on March 26, 2009 (23 years to the day after my own father died). One of the finer tributes to him came from a Buffalo-based radio nut, who put up this page, with the t-shirt pictured above and several aircheck clips that make me genuinely teary.
If I made it through the night of calls and bits and "the story behind.... the story" all the way till just before 2 a.m., I'd hear Larry's nightly signoff. It was a vintage recording of Jimmy Durante singing Goodnight. That's not it, exactly; Jimmy sang, "We had a few laughs," and Larry voiced-over "ha ha ha," and they worked in at least one Inka Dinka Doo as the Commander whistled the mournful closing notes before the final nocturnal wishes to Mrs. Calabash, where-ever she was. If I was still awake by then, I felt I'd earned my ensuing night's sleep, even if I didn't get the stinkin' T-shirt.
Good night, Larry. Group W may long have faded into Viacomdom, but to me you will always be The Spirit of New England:)
Yet for the better part of a decade, through the combined miracles of skywaves and insomnia, I was more in touch with the goings-on in Roxbury than in Roslyn or Rochester, and I knew more about Kevin White's problems in Boston than those of Jimmy Griffin right here in the B-lo.
Hi, my name is Ray, and I was a Glicknick.
----
Blame Jim and Jean, my roommates for varying spans of years at Cornell. He was from north of the Hub of the Universe (Chelmsford), she from the south (Brockton, home of the daily Emptyprise), and both kept in touch with Things Back Home, mostly, through WBZ-AM, the 50,000 watt blowtorch that came in at 1030 on your AM dial and kept me from listening to the Mets on the misdirected station at 1050. Most of those hours came in the late evenings and overnights, when the clear channel signal could penetrate even Ithaca's hilly barriers. In those years, and most of my first round of later ones in Buffalo, that meant keeping company with Larry Glick- "the Commander" of the airwaves, who didn't use shock or awe to keep you hooked but just talked to you, like you were a friend he'd missed or hadn't even met yet. Somebody likened his style to the Magliozzis of "Car Talk," who came along on Boston radio a few years later and remain there (and nationally on NPR); I'd agree with that assessment, as they didn't resort much to overproduced bits or celebrity crap but just made their living, and your day, by being themselves.
Key to the Glick schtick were "the calls," and they had to be "good" ones. Early in my LJ days, I met a guy through Googling who'd made one of those calls, and who proudly earned himself the prized Glick University t-shirt-
- where the only requirement for ownership was that you "keep it clean." Shane (still occasionally posting through a feedsite I RSS'd as
nickerblog) made a call to the Commander about some cool stuff his Dad was doing up in New Hamp-shah, and duly scored his bling for it, a memory he shared more than 20 years later and from 3000 miles away. I called in to the show a few times over the years, never with a good enough call for the prize, but just to hear a friendly voice up close and personal (if on seven-second delay); Larry was never fazed by calls from hundreds of miles away, since that signal bounced from the upper reaches of Canada all the way down to Florida without even trying.As it became harder and harder in those pre-internet days to find humor on the radio (Dr. Demento never aired in the same city as me for more than a few months, and tightening station formats limited other comedy options), Larry had a shorter but regular repetoire of such "bits," which callers would request and usually get. I knew "The Ballad of Irving" from Dr D, but it was Larry who played "The Reading of the Will" from the same album, which was less musical but just as funny. ("Hel-lo, Louie!"). A Rich Little medley of numerous past and current voices, called "The Presidents' Poker Game," was another of that ilk. (Carter: "Um, the pot's a nickel short." Nixon: "Well, why's everybody looking at ME?!?")
Many a night, I'd fall asleep with the radio on, and awaken to the BZ morning guy, Dave Maynard, who woke you up, literally, with a playing of Reville at the stroke of 6 a.m. The signal would usually drop soon after that, and I never got to know Dave as well, but in those days, Boston's WSBK-TV was a cable "superstation" carried on upstate systems, and Dave's show, especially, was heavily promoted on that station with commercials usually ending in him crashing into some sort of calamity, the tag line being someone saying to him, "Piece of cake, Dave!"
I randomly used that line the other day, as old farts my age will do now and again, but now we old farts can Google things to reclaim those memories. I lost touch with the Commander after I moved to Rochester and he, soon thereafter, moved to another station that didn't carry, but there he was, just like he was on the air last night, doing one of those promos for Maynard in the Morning as preserved on YouTube:
It took only a few of the comments to realize something I'd never heard, and reacted to with deep sadness: the Commander signed off for good from this world, just over 2 years ago, on March 26, 2009 (23 years to the day after my own father died). One of the finer tributes to him came from a Buffalo-based radio nut, who put up this page, with the t-shirt pictured above and several aircheck clips that make me genuinely teary.
If I made it through the night of calls and bits and "the story behind.... the story" all the way till just before 2 a.m., I'd hear Larry's nightly signoff. It was a vintage recording of Jimmy Durante singing Goodnight. That's not it, exactly; Jimmy sang, "We had a few laughs," and Larry voiced-over "ha ha ha," and they worked in at least one Inka Dinka Doo as the Commander whistled the mournful closing notes before the final nocturnal wishes to Mrs. Calabash, where-ever she was. If I was still awake by then, I felt I'd earned my ensuing night's sleep, even if I didn't get the stinkin' T-shirt.
Good night, Larry. Group W may long have faded into Viacomdom, but to me you will always be The Spirit of New England:)
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-01 04:24 pm (UTC)Before Maynard in the Morning was Carl DeSuze. I used to wake up to the smell of percolating coffee and the sound of his voice coming from the radio in the kitchen.
And let's not forget David Brudnoy...