Every Friday we end the week by dipping into my old music radio archives for a musical segue into the weekend. Today, we went back to May of 1996 for a fun and musically amazing segment with the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
The 17-piece band was much too large for our tiny “Music Hall,” so we had saxophones and trumpets and other band members spread all over the radio station, playing in sales department cubicles and hallways… but the sound was stellar! What a treat it was. I hope you enjoy it!
In the first hour, after going through some of the day’s news, I spoke with someone I’d never met before, but who’s been hounding me on Twitter to invite him on the show. So today I was joined by John Melendez, the guy better known as Stuttering John from the Howard Stern Show.
As I tweeted out, I’ve never been a Stern fan, and was always put off and a bit disgusted by John’s offensive questioning of people… but, frankly, he won me over this morning.
But, I still get uncomfortable with stuff like this:
Before we got into the Flashback stuff, I shared a Facebook post written by Donna Smith, who I said was a hero of mine. She is! Donna was featured in Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, and has been fighting for single payer healthcare ever since, all the while fighting the cancer she was trying to beat in the movie.
Her cancer is back, and she’s been sharing her struggles, which intensified when she was infected with MRSA during her most recent hospital stay. She wrote about it here.
Although Donna now has health insurance thanks to the ACA, her share of the costs are mounting, so her daughter set up this fundraiser for her. Please help if you can!
And with that, we’re done for the week. Go out and enjoy the weekend, and come back Monday as we take on a whole new week, radio or not!
My brother is a huge fan of Howard Stern.
I could definitely leave him, love him, not so much. I just don’t think it’s very “funny” making fun of mentally challenged people (like he does in Private Parts), having KKK judges for Puerto Rican “beauty contests,” or the way he does a modern day version of the carnival freak show with his “Wack Pack” made up of people like “Beetlejuice”.
I don’t mind low comedy, I’ll support Howard’s quest to use all the swear words he wants, fuck the FCC, I’ve got nothing against promoting porn stars. But there are aspects to his shtick that just don’t work for me: all that stuff I just mentioned above.
He’s basically apolitical, apart from giving some lip service to his own version of libertarianism (that’s what he ran on for “governor,” along with fixing all the potholes), and constantly saying he wants to be made head of the FCC.