Assorted goodbyes....

Somehow, my Pete Townshend userpic has become the default on this thing. That's fine for this entry- because my workweek, my May, and a lot of memories wrapped up with listening to something I haven't listened to in ages, but those ages remain a part of me.  That has continued into this week.

À la recherche du temps PLJ....

I've always had more than a fascination for radio.  Some earliest memories are of the Good Guys on WMCA, then, as the Beatles became implanted in our culture, it was more WABC than Ed Sullivan which brought me the whole cycle from Meet the Beatles to Let it Be.  I probably got my first FM radio in the early 70s, and that led to other New York spots on that dial, including 99X ("is my radio station") and WPIX 102 (there's another post brewing about a weird telephonic connection to THAT), but for many years on and off until I left the area, "New York's Best Rock" was on my alarm clock as 95.5 WPLJ.

The station began as a sister to the famed Musicradio of WABC-AM, originally simulcasting all or some of their programming on the still-unfamiliar FM band.  The 1970s brought the rebranding apart from the network's acronym: we'd heard, and believed, that the letters stood for Peace Love Joy, but later research proved the station to have been named after a 60s song, covered more recently by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, titled "White Port, Lemon Juice."  I missed its earliest, most progressive days, when the DJ lineup included Monster Horror Chiller legend Zacherle, but my lineup was full of legends, many still on the air in the NYC area. Jim Kerr did mornings- no sidekick as such yet, but assisted by guests like Howard the Cabdriver (I still issue his "You've Got To Be Kidding Awards" at least a few times a year). Carol Miller was New York's other nightbird- not getting namechecked by Dar Williams, but still bringing it close to 50 years later.  Tony Pigg. Jimmy Fink.  Pat St. John. Sunday mornings were "On This Rock," with then-actual priest Father Bill  Ayres. Dude actually sent me a Bible once just for calling in.  When I left town in those pre-streaming days, PLJ left my life, but I'd always smile seeing a reference here and there- as it shed its ABC ownership, briefly its call letters, and finally, earlier this year, its very existence. 

PLJ's owner sold it, and a number of other properties around the country, to a Jesus broadcaster, and the date of the handoff was set as last Friday, May 31st.  Many from its past joined the final staff from the present in bringing two days of memories, music and finally goodbyes.  Jim, Carol, and Pat were among those who visited or phoned in in the waning hours.  The music ranged from the predictable to the WTFs. I got home from work a little after 5 on Friday and couldn't catch the stream, but my browser was displaying the last couple hours of songs played:



Eventually, I discovered that a Microsoft browser could handle the online stream, and that got me more goodbyes, more stories, and this batch:



(The Dave Matthews cut was especially touching, as they recounted his doing a live remote performance with the station at Sloan Kettering, not telling anyone onair at the time that he'd gone room to room playing acoustic solos for as many of the kids as he could.)

They then stuck in Del Amitri's "Roll to Me" as their classic "two minute song"- the opposite of "Stairway to Heaven" type epics, where a jock just needed to fill a couple minutes of airtime versus an extended potty break.  That got it to the end, and answered the speculation about what song they would end on. My money was on the Beatles, and I was sort-of right: "Imagine," also played as the last song on sister WABC's signoff as a music station in 1982, came and went. Then they went to a live Hall and Oates rendition of, derp, the station's eponymous song "White Port, Lemon Juice."  But two Beatles lines from the end of "The End" were the last notes, before our longago misunderstanding of the call letters was finally validated in their final on-the-hour ID (thanks to my friend Scott for the transcription, emphasis mine):

May the 48 year run of this radio station prove to be a testament to the power and the love of terrestrial radio and may the mere thought of the letters PLJ bring a smile to your face, a warmth to your heart and a tingle to your ears. Heres to those who have walked these halls and breathed life into these microphones. It is with peace, love and joy that we toast the white port and lemon juice… and for one final time, from high above Madison Square Garden, this is the world-famous WPLJ, New York.

Silence. Then, a supposed Song of Jesus came on, plj dot com began pointing to the hateful talk hosts of WABC-AM, and the music died a second time.  I suspect this will happen more and more to stations of my past and even present as Radio As We Know It becomes smaller, sicker and more corporate.  I thank them for bringing it all back for a short time, and I thank the friends who record and archive so much that can be found and re-played after those memories are no longer being made.

----

He lost on Jeopardy!, wooo, hoo hoo, hooo....

Monday brought another goodbye and, for me, good riddance- and I missed it:(  It was a long workday, court hearings in Rochester at 10:30 and 6:30 which made it a day, with drives, of before 9 to just past 8.  It wasn't until later that the posts started coming: longtime Jeopardy! champion James Holzhauer had finally lost, just shy of breaking an ancient record of championry.  And his slayer was a librarian, who did her master's thesis on predicting the difficulty of Jeopardy! questions.

I did watch some of her first game as returning champion, and it's clear: James has changed the game.  Working bottom-up and hunting for big-money Doubles- that's how it's gonna be done now.

----

Udda thingza....

This afternoon and tomorrow bring a little relative quiet, but I just covered three court appearances here this morning after three Monday and yesterday and another scheduled on Friday.  We're also dealing with a bed-shitting dryer (Friday appointment), a seemingly wounded cat (seen Monday, she's fine), a horking dog (no appointment yet, she seems better), and me waking yesterday with a sore ankle and a possibly chipped tooth (medicating the first, waiting and seeing on the second).

We're down to the final episode of Good Omens, the Amazon series based on the Gaiman-Pratchett novel with Michael Sheen and David Tennant forming one of the odder couples you'll ever see.  Plenty of fun cameos and Doctor Who references aplenty (Spoilers, sweetie!)  And Handmaid's Tale resumes today; fortunately, Cheeto is out of the country, so he won't be getting any more ideas from it:P